AT LAST! My name can be up there with Bear Grills, Ray Mears and Crocodile Dundee-soap from the most basic of materials and simplest of methods has been achieved. Not that I am claiming the invention, I’m just pretty chuffed I managed it.
Initially i had hoped to make soap from banana skins but this wasn’t as simple as first thought. First of all, unless I turned into the banana version of BubbaGump (banana salad, banana cocktail, banana soup...) I was never going to eat enough bananas. Secondly, storing all the banana skins was leading to my own fly farm and thirdly (and most importantly), the villages that we go to don’t have access to bananas. In fact, there was not much around in the way of fruit.
What the villages do have a lot of is hardwood ash. Mapani wood is used to fuel the fires and also gives off a wonderful incense like scent. We also use this wood on clinic to cook our food and so I have been collecting this once cooled to experiment with back at base.
After a few conconctions, some hard learnt lessons about fumes and some good luck I finally made a brown, pretty solid soap! If anyone wants the recipe, email me or message on the blog and I will send it. I have had to work in the very scientific cups for measuring to be able to replicate this in the bush but definitely hoping to develop this when I get back.
I passed my new found knowledge on to a group of 16 year old Zambian school kids. This was a very different teaching experience; the language barrier, the children are ridiculously well behaved and also they have not had any science lessons at this point in their education. However, what they lack in science knowledge they more than made up for in insight asking me great questions about health. I started with a deep breath knowing that science is a cruel mistress and may not work on demand. Once those frothy bubble came about, the kids were more than impressed and I could stop sweating! The school kids are now thinking of setting up a little enterprise, making soap for the village shop so hopefully they will learn business skills too. It’s exciting for me to see the project being taken on and developed by the kids.
My next group is going to be community health workers. These are people who are nominated to help the community to be healthy and as a port of call when someone is sick. Hopefully they are not too disappointed when they find out we are making soap and not soup, like they did last time (the home economics teacher turned up).
Initially i had hoped to make soap from banana skins but this wasn’t as simple as first thought. First of all, unless I turned into the banana version of BubbaGump (banana salad, banana cocktail, banana soup...) I was never going to eat enough bananas. Secondly, storing all the banana skins was leading to my own fly farm and thirdly (and most importantly), the villages that we go to don’t have access to bananas. In fact, there was not much around in the way of fruit.
What the villages do have a lot of is hardwood ash. Mapani wood is used to fuel the fires and also gives off a wonderful incense like scent. We also use this wood on clinic to cook our food and so I have been collecting this once cooled to experiment with back at base.
After a few conconctions, some hard learnt lessons about fumes and some good luck I finally made a brown, pretty solid soap! If anyone wants the recipe, email me or message on the blog and I will send it. I have had to work in the very scientific cups for measuring to be able to replicate this in the bush but definitely hoping to develop this when I get back.
I passed my new found knowledge on to a group of 16 year old Zambian school kids. This was a very different teaching experience; the language barrier, the children are ridiculously well behaved and also they have not had any science lessons at this point in their education. However, what they lack in science knowledge they more than made up for in insight asking me great questions about health. I started with a deep breath knowing that science is a cruel mistress and may not work on demand. Once those frothy bubble came about, the kids were more than impressed and I could stop sweating! The school kids are now thinking of setting up a little enterprise, making soap for the village shop so hopefully they will learn business skills too. It’s exciting for me to see the project being taken on and developed by the kids.
My next group is going to be community health workers. These are people who are nominated to help the community to be healthy and as a port of call when someone is sick. Hopefully they are not too disappointed when they find out we are making soap and not soup, like they did last time (the home economics teacher turned up).
