glass beads

my favorite of our workshops was the glass beads.

basically, they start with broken bottles from beer or minerals; women pound the glass until it is a fine powder.

the powder is then poured into ceramic molds. each mold has dozens of spaces for the beads, and each space has a piece of cassava stem inserted in to hold the spot for the bead hole.

this is some of our counterparts working on that step.

then filling the molds with the glass.
then it goes in the oven, which is built of dirt and has two holes on the sides to put logs in.
they baked for a couple hours, then we had to let them cool of course for a little while, and the end result was really great.
we got to keep our beads!