Truth be told, she does not see exactly how she did this. She certainly did not follow a conventional path: she never went to school, lost her mother when she was 17 and never knew her father. Maybe it was because she simply refused to give up. "I knew I had to do something," she says as she looks back. "I was a porter at the market. I would carry loads on my head and they would pay me. Then I started selling panties." She pauses. "I don't want to sell panties again."

One day she saw some baskets for sale in a village. She found out they were made in a remote village. "We walked on foot, we had to jump rivers, I was so scared. I said I want to buy your baskets." She sold the baskets at a trade fair in Accra, Ghana. "I was so excited I knew I had to carry on," she says. "Then I added the pottery. The people that do most of them are unskilled women, like me. We never went to school."