KARIN ALTMANN
In 2023, thanks to the Nubuke Foundation team, Karin met the last spinner in Wa. Mariam is the sister of weaver Karimo Mahama, with whom Karin had collaborated for the Woori Textile Festival 2023.
Wa is the regional capital of the Upper West Region in Ghana, a region that is noted for a rich weaving tradition. Mariam has lived most of her life in Wa, where she has been in the process of spinning raw cotton into threads for decades.
But in fact, Mariam is a native of Daboya, the most famous of Ghana’s fugu weaving communities. Daboya is a semi-urban locality in the Gonja area in the Savannah Region, about 60 km west of Tamale. It is believed that narrow strip weaving in Daboya was introduced by the Mande people who came from Mali to Ghana, and Mariam’s ancestors are also from Mali. Men do the dyeing, weaving and sewing while women prepare the raw cotton and spin it into yarn.
Mariam acquires the raw material from the local market in Wa, spins thread used by her brother to weave fabrics, but has also developed good relationships with other weavers, giving her a ready market for the threads she spins. The only and at the same time major problem is that there are no young people who are willing to learn from her.