We started Alali Letters because everyone we know is tired of typing. Not tired of talking, tired of typing at a screen and calling it connection.
The idea is simple. You write a letter to someone you have not met. You do not sign it with your name, you get a code instead, and you leave it in a basket at the studio. Someone else picks it up on a day that is theirs, not yours, and they write back. You get a message when a reply is waiting. You come in, you sit, you read it.
We watched the first few letters go into the basket and felt strange about it, in a good way. There is something about writing to a stranger that makes people more honest than writing to a friend. No history to protect. No tone to keep up. Just paper and a pen and whatever is actually on your mind that day.
Once a month we bring the basket out from behind the desk. People sit with coffee or wine and write there instead of at home. Some finish in one sitting. Some take the letter with them and bring it back weeks later. We do not rush anyone.
The paper is illustrated by our own artists. The envelopes are wax sealed. None of it is imported. We wanted the whole thing to be made here, by people who work with us, because that felt closer to the point of the project than buying something pretty from somewhere else.
We are still learning what people write. Grief, sometimes. Hope, more often. A few letters that just describe a good meal in detail, which we like just as much as the serious ones.
It costs thirty thousand naira for a kit. It is not for everyone. But for the people it is for, we think it might be one of the better things we have made.
ALALI