Women’s work

For most of the women at my NGO, they weren’t to very little or no schooling at all. Parents don’t see the benefit in educating their girls if they are just going to grow up to make babies and be a wife. So many cant read or even speak French because they’ve never been inside a classroom. For these women, to lose their husbands due to death, or discovery of HIV status their source of income is completely gone and they are left with no resources unless they have a kind family. Therefore at the NGO three women where allowed to take courses in soap making (soap for clothing, body, and liquid soap for washing the house) these three women could then teach other women and share the information. The few women who had done a bit of school were also educated in business a bit to help with the financial issues of the NGO. I helped the women make soap today and it is a very elaborate process. Today if was soap for doing laundry and it started with a big pot where some of the ingredients are brought to a boil. Once that has cooked enough it is poured into a large tin where someone stirs it while another pours in different chemicals and smells to make the soap a nice color texture and scent. The liquid after about 30 minutes of stirring is then poured into four large metal containers (rectangular) that have been thoroughly cleaned out and set to rest. Someone runs over them with a large rubber spatula to make the tops smooth. After about an hour they then press another metal fixture the separates the soap into sections of about 16 bars. They let them rest for a while and then pull everything apart to have the bars of soap. Then the women sit on the floor and use razor blades to gently slide along the edges making the sides straighter and smoother. They collect the shavings from this boil it down and use it again. After the bars have straighter lines, someone uses a stamp and a hammer to hammer in the logo of the NGO. From there the bars are brought inside where the women all sit together one folding a wrapper around them, another placing a bit of glue on the edges to seal the wrapper and a third cleaning up the others twos work. All this process to make a bar of soap that costs a total of .80 cents. The money made from the bars doesn’t make much but it provides them with enough money to eat lunch together ever day.