First prototypes and products on display in our shop!
When I went to Dakar with Geertje, I hoped it would be as much fun as I thought it would be. It turned out to be much more fun and beautiful. I also vaguely thought about the possibility of somehow making contacts and starting collaborations. As I stood in my swimming trunks in front of the locked gate of the house we had rented, which I could not enter because the key had slipped out of the same trunks during a dip in the sea, it was hardly conceivable that the project I am now up to my ears in got off the ground precisely because of that. Rama, a neighbour, saw me standing in my swimming trunks talking to the gardener and thought; this is a curious setting. She asked if anything was wrong. She helped us get a spare key, we had a drink the next day and on the plane before we left, I texted her if she would help me with the Eindhoven-Dakar project. Without her, almost certainly none of what we did and what I wanted would have come to fruition.
I have been to Dakar three times now and we, or rather Rama, have been incredibly busy realising the products I designed, expanding the art collection and sourcing Senegalese products.
I am not resting my head and besides the scenario that nothing will come of it all, I also dream that we will sell well; that we will open a shop in Dakar because we have to collect the stuff somewhere for transport anyway or preferably a building where we also produce and thus have the shop, but also a gallery, restaurant and hotel like we have here. Production is well organised with machines, level floors, work tables, it is tidy and clean, the artisans enjoy coming to work and customers and guests from Dakar, Senegal and all over the world know the way. Anyway; nice dreams and super satisfied with the incredible results of an amazing adventure. My most soothing thought is that if, in the unlikely event that we don’t sell anything, we will be beautiful art and objects and, above all, a fantastic adventure richer. A kind of very exclusive holiday it was then!
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