Documenting the arts and crafts of Harar
Our second day in Harar we took it easy. We had decided to wander back through the walled city on our own, following our own feet. We had breakfast in a small cafe by the Harar Gate and then wandered in through the Buda Gate.
We soon found ourselves back at Rimbaud's House. Ed wandered off to look at the displays and I stayed in the library to read the guidebook. As I read I could hear voices singing nearby, and I thought there was a school located near the museum.
Ed returned as the attendant was about to close the building for lunch. We walked into the courtyard and the singing began again. I turned back and walked to the edge of the building. There, a group of women sat on the raised steps of the room. They weaved baskets as they sang. A camera was set up to film them and a woman sat among them with a microphone. The man standing next to me told me they were filming a program for an Ethiopian travel channel documenting this women's collective. I asked him how he knew. He told me he was producing the show.
A curator from the Ethnological museum in Addis, he had been working for the past year in Harar with a World Bank program designed to form collectives and encourage local crafts with the hopes of selling them abroad. A group had just returned from a New York trade show where they had shown various articles made as part of the program. He said that the report was on his desk but he was afraid to read it. He said that westerners didn't usually want to buy the very colorful baskets they made; they preferred muted colors. (Later we were to prove this assessment when I chose to buy faded antique baskets over the bright newly-woven ones that were for sale.)
He lamented also programs such as the one he was with. He said the timelines were short and the foreign experts, while well-meaning, didn't take the time to learn about the local traditions. They appeared with their own ideas which they tried to teach in a few weeks or months and then disappeared, rarely taking into account local attitudes. He referred to it as "design intervention." He had written books on the local arts and crafts and was hesitant to create work that pandered to another culture.
He asked us what we did and when I told him I was a designer asked if I might be interested in helping them with promotion ideas. Harar had recently been designated a UNESCO world heritage site, and he was hoping to not only sell Ethiopian wares to the west but also encourage tourism. I gave him my card and told him to email me.
As the crew began to wrap, the interviewer spoke with the man. He told us they wanted to interview us for the program. We readily agreed. I told Ed this was the second time I was being interviewed for a local travel program; the first having been in Kyoto for a Japanese travel program out of Osaka.
We left as they were interviewing an Ethiopian man who had just returned from Germany. He had grown up in Harar and had returned to Harar for the first time in many years. The producer walked us out and thanked us for our help. I told him I was looking forward to his call.
