A guest post by jewelry designer Emily Grace Goodrich

Fortunately, it’s easy to find fresh ginger any time of the year in Southern California. This is important because it’s the ginger that sets African tea worlds apart from anything I’ve tasted before. It’s habit-forming, and the best mornings in Uganda begin with a blank page, a pen, and a shared pot of tea.

It’s been almost a week since I reluctantly rode a taxi through Kampala for the last time, toward the airport. And these are my attempts to stay behind in the smallest ways: reliving the smells, the flavors, the memories. Especially reliving the tea.

I’ve traveled many times before, often under the well-meaning premise of helping. To the slums of Mexico and jungles of Peru, to remote villages throughout Malawi, to the junkyard hideaways of the Roma in the heart of the Balkans. But this trip wasn’t about assistance, it was about collaboration. And collaboration is binding: I’m unsure of when and why, but I know it will one day draw me back to the red-earth hillsides, the sun and rain soaked landscape of Kampala.

There is something more vivid about the beadmakers in Acholi Quarters, a confidence and dignity that I didn’t often see in the women I met in Uganda, or even elsewhere in the world. They dress well, and their children are full and happy and in good schools. They laugh with ease and confidently make suggestions, they learn quickly and then become teachers themselves. Yet they are excellent students, they value knowledge and quickly absorb even the smallest drop that a trail of new ideas leaves behind.

In just a few short weeks this team of women has taken in a flood of new ideas: about things like color theory, fabric, ribbon, wire, and recycled plastic. And as much as they work together as a team, each contributes to the group in her own way. Esther is kind and patient, but has a definite competitive streak and walks a little taller when her work is deemed “just perfect.” Agnes and Gladys are among the youngest, but have the sharpest eyes for color and design. Ellen can make better fabric flowers than I can- on her first try. And Nighty consistently stands among the best and fastest learners while simultaneously wrangling a squirming toddler.

The brevity of my trip leaves me feeling as though I’ve rushed in, dumped a tangle of information in a big heap and then fled; but I am confident that the women of Acholi Beads will turn fragments into works of wearable art. When they ship the new designs to America later this spring, you will see just what I mean.

I’m wearing the same strand of paper beads around my neck that I wore in January, but I see them differently now. They are full of faces and names and stories. Though you may not know the details, yours are too.

I got some great news when I visited our Ugandan partners this morning.  The co-operative that we helped them found, called NUPECA, just rented their first office space!  They got a two room office on the main road through Acholi Quarters where they’ll be able to handle all of their projects.  And as with most things Ugandan, it’s colorful!

Below, Christine and Otto, two of the co-op’s top leaders, stand by their new office.

On the back of a motorcycle again.  A little one, whining its way through Kampala’s pock-marked streets.  Small raindrops poke the opposite of sparks into my cheeks, my forehead, my closed eyelids.  I am breathing.

A man that I just met is driving, a random stranger warding off the high-60s cold with a coat made for Alaska, who may or may not know where we are going.  But I know.  This is my seventh time to Uganda.  I know where I’m going.

The Cokes this time in Acholi Quarters are room temperature.  On hot days they are cold, sometimes with ice blocking the glass bottleneck.  And on this cold day there are the Ugandan version of donuts, which look like fried dinner rolls and need the Coke to disolve them before swallowing.

There is smiling talk in Acholi, and laughter that I observe and appreciate but cannot share.  And there is planning and checking of progress.  Always checking progress.  Always straining for more progress against the slow ironic calm of poverty.

But we are making it.  We are far, far better than we were a year ago.  So far that the past seems silly, a wonderland for the Alice of our family, with fantastical colors and bad surprises.  And so much joy.

This year is going to be better yet and again.  An exponent of previous years, an extreme makeover of an already beautiful world.  This year the flower will bloom.

I lean and step down hills covered in the kind of mud that God makes when he blows his nose.  Mud that sticks to things it never touches.  My shoes collect the orange mud and keep it.  It weighs them down.  It makes them real.  Everything I own is made real in this way, collecting the warm colors of Ugandan soil and bringing them into the American light.

Ugandan colors.  American light.  This year the flower will bloom.

The leaders of the cooperative working on new designs.  The future is bright.

The monthly rush to finish quality control and counting in time to ship out the latest order!  The room looks roughly like DC after the recent snowstorm, except the snow is rainbow colored and made of paper.

She’s vicious.

Emily and Christine sourcing supplies for new designs

Welcome ceremony

Kids watching the welcome show

We hit the ground running in Kampala.  Full days of welcome parties, scouring Ugandan markets, and meeting with the co-op leadership to plan next steps.  Enjoy the photos.  More to come soon!

Today we’re launching our second annual Acholi Gras clearance sale!  And this time there’s a twist.  We’re donating 100% of the proceeds from this sale to Partners in Health for their relief efforts in Haiti.

So you get incredible discounts on last year’s line of Acholi Beads, and we’ll give 100% of what you spend to help the people suffering in the wake of Haiti’s earthquake.  We’re all about the win-win.

The people of Haiti are suffering many of the same difficulties that our partners in Uganda have been through - their homes are destroyed, they’ve seen loved ones killed, and now they’re displaced without enough food, water, or shelter.  We hurt with them, and we’re glad that our business has the potential to support their relief and recovery.

Shop the Acholi Gras sale here.