When I returned home with a small handmade basket of beaded jewelry from last month’s open-house fundraiser for Connect Africa, I fully intended to take the basket to school, where I envisioned using it to hold the loose paper-clips and rubber-bands that always accumulate on my desk. Instead, the basket seems perfectly content to stay on the desk in my home office, where it is currently serving as a catch-all container for the aforementioned jewelry, a small box of binder clips, and several scrunchies.
Note to self: at next year’s fundraiser, buy several baskets.
This is my contribution to today’s Photo Friday theme, Homemade. Technically, these African handicrafts are handmade, not homemade…but I figured that was close enough.
Hoarded Ordinaries 
Dec 5, 2009 at 1:25 am
What significance does the basket hold for certain Africans? Is it just a basket, or something more? Which African tribe/tradition does it come from?
Questions, questions…
LikeLike
Dec 5, 2009 at 7:30 am
Wasn’t it Winnie-the-Pooh who talked about needing “a useful pot to put things in”?
LikeLike
Dec 5, 2009 at 10:29 am
Pretty!
LikeLike
Dec 5, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Kevin, all I know about this basket is that it was made by Ugandan women who sell their handicrafts to support AIDS orphans in their village. Most of the women are grandmothers, as AIDS has decimated the “middle generation,” leaving elderly women to raise their children’s children. Apart from that, I don’t know what the specific significance of this particular kind of basket is.
Steve, that sounds like something Winnie the Pooh would say…and surely that useful pot would be an empty HONEY pot! 🙂
Leslee, there was a HUGE selection of pretty things at this fundraiser, which is why I limited myself to one small basket!
LikeLike