Sirigu

Sirigu a scenic village in the Upper East Region of Ghana, in a fairy-tale savannah landscape with beautiful, typical Northern traditionally decorated houses, trees, and farmlands.

The people of Sirigu are mostly farmers, growing sorghum, millet, groundnut and keeping cattle, goats and fowl and livestock. Several years of intensive farming and poor rainfall has degraded the land to the extent that even subsistence farming in threatened. This is made worse by low prices of farm produce and unreliable rains.

Sirigu is well known for its basketry, pottery, traditional architecture, and wall paintings. Many children owe their education and healthcare to income generated from the handicraft and traditional arts produced by the women of Sirigu. Consequent decline of yields form farm has made it even more urgent to revive these artforms and to leverage it as an important source of income for the women for the upkeep of their families.

Women in Sirigu are socially and economically disadvantaged in the community due to the largely male-dominated traditional system; the have a low literacy rate and have to combine household chores with the heavy farming workload. Pottery-making, basketry, wall-painting and canvass painting therefore provide the only means for them to earn their own income and also serve as a platform to develop and express their age old individual potentials and identity.

• The guesthouse inside the SWOPA compound which consists of five rooms, decorated in the traditional style, with beautiful frescos in relief inside. Each room is fully mosquito proofed and has double beds. One of the rooms is self-contained; the remaining four rooms have a shared bathroom and toilet.