Waite Adventures: Batik Class in Adenta, Ghana

Okay, so the order of these pictures is completely off. Being the computer genius that I am, I just decided to leave them this way. The computer is too slow to erase them and begin again. So I took a batik class. Batik is a type of fabric that you buy here. It's a sturdy material and used to make clothes. They also use it to make other things as well. Batik is stamped and dyed. I took a class from my friend Esther. She sells batik and to try to expand her business, she teaches classes on the side and makes good money for it. Smart woman! I don't think that I can put in to words the amazement I have for these people. They work SOOOO hard to make pennies. Like everything here, it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of time to make anything here and then they can hardly make enough to get by because they can't sell it for what it's worth because no one will buy it. So, I want to take you step by step with this process so that you can see how much time they must spend to do this. So you'll have to scroll through the pictures to see the correct order.

11. After making the batik, you then have to figure out something to do with it. I decided to have a skirt made. I took it to my friend Bernice and told her to go for it. She made this skirt for me. Ta da! Aren't Ghanaians amazing!!! They are a hard working and very humble people! and yes Tracey--I am loving it here. I will miss them terribly and yet I'm so excited to go home and see family!

6. Then you have to dry it. Just lay it out on the grass and go baby go. This is mine. Afterwards, you can either finish the product or go for another round. I went for another round, meaning that I did the whole process over again. I stamped it again, but this time I stamped in the other squares that were left blank (see previous step of what mine looked like) and then painted over my other stripes. What this does is seal the light blue color I had just dyed it so that everything else will turn a darker blue after the dyeing process again. It gets laid out again to dry in the sun. (so if you want to do all different kinds of colors, this is what you do. I could have done a purple instead, and then gone back to do a green so that it becomes this myriad of colors and they are beautiful when done!)

7. After it's dried, the cloth gets put into a bucket of boiling water. This loosens the wax from the cloth. They dip it a couple of times and let it sit for maybe 20 seconds and then take it out and immediately put it into a bucket of cold water.

8. They then scrub it fast and hard with their hands to remove the wax. You can see the white wax floating in the bowl. (Esther told me that after they remove the cloth from this bucket they will also take the wax and put it into another pot. When that pots gets enough of this scrubbed off wax in it, they will take it and melt it all together, let it harden, and then chop it into chunks to use again for stamping)

9. They get laid out for the final time after they are removed from the cold bucket. This was all the cloth of everyone in the group. Mine is the second one from the left on the top row.

10. Esther makes all her pupils pose for a picture afterwards with their cloth. She loves this part even though she probably never recieves a picture in the end. She said she likes it done so that we have a picture. These are all my friends who have become so dear to me here. Without them, I don't know how I'd function. Starting from left to right is Susan (fulbright teacher here), her friend who is visiting from Chicago, Katie's mom who is visiting from Nebraska, Ana, Esther, Yours truly, Katie and kneeling is Sis. Hill who is a missionary for our church here in Ghana. She is from Arkansas and I tell ya, I bet every Ghanaian must ask her to repeat everything she says because of her southern accent. I just love this woman. She has been wonderful and is going to take a cooking class with me from Esther. Esther said that she loves cooking and would love to teach us----why not!

1. First they must take chunks of wax and melt them in these large tin bowls. It gets very very hot obviously so you must be careful. Since they are working with it all day, it's impossible not to get burned. Esther has a whole crew now that help her (because she can finally afford to pay them) and they were showing me the burn marks on their hands and legs from hot wax dripping on to them, etc.

2. You have to pick which stamp you want to use. My friends are in the background looking at the wall of stamps that Esther has. The stamps are foam that they have taken a pen to, drawn a design, and then cut it out to form the stamp. They do this all by hand, they are the machines. This man is using a paintbrush to form this design. I loved it so much that I decided to use it in part of my batik.

3. While we were picking our stamps, Esther was putting the dye into the water buckets. We had all chosen what color we wanted to make our cloth and she was adding it. She said that she adds a powerful dye and then also adds a baking soda type thing. I didn't quite understand what she was saying simply because of the wording and the accent. So, obviously the more colors you want to use on your cloth, the longer it will take to complete, so I opted to do just one: blue.

4. Next, depends on what you want. You can first dye your white cloth so that your background color can be whatever you want instead of white. OR you can start stamping which is what I did. On half of the cloth I stamped this leaf type design and then the other half I painted the wax on to make stripes. Very cool and fun. So, when I take my cloth to the dye bucket, the wax will protect the design and keep it white.