Each chess piece (aswell as the board) is carefully carved by handFollowing on from my recent post about the Tanzanian Bao Game, I thought I’d post a photo of a typical hand carved wooden Tanzanian chess board. Isn’t it lovely ?
I got this ages ago and it sits on the coffee table in my main lounge. The cats – Ollie especially – love tapping the chess pieces with their paws and knocking them over so that they scoot across the tiled lounge floor and then they pounce on them with glee ! (This is also an endless source of amusement to my daughter !)
You can find these wooden chess sets all over the country in all sorts of different sizes and styles. Some of the boards are even made into side table tops, for display and use in your lounge, and the chess pieces are then kept separately.
In many places you can actually watch local craftsmen carving the little figures with a knife under a tree on the roadside. Each piece is then carefully smoothed and polished before being placed on the board and put out for sale. (They are reasonably priced too, especially considering all the work that goes into making them.)
They make excellent presents for family and friends in far flung places and as they are handmade, each one is completely unique.
I was watching a programme on CNN the other day, filmed in Zanzibar (which lies just off our coastline) about local craftsmen and curio shopping. It was presented by Richard Quest (I think he’s great !) and in it he was saying something that really rung true with me and that is that when people come on holiday to Africa they do expect to get good bargains in the local markets but that one should only bargain the craftsmen down to a reasonable amount as very often the difference of a few dollars to you can make all the difference to a local craftsman between whether or not his family get to eat that night.
It is true, most curio prices here are inflated for the tourist & you are expected to bargain down … it’s part of the whole experience of curio shopping here, but the idea is to not go so low that the poor craftsman is forced to give his carefully made item away for next to nothing simply because a small amount of cash is worth more to him than returning home to his wife and children who have perhaps not had much to eat that day at all.
Something to think about and something that I too, even as a resident here, need to always consider when perhaps, say, my Vegetable Mama tells me that the price of tomatoes have increased this week because the rains are bad and I get annoyed by it. Food for thought.
I got this ages ago and it sits on the coffee table in my main lounge. The cats – Ollie especially – love tapping the chess pieces with their paws and knocking them over so that they scoot across the tiled lounge floor and then they pounce on them with glee ! (This is also an endless source of amusement to my daughter !)
You can find these wooden chess sets all over the country in all sorts of different sizes and styles. Some of the boards are even made into side table tops, for display and use in your lounge, and the chess pieces are then kept separately.
In many places you can actually watch local craftsmen carving the little figures with a knife under a tree on the roadside. Each piece is then carefully smoothed and polished before being placed on the board and put out for sale. (They are reasonably priced too, especially considering all the work that goes into making them.)
They make excellent presents for family and friends in far flung places and as they are handmade, each one is completely unique.
I was watching a programme on CNN the other day, filmed in Zanzibar (which lies just off our coastline) about local craftsmen and curio shopping. It was presented by Richard Quest (I think he’s great !) and in it he was saying something that really rung true with me and that is that when people come on holiday to Africa they do expect to get good bargains in the local markets but that one should only bargain the craftsmen down to a reasonable amount as very often the difference of a few dollars to you can make all the difference to a local craftsman between whether or not his family get to eat that night.
It is true, most curio prices here are inflated for the tourist & you are expected to bargain down … it’s part of the whole experience of curio shopping here, but the idea is to not go so low that the poor craftsman is forced to give his carefully made item away for next to nothing simply because a small amount of cash is worth more to him than returning home to his wife and children who have perhaps not had much to eat that day at all.
Something to think about and something that I too, even as a resident here, need to always consider when perhaps, say, my Vegetable Mama tells me that the price of tomatoes have increased this week because the rains are bad and I get annoyed by it. Food for thought.
