Mwalimu Hotel: In it for the long bar

KEUMBU, Kenya -- Take a small amount of sodium hydroxide, also called lye in the U.S. or caustic soda in the U.K., and dissolve it in water. Be careful; it's highly corrosive. Melt some basic, inexpensive fat -- let's say, beef tallow or lard -- and then take it off the heat. Carefully stir the lye solution into the melted fat.

Keep stirring; at the outset, your components are basically oil and water, which don't mix, and so you must keep them from separating until the lye starts to react with the fat. Once that reaction starts to take place, however, the resulting chemical will help to emulsify the remaining oil and water until it, too, has reacted.

Eventually, the mixture will be thick enough that if you pick up your spoon and dribble some of it across the surface, it will leave a visible mark. This stage is called "trace," and it means the mixture is no longer in danger of separating and that you're ready to pour it into molds. Within a day or two, if you were careful in measuring your ingredients, the product will solidify to a familiar, waxy texture. But, because you've used a cold process, rather than cooking the mixture as your great-grandmother might have, you must allow it to cure for a few weeks before using it, on the off chance that there is still some un-reacted lye tucked inside.

Robert Ogoti, left, explains some of the soapmaking curriculum to a Kenyan official, center, who had stopped by to view the LEAMIS International Ministries program. At right is Abel Onchari, pastor of New Life Restoration Centre in Keumbu. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney) [Click to enlarge]

Congratulations; you've just made a bar of soap.

It's a relatively-simple process, yielding an easily-marketable, universally-needed product. So when LEAMIS International Ministries developed a cottage industry program several years ago, soapmaking seemed like a natural fit. In 2004, Carolyn Schussler of Mississippi's Gulf Coast taught soapmaking in Nairobi while, a few doors away, I was fumbling with the craft of copper foiling, an ill-advised experiment which (in my opinion) was more trouble than it was worth.

The next year, LEAMIS had cottage industry programs going at two different locations simultaneously. Carolyn would once again be teaching soapmaking in Nairobi, so someone else would be needed to teach it in Ndonyo, in the Kisii region. Carolyn put me through soapmaking boot camp. I visited her beautiful new home in Bay St. Louis, Miss., in June 2005, just two months before Hurricane Katrina flooded it up to the doorknobs and gave the Schusslers an ocean view by demolishing the trees and buildings between their home and the coastline.

This year, LEAMIS would concentrate on only one location in Kenya -- Keumbu, also in the Kisii region. Carolyn wasn't able to make the trip, so I was assigned the soapmaking workshop for a second year.

A student in the soapmaking workshop trims off a bar of soap. This long wooden mold, built by Robert Ogoti, produces bars of the type sold in Kenyan markets. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney) [Click to enlarge]

In the first part of this series, I wrote about the unique arrangement which paired volunteers from Nairobi with volunteers from the U.S. in ministering to the people of Keumbu. But Robert Ogoti, my translator and assistant teacher in the soapmaking workshop, was not part of this unique partnership. He wasn't staying with us at the Mwalimu Hotel; he was a local, a resident of the Kisii region. I didn't get any pre-planning time with him, and I got to see him only during the day while I was at the church.

But Robert was essential because he already had some soapmaking knowledge -- which meant that he knew a lot more than I did about what was available, what was possible, and what was desirable in Kenya.

During my 2005 soapmaking workshop in Ndonyo, I brought along some plastic storage containers to use as molds. I knew this wasn't a practical idea for my students, but I wasn't sure what else to use. I tried to explain to them that a wooden box could be used as a mold, and I also showed them how discarded plastic beverage bottles could be used as molds for decorative, flower-shaped soaps.

But the people of rural Kenya don't want decorative, flower-shaped soaps. They buy long bars of soap in the outdoor market and then cut it into individual bars. Robert, God bless him, already had wooden molds shaped to produce this kind of long bar of soap. He brought them to the workshop, and we used them. Problem solved.

The lye and beef tallow for our workshop had been obtained in-country by the host pastor, Abel Onchari. I would never have been able to take lye in my checked baggage, and fat would have been too heavy to transport practically. Plus, it was important to show my students that they could obtain materials in-country. Although lard is the most common starter fat for U.S. hobbyist soap makers, Kenya raises relatively few pigs and so beef tallow is much easier to obtain.

But I wasn't sure what to do about coloring or fragrance agents. I had brought some essential oils, and some color chips, with me from Hobby Lobby, and I planned to demonstrate their use as part of the workshop. But I wasn't sure what to tell the Kenyans about their local options for color or fragrance.

Robert, however, already had Kenya-purchased fragrance and a powdered dye.

Even with Robert's help, there were still questions I couldn't answer. At times, I wasn't sure whether they were really good questions to which I simply didn't know the answer, or out-of-left-field questions to which nobody knew the answer. Add in the uncertainties of language translation and you have a recipe for confusion.

After my first workshop on Monday, I felt as if I was in over my head.

"How soon do you think Carolyn Schussler could get here?" I asked Bob Willems, our team leader.

I really did feel bad, but it was just then that Robert sat down next to me and talked about the importance of someone like me coming into the community and motivating people to take up a new craft like soapmaking.

One of my students, Dominic Ochoa, kept asking me about the use of salt in soapmaking. I have seen references to adding salt to soap recipes -- it can help harden the bar -- but I haven't used it and it isn't part of the very basic cold process recipe I was teaching. It turns out that Dominic had a soap recipe from a tattered old chemistry book. The recipe was a little more complex than mine, and used a hot process. One day, he and Robert asked me if they could try it out during our set-up period. I kept coming up with excuses not to.

"Let's wait and do it during the workshop," I said. But they kept wanting to try it.

Finally, it hit me: These two guys are excited about making soap. This is what I'm supposedly here for. Why am I getting in the way? I told them to go for it.

It was a disaster, and they quickly concluded that my simple cold-process recipe was far superior and would cost less to produce.

A number of students asked me if we would be awarding certificates at the conclusion of the class. Apparently, there are regulations in Kenya requiring someone who sells a homemade product to be able to prove that he or she is trained to produce it. Unfortunately, as LEAMIS co-founder Rev. Debra Snellen told me, it's impossible for us, given our class sizes and limited amount of time, to test our students or certify that each class member is fully qualified. So it's impossible for us to give certificates to class members. We can only hope that if our workshop motivates someone to take up the craft of soapmaking, they'll be able to follow up on it in a way that will satisfy the Kenyan government.

As the week went on, Robert started answering some of the more frequent questions himself -- in Swahili, leaving me sitting there on my chair. Not that I was unhappy about this, but then when I had the floor again I wasn't sure what had already been covered.

LEAMIS did give certificates to the assistant teacher in each workshop, certifying them as qualified to teach that workshop. I have no doubt that Robert is now qualified to teach basic soapmaking.

On the last day of workshops, Jan Schilling's teaching assistant (and one of our team leaders) Charles Ngau planned to talk to their students a little about marketing in Kenya. I said that sounded like it would apply to soap as well, and so we combined our two classes for the first half hour so that they could hear the presentation. I gave them a painfully-abbreviated definition of fixed and variable expenses and reminded them that both must be taken into account when deciding how to price their products.

Will the people of Keumbu be able to make and sell soap at a competitive price? I am afraid I don't know that. There are too many variables which I, as an outsider, don't understand well enough to make predictions. I will have to wait and see how things turn out, and that's frustrating.

Robert has dreams about being able to purchase small-scale automated equipment. I do know that the church in the Kibera slums outside Nairobi with which LEAMIS worked in 2004 and 2005 has been able to move forward with candlemaking and soapmaking, and has even mechanized its candlemaking.

Personally, if you will pardon the pun, I hope Robert and the church in Keumbu can clean up.

TOMORROW: Dancing with granny