Wednesday, October 30, 2013

A Basket Case

Except for diamonds, a few cattle, and some tourism, there aren't many sources of income for the local populace.  It's similar in neighboring Zimbabwe, except they don't have diamonds.

Consequntly, in the numerous markets around Bots, there are a lot of crafts for sale.  You can find lots of carved wooden and stone animals, bone/horn bottle openers, items made of wire and of beads, and screen prints.  But, the most interesting to us are the beautiful and inexpenisve baskets.  These come in a variety of sizes and shapes, from quite small to huge.  The colors are light, medium and dark brown, black, and a tiny bit of white.






The true art pieces can run a couple of hundred dollars, but you can also buy nice ones the size of dinner plates for under $3.  To look at these and think that the materials can be gathered and the baskets fabricated and retail for under $3??  Brenda heard that some of these are machine made, but even if they are, $3?
We asked yesterday about a couple of cheap ones, and the lady said they were hand made.  Maybe she was strethcing the truth, maybe not, but $3?

Likewsie, there are carved animals of stone and wood for very low cost in view of what it took to make them.  I can't imagine that the people making these objects are earning more than a dollar or two an hour.

Scripture is full of warnings of the dangers of wealth, yet me, and everyone I know still wants to be rich.  Remeber those health and wealth preachers?  It is the easiest sell in Christendom.

"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

L^rd open our deaf ears!

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