The Loom and the Anthill

 

The threads are strung and the invitation is clear. Weave your story until you reach the end. The pattern is not in a book or a Youtube video or a church doctrine. It is already present in your mind’s eye and your hands will work to follow its shape and match its color. And not just your hands, as hands and feet work in concert like a virtuosic organ player opening the strings in different combinations to pass the shuttle through. 

 

And so it demands all of you— your coordinated body, your artistic eye, your musical rhythm, your patience and perseverance and dedication to weave the cloth that is yours alone, to join with other kente cloth strips to create the royal garment fit for kings and queens. 

 

These my thoughts once again visited the weaving village where these astounding men artisans are at work. And then a few paths down are the women patiently preparing cassava from the plant nearby to take it through its multiple incarnations as a life-sustaining food. The same with the date palm, making yet more food and oil and palm wine and fibers for baskets and wood for fuel. Every part of the local natural resources used to sustain life in deep communion with one’s natural habitat and connection with fellow members of the human community.  One can’t help but feel, “This is very different from shopping at Costco.”

 

On we went to the Nunya Academy School, a place that began as a vision in one remarkable man’s eye, seeing clearly the threads set out before him. And so with a little—and often a lot of—help from his friends, he set to work weaving the threads and little by little, the exquisite pattern emerged before finally manifesting as a two-story school building. Kofi Gbolonyo is that visionary man and his vision first came to him visiting Sofia, James and myself in San Francisco. Those gatherings in San Francisco eventually led to initiating the first Orff Afrique Course in 2014. We have a photo of the three of us back then standing in a field that he had purchased for an eventual school building. 

Then in the second course in 2016, we took another photo in the same spot in front of a sign that said “Future Home of Nunya Academy.” In 2018, another photo of us breaking ground in a special ceremony and finally, in 2023 (the 4^th Orff Afrique Course), there we were in front of the building itself for a long-awaited Opening Ceremony.  

 

But the dream wasn’t fulfilled yet until it was alive with kids and today, it was.  A moving experience to go in the classrooms and see the kids and even get to sing a song with them. The school officially opened in September of 2023 with two students, Kofi’s niece and nephew. Now when we arrived, all the kids lined up and there were —300 of them!! The 30 teachers in the course ran to them like bees to flowers and the games began, everywhere in every corner of the school grounds. Kids from 3 years old to 14. And 11-year journey from that first photo to this moment. 

 

After the kids were picked up, we gathered to hear Kofi tell the story of Nunya’s inception from meeting Sofia in 2001, James and I in 2003 all the way until today. It’s an extraordinary story and alongside his relentless hard work and perseverance, Sofia’s ongoing commitment, help from James and I, it’s also the story of him meeting just the right people at just the right time to help move the dream forward, inch by inch. Dedicated work and serendipitous luck hand-in-hand to weave this cloth that just was meant to be. In some other world, the invisible helping hands prepared the threads and planted the dream in the mind of the person who was born to see it through. 

 

And the anthill? Sofia joined Kofi in telling the story of how she first noticed him when he worked as an assistant in a course she took in Ghana in 2001. She noticed that his answers to her questions went far beyond any of the other teachers. One of her questions was about the large anthills they passed driving by on the bus and he gave her a detailed account of how they are constructed and what intricate paths are laid out inside of them. This was the moment when their partnership in the vision first began for her, so that when we are on the bus driving to Dzodze last week and she shouted, “Look, an anthill!” none of us could have known what that meant to her. A reminder of one of the most profound relationships and experiences in her life. She teared up as she told the story and it was the appropriate end to this most extraordinary tale. 

 

But not yet the end of the matter. Still more as-yet unwoven strings beckoning as Kofi toured us to more land behind the building he had bought and got us imagining the next building they plan to build to keep up with the demand. From 2 to 300 students in just one year is a clear signal that that this is so much more than one man’s vision. It’s a hidden need in the local culture that demands to be fulfilled. And I, for one, feel so blessed and proud to be a tiny part of it.