Zizamele Blog

Zizmele has been featured in Essay Gift’s June 2008 newsletter:

SEOUL SISTERS AND BROTHERS!

My impressions of South Korea

- A Karaoke system in our minibus

- A toilet you needed a PhD to understand (A toilet where the seat warmed up and lit up automatically during the night and had a touch screen for various bidet functions)

- 8 lanes of city traffic flowing seamlessly along with no hooting, road-rage or weird lane-changing

- A Buddhist temple dating back to 974 amongst the skyscrapers of down-town Seoul

- Paper lanterns lining the roads instead of street lights

- Glamorous, charming very generous and friendly local people

- The hi-rise neon billboard alongside my 26^th floor hotel room that flashed the words HAPPY FOREVER day and night

- Shopping until the early hours in complete safety at street markets that opened at 10pm

The SA crafters in traditional dress leading the dancing at the Crystal Ballroom bash held to celebrate SA Freedom Day on 27 April! Seoul sisters and brothers.

I was privileged to be invited to Seoul, South Korea two weeks ago to take part in a Cultural celebration as a guest of the SA Embassy. The trip was organised and sponsored by the DTi in conjunction with the South African Embassy in Korea. Zizamele Ceramics was selected along with Vincent Urbain from Urban Africa and Lulama Sihluku represented Zambane Textiles from the Western Cape. We joined about 12 other crafters from all over South Africa representing a variety of media. Our products - ceramics, textiles, basketry, re-cycled jewellery, wood-carving and leatherwork amongst others had been freighted ahead of us. Our products were displayed and sold in an upmarket mall called Co-Ex in the Trade Centre which was alongside the Olympic Stadium.

There was a mixed reaction to our products. The Koreans are dedicated consumers and love novelty. As they have a very distinguished and ancient Ceramic tradition the Ceramics did very well. However the ceramics that were similar to theirs did not do so well.(ie traditional ceramic processes) They seemed to value the concept of hand-made work but it had to have been created DIFFERENTLY to anything they knew. They were also prepared to pay good money for the items they liked. The embassy had arranged with a local university to lend us their final year business students to help us with interpreting and general tasks associated with trading. These students were bright, enthusiastic and an enormous asset to the show. I offered one of my students a full-time job back here in Cape Town working for Zizamele which he was dying to accept!

The city is built around the Hangang River and divided much like Paris to a North side and a South side. A quarter of the country’s population lives in Seoul - over 10 million people made up of more than 90 nationalities. There are as many cars in Korea as in the whole of South Africa but the country size is the same as Kwazulu-Natal!

As a first event of this nature it can only improve in the years to come and it certainly created quite a stir in diplomatic circles as well as amongst the local South African population who flocked to buy our hand-made craft. Looking around the local shops and markets revealed very little that had been hand-made. The Koreans are renowned for being one of the hardest working peoples in the world and they are at present experiencing an economic boom par excellance. Famous Korean brands are Samsung, LG, Hyundai and Kia. Bilateral trade between Korea and South Africa has almost doubled, from 2004 to 3,4 billion. Local agencies such as the Korean Power Electric Corporation are opening up offices in SA while recently the Korean Inernational Trade Association signed a MOU with counterparts , Business South Africa.

It was to be Buddha’s birthday on 15 May and the city always gears up for this celebration with thousands of lanterns strung around the city. Some of them are enormous and shaped like dragons, elephants and tigers and all made from paper. The locals attach hand-written prayers to the ones that are hung in and outside the Buddhist temples.

The food is wonderfully light and I understood why I had not seen any overweight people in Seoul! The Koreans do not eat milk, sugar or bread but plenty of soups, stir-fries, fish and vegetables - even at breakfast! These are often brought to the table in a stone pot which is so hot the contents are still cooking! Meat is prohibitively expensive and not often seen on menus.

From May onwards the city is ablaze with the national flower - Mugunghwa. This is our Azalea but in huge bushes seen just about everywhere from verges to traffic islands. Exotic orchids are also to be seen throughout the hotels and shops. We were sorry not to have the time to visit the rural areas as these are said to be really beautiful.

All in all a fascinating trip which sadly did not yield the export orders many had hoped for but gave us crafters a glimpse into a thriving first world economy that has evolved from an ancient civilisation.

TONI BURTON

ZIZAMELE CERAMICS