Knives as essential tools exist in every culture on earth. Their shape and style are dictated by their people's needs, be those agricultural, spiritual or self preserving. Certainly ethnic styles of cutlery have been lost to history but many designs are still used today and revered in their countries. Taking those individual designs and adding a Spyderco touch is the core of Spyderco's Ethnic Series™ of folders and most recently the C132 Spyderco Chokwe.

Chokwe people live in the Zambia/Democratic Republic of Congo region of Central Africa. Primarily agricultural, they are gatherers, fishermen and hunters. Highly positioned in Chokwe society are their blacksmiths who craft fixed-blade knives for daily use in feeding, harvesting and protecting their communities. Our Chokwe folder is patterned off a historic fixed-blade, keeping true to the triangular shaped blade and coffin-shaped handle. The blade is CPM S30V blade steel and flat-ground for cutting performance. The handle is black G-10 with bored out handle holes reducing overall weight and making through holes for attachment to a longer handle or pole. Full length internal liner reinforces the locking device, a Chris Reeve style integral lock. Metal hourglass clip carries the knife tucked in a pocket tip-down right hand carry.

Nothing on the modern market is like it. It may look modern and streamlined but the original design is hundreds if not thousands of years old. Necessity generates function and in the knife world that can happen in central Africa a few hundred years ago. It can also happen in Golden, Colorado in 2009.

Spyderco will donate approximately 5% of sales of the Chokwe to the Keep a Child Alive Organization. Keep a Child Alive is dedicated to providing life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, care and support services to children and their families with HIV/AIDS in Africa and the developing world by directly engaging the global public in the fight against AIDS. For more information, please visit www.keepachildalive.org