I’ve just returned from six weeks in Varanasi, India.
I have some answers and I have some questions:

It was my great privilege to be able to work with some of the city’s most outstanding young artists.
These are some of the students at Vidyashram, The Southpoint School:

some of the 5th grade class with their bookmaking projects at Buddha’s Smile School:

and, students attending Banaras Hindu University:

There are approximately 400 million children in India. This is the world’s largest child population and includes an estimated 20 million child laborers.

Buddha’s Smile School (BSS) serves children from extremely disadvantaged communities.
These are children who work to support their families:
Many have jobs picking through garbage heaps for sellable materials.

Some have worked the horrendously dangerous job of walking miles alongside of wedding processions as human lanterns.
In this job, a line of a dozen or so women and children are connected to each other by live wires. They will walk barefoot, at night, for hours, balancing precarious electric structures on their heads, for a very low wage:

This is Rajan Kaur, the founder of BSS, contemplating growth with some of her students:

…and the making of a mural in the entrance of the school:

Making art with these kids was one of the most rewarding experiences of my lifetime and makes the other side of the planet seem much closer.

“This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.”

This is an excerpt of a message from U.S. President Jimmy Carter on the Voyager Spacecraft time capsules, the ‘Golden Records’.
These are currently the most distant of all human-made objects.

One of the workshops was in the village of Xeabaj Dos.
This community of people has been twice relocated in less than eight years.
Their original village, Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan, was completely destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. After reestablishing themselves high up in the mountains, Hurricane Stan came in 2005 and wiped out the new settlement. Many of the newly built homes in Xeabaj Dos have walls constructed from USAID tarps. They have a large, sturdy school, and just got electricity for the first time a few months ago.
You can see a photo essay here about the first relocation.

In the center is the structure we used for our workshop:

One of the goals of Oxlajuj B’atz’ is to provide opportunities for women to learn new skills and improve upon those that they already possess with the goal of developing more work opportunities, better income-earning potential and greater access to local and global markets.
The women in this village had requested to learn how to make soap, both for their own use and as a potential new product.

Soapmaking can be precarious; it involves a chemical reaction with a very caustic substance: lye. Measurements and temperatures have to be exact, and safety precautions have to be taken. Our experience proved one can still have great success soapcrafting in fairly basic conditions.

To make soap, you need three basic ingredients: an oil or fat, water, and sodium hydroxide (lye).
We started by heating up the oils over a wood-burning stove, and measured out a proper quantity of water…

Lye is a strong base, or alkali, and can cause severe burns if it splashes on your skin or in your eyes. When handling it, you must use protective gloves and safety goggles.

When it is added to water, it also creates toxic fumes. Make sure you have plenty of ventilation when mixing your ingredients!

After the lye, water, and oil have been mixed, the mixture is poured into molds and allowed to sit for 2 days.
These women had a particular interest in making soap that had medicinal qualities. Among the plants and herbs that grew in the area, we experimented with adding eucalyptus, camomile, calendula, lavender, and achiote (annatto) as a colorant.
Lye will react with anything in its path. In order to retain the natural properties of herbs and additives, it is necessary to add them when the soap compound is stable enough. This process is called ‘rebatching’.
After the cakes of soap have rested for a couple days, they should have a ph balance neutral enough to come in contact with delicate herbs or hearty hands. The soap is then cut into small pieces, re-melted, and the dried crushed herbs are added.
Once this mixture is poured again into molds, the soap should be ready to be used in 2-4 weeks, after all the lye has neutralized.

Soap making is a new process for me, too, and the excitement at the workshops was contagious.
After all, it was the request of the women of Xeabaj Dos to be taught how to make soap that inspired me to learn how to do it myself. I consider this a great and rich collaboration.
I hope this is just the beginning of a greater involvement on my part in bringing materials and information on soap making to the women working with Oxlajuj B’atz’.

I’d like to thank everyone involved for their invitation, participation, enthusiasm, patience, and humor.
See you soon!

Photo credits: Eddie Haynes, Erica Harris and Taryn