While visiting Sierra Leone in West Africa earlier this month, my daughter Jessica and I purchased some lovely baskets from a road side vendor between Makeni and Freetown. The basket I purchased is very tall but made it home safely, well packed by my laundry. The new basket from Sierra Leone now lives in my dining room with two other favorite baskets:
- An Apache burden basket woven in 2000 by Alma Altaha (San Carlos Apache Nation). You can see where she wove ALTAHA into the horizontal stripe of the basket. It was probably made for the Sunrise Ceremony (puberty celebration) of a girl in her family. I bought it at Action Pawn in Globe, Arizona, outside of the reservation.
- A Peace Basket from Kigali, Rwanda, I purchased in 2014. These baskets are a symbol of the peace after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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