And Albert Foundation>

Breaking the Poverty Chain

“Trading for Life” has been our consistent strategy to help the poorest groups help themselves by working for their own development. Trading in their arts and crafts, setting up and supporting an increasing number of workshops and sending regular containers to the UK, has been happening since the first one left Niger in 1993. Our “trading route” then followed from the Sahara desert in Niger with Touareg crafts, through Burkina Faso and finally down through Ghana by 1995.

In Ghana one buying trip explored the Northern remote village of Singa, across the White Volta by canoe and then a seven mile trek to the village along an old slave track. At the other end of this route South from there, another trip looked at the coastal fishing village of Anomabo where I found the old British castle of Fort William, still intact.

In Singa the old Chief told us God had given him a dream of a white man coming to help his people! I was certainly the first white visitor! I also found out then Singa was the last village on one main slave route from the Northern lands from Mali before the crossing of the White Volta. Its remoteness was confirmed by the local people who called it “overseas”! Its suffering, with no clean water, no medical accessibility, and waterborne diseases of many kinds from bringing the river water seven miles each day and leaving it unfiltered, was something I found hard to do nothing about. This suffering over the generations had given rise to the belief the place was cursed or to dangerous to visit! I had to try to fulfil the Chief’s prophecy and do something!

So here I was with some 4 years ago presented with the by then obvious linking of our chosen places of work and trade along a slave-trade route of villages from the Sahara desert to the Atlantic Coast. I set in motion a conscious strategy to forge these new “freedom links” into a comprehensive method of sensitive development which suited the different tribes themselves and their very disparate environments. If, whilst this was tried, some of the links re-forged old alliances, broke down the frontiers artificially formed by Western colonial powers, or even forged new links with one time enemies, slaves and slave-traders for example, all the better. Both David Livingstone and William Wilberforce recognised the power of adventurous honest trading to bring peoples together in a common bond of mutual assistance and understanding and saw it as a practical way to defeat slavery. Their inheritance still stands against the poverty which allows slavery to flourish still.

In Singa, breaking the chains of slavery past, and the common curse of grinding poverty now, would require opening up the old river-boat trade. There are a 100 villages along the River to the Volta Lake with disused ware-housing at one end and skilled boatmen and fishermen at the other who are rapidly becoming friends and thrilled with the idea of getting back to the old ways to eventually move forward again! It would not take much labour to turn the old slave-track from the River to the Village into a useful dirt road. We are already planning a raft type ferry to take over a medical Land Rover this year or even a tractor and trailer to transport goods and people.

At Anomabo, Fort William which was dedicated as a memorial to King George VI in 1954 and due to be restored for African Youth, eventually became a prison. Its shackles could not be thrown off! Our aim together is to break the chains of past evils and turn it into a place of culture and life for African young people to learn to respect how powerful and rich their own country and Heritage really is. They are not always aware of this, when the greed and superficiality of the West threatens their growing minds.

There are about 30 villages ear marked along this slave route from the Fort to the Desert where we are building a programme of village “repair and regeneration”. This is centred firstly on the trading of goods and commodities through a very old fashioned idea of “Trading Posts”; secondly on tree nurseries and plantations and small horticultural schemes centred on tried and trusted methods, all of them fully organic; thirdly on culture and heritage centres for music, poetry and story telling, children’s nurseries and playgrounds as “learning through play” centres.

For many years I have taken out students and designer/buyers and interested friends to “see for them-selves” and offer further objective insights into our strategies. As we finish indigenous guest houses in each place along the route this will develop into a full programme of sensitive eco-tourism beginning this year.

Finally my vision would link this redeemed slave-trade route (and others which could follow) with the “children” of slaves and traders of the Diaspora in UK/Europe, the West Indies and the Americas. This would be to forge long term relationships through new trading partnerships, visits, and educational exchanges. In my “Wilberforce” City of Kingston upon Hull this would mean having a cargo/passenger boat voyaging between Hull and Takoradi in Ghana on a regular basis for those small traders who can’t afford whole containers…or folk who object to flying! Until the Hull Fruit Market tastes our Burkina organic mangoes they ain’t tasted Mango!

In West Indies and America it would mean the Diaspora coming home to trace their roots of wonderful culture and music and skills and invest in their Heritage in all these representative environments.

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