Living CultureKasenaKasena-Nankaniliving tradition
The Women Who Paint the Walls
In Sirigu the houses are round and made of earth, and the women paint them.
Sirigu, near Bolgatanga.
2 min readSource-backed story
Listening to The Women Who Paint the Walls
The Women Who Paint the Walls
Story 1 of 1
0:001:25
Read transcript
The Women Who Paint the Walls
In Sirigu the houses are round and made of earth, and the women paint them.
Not decoration — the painting is part of the building. After the rains the walls are re-plastered and then finished by hand in black, red and white made from local earths, mud, soot and a binding of dawadawa pod, and then burnished with a stone until the surface is hard and sheds water. A painted wall lasts. An unpainted one does not.
The patterns have names and the names are things. Wanzagsɛ, the broken calabash: a woman's most useful possession, and even broken it still works — so, a woman's worth is not diminished by hardship. The python, for protection. The cow, for wealth. The nets, the zigzags, the triangles that are the scales of a crocodile. A woman learns them from her mother and her mother's co-wives, on the wall, with her hands.
It was fading. In 1997 the women of the village organised — SWOPA, the Sirigu Women's Organisation of Pottery and Art — and now they paint, teach, sell, and run a guesthouse in a painted compound where you can sleep inside the art form and get a lesson in the morning.
In Sirigu the houses are round and made of earth, and the women paint them.
Not decoration — the painting is part of the building. After the rains the walls are re-plastered and then finished by hand in black, red and white made from local earths, mud, soot and a binding of dawadawa pod, and then burnished with a stone until the surface is hard and sheds water. A painted wall lasts. An unpainted one does not.
The patterns have names and the names are things. Wanzagsɛ, the broken calabash: a woman's most useful possession, and even broken it still works — so, a woman's worth is not diminished by hardship. The python, for protection. The cow, for wealth. The nets, the zigzags, the triangles that are the scales of a crocodile. A woman learns them from her mother and her mother's co-wives, on the wall, with her hands.
It was fading. In 1997 the women of the village organised — SWOPA, the Sirigu Women's Organisation of Pottery and Art — and now they paint, teach, sell, and run a guesthouse in a painted compound where you can sleep inside the art form and get a lesson in the morning.