Go down to the potter’s house

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
(Jeremiah 18:1-6)

Christians regularly pray that God might remould our lives, as a potter remoulds pottery. So, our communal trip of 14th November was both a parable and an exercise in sourcing souvenirs.

If you turn right off the main road from Yaoundé to Douala, you come to the bustling town of Eséka. If you carry on through the town and take a right you are in the general vicinity of the potter. If you flag down a random guy on his motorbike and tell him where you want to go, there is a reasonable chance he will say “Follow me”. So you follow him on the main road beside the railway line, turn left onto a clay road, turn off it to a lesser grade of road and you arrive at Poterie D'Eseka and its proprietor, Samuel Nicodème Djon.

For someone who has exhibited work in Europe and USA, he still lives in fairly modest surrounds. This is the view from his front door:

Samuel talked us through the process of making pottery. First, he gets the raw material from a local river and leaves it in a bucket until it settles. At this point he can pour off the water (plus straw, sand, dirt).

Once it has had a chance to settle in the brown bucket, above, the clay goes into the large blue basins below. It goes through several more days of settling and pouring off water. From there, it goes to a bed of rice-paper to dry and let any excess moisture still there drain out.

Once it has dried, it can be weighed and cut into even pieces that look a bit like cakes.

The cakes can then be put on a wheel and in a process that looks remarkably easy (until you try it!), all sorts of beautiful pots and vases can be made.




Once she is finished, they are set up to dry for a little while. Some are decorated with a different colour of clay or in other ways.

After that, they are fired and put in the shop!

As you can see, the designs which depict local scenes look well. Not bad for something that started as a shapeless lump of sludge from the local river – all it takes is the Master's hands (it's all a big parable, isn't it?)


After that, it was off to a local establishment for not-so-traditional fish, chips and mushy peas!

Then we went home. At the risk of sounding like a tourist visiting Ireland.... “Wow... it's all so green...”