Plan A: Sit under the mango tree, with a bucket of water nearby to splash myself, and children surrounding me with banana leaves fanning continuosly.
Plan B: suffer...
Plan C: My body will be adjusted to the temperature and it won't put a damper on my daily activities.
In town now a few days ago I went to a women's association gathering to make soap. I did not really partake in much of the process just because there was so many women and not much to be done. So I settled on chatting and being the photographer. Of course, before we could get started on some work we had to get some snacks to share with the ladies. So another volunteer and I headed down the street to pick up some peanuts. Then we were interrupted by another woman making a grand entrance with a used car recently purchased for use by the association. A lot of excitement ensued and we gathered in front of the vehicle to take pictures. So many people surrounded the vehicle it could not really be seen in the photos.
They started the fire with wood chips and plastic bags. We were going to make 3 differents types of soap; cucumber, henna, and honey. First step was melting 5 liters of shea butter, 3 cucumbers were grated and squeezed for their juice to make 1/2 kilo. I'm not sure how many days before the lye was sitting in the 5 liters of water, but by the way it looked it could have been over a week or two. After the shea butter was melted they moved it into a tub to cool and added another 5 kilos to the cooking pot, each soap mixture needed 5 kilos of shea butter.The whole process went rather smoothly and just took up about three hours of the day.
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| cucumber juice |
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| melting process |
Once the shea butter was filtered through a cloth and cooled, 4-5 liters of coconut oil were added along with cucumber juice/henna/ or honey, some perfume, and the water with lye. Then it was quickly mixed well and poured out into containers to set.
The first weeks back at site after being gone so long for in-service training and holiday hiking left my house a complete disaster filled with cobwebs and dust. I spent the entire day cleaning, moving furniture, sweeping, dusting, unpacking. I arrived New Year's Eve and spent that night watching the television with the family. I was invited to an event at a local politician's house, but declined because I was tired and wanted to spend New Year's with my host family. There was a live broadcast from Bamako of singers performing, a few seconds before midnight a man came onstage interrupted the singer and soon after said "Bonne Annee" Happy New Year. Well that was anti-climatic, no ball drop. In the states I enjoyed the televised New Year's because they would broadcast cities celebrating around the world, but I was bringing in the New Year hours before the U.S. My host-brother ran into his room and burst out with matches and some firecrackers. I saw a few in the night sky and heard a variety of different pops and crackles around the village. The next morning I got a call from my lovely family celebrating the New Year at Nanny & Pa's.
I have been buying unrefined Shea butter from Coastal Scents for about 4 years. I buy it every winter because I live in Northern Canada and I shovel snow in the winter for a living. Shea Butter protects my skin, makes an excellent lipbalm, and because it's occlusive in nature it protects my face (YES I said FACE) from salt and cold, chapping winds. I don't know why it clogs some people's pores, for me it's always been nothing but an incredible comfort to my skin...but then again, jojoba oil clogs my pores and it's noted MANY places it doesn't do that to alot of people. Goes to show what's good for me isn't good for you and even worse for the next guy S:)
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