Fabric, Fashion, and Footwear, Part One

Warning:  this is a long entry, don't start reading if you've got important things pending, like water on the stove ready to boil, or if your dog needs to go outside to the bathroom.  Sorry.   

batik -- noun

1.  A method of dyeing a fabric by which the parts of the fabric not intended to be dyed are covered with removable wax.

2.  A design that is created by this method.

3.  Fabric dyed by this method.

Before coming to Africa if a mad scientist had put me in a laboratory experiment to measure my response to certain words, a kind of word association test with monitors attached to measure pulse, sweating, pupil dilatation, salivation, gastrointestinal motility, etc., he, or more likely she in this situation, would have seen little physiologic response elicited by the word “batik,” no different from what my response would have been to “corduroy,” or “flannel,” and quite unlike what my response would have been had she said “sawzall,” “hammer” or “drillpress.”    But now, having lived over a year in Ghana, the batik Mecca for fabric pilgrims, things have changed.  I get as excited thinking about batik as I do when I think about woodworking tools.

Let me explain how batik is made in Accra.  The white fabric is first stamped with melted paraffin from a design cut on the surface of a foam block.  These are examples of the blocks.

This is a demonstration of stamping.  The melted paraffin is in a large bowel to this woman's right.  She dips the foam block into the paraffin and then stamps repetitive designs until the paraffin is gone from the block.

The wax is allowed to dry and the fabric is soaked in a dye

which is absorbed into all of the fabric except where the wax is present. The fabric is dried

and then stamped again,

or brushed,

and dyed again.  This process can be repeated up to four colors. The fabric is then boiled to remove the wax,

dried one last time, folded and prepared for market.

A lot of people make batik here in Accra, most of them in their own homes, producing one or two rolls at a time (each roll is about 10 – 12 yards in length.)   These individuals usually sell their rolls in stalls along the roadside.  Other places, like the “batik factory” in the pictures above, are more elaborate with many employees

and large setups, producing as many as 20 – 30 rolls a day.  Some of the batik is quite elementary with one color and a simple design. 

Other batiks are more artistic with multiple colors and intricate designs. 

Most of the time the fabric is very tightly woven, almost like silk.  Occasionally it is very thin and paper like.   It takes a skilled eye to appreciate the colors and designs and a delicate touch to discern the quality. 

In the opinion of many, and I think rightly so, Marsha has become the Accra Queen of Batik.  She knows where the batik is made, the different varieties of batik fabric, the different designs, etc.  She knows where to go to acquire the best.  In short, she has become the African equivalent to the Great White Hunter of fabric safaris, and I, as her gun bearer, or more properly, her money carrier, have learned much from her fabric hunts.  (If you think I jest, two weeks ago a new American senior missionary here in Accra called on my phone and asked if she could talk to Marsha, because this missionary had heard that Marsha was the “Queen of Batik.”  I don’t make this up.) 

Our favorite place for batik is Esther’s.  (There is no name on her store.)

This is Esther.

Esther has been producing batik for over twenty years.  She has an incredible eye for colors and makes about 6 - 8 new prints each week.  She can recall all of the Americans that have been regular visitors to her store.  She makes her batik in her home employing family and friends.  These are some of the choices of batik in her store.

Note the BSU football batik!

Having been with Marsha looking for batik many, many times (we have been to Esther's enough that she has started kissing me on the cheek like a relative) I now start salivating, my pupils dilate, and my heart rate picks up when Marsha says “lets go look for batik.”

A successful batik outing!  Marsha has washed the fabric and it is drying.

I need to write something about kente cloth, a traditional cloth associated with Ghanaian tribal weavers, but I do not have enough information to present an accurate description.  There is more history about kente cloth than I have been able to discover.  We have visited the weaving villages three times.  Here is a photograph of our most recent visit.

The villages continue traditional weaving and teach the techniques to the younger generations.  All of the village weavers do a variety of designs but each village usually has one or two designs that have been a part of that village for many years.   In the past kente cloth was associated with the ruling chiefs and their families. In one of the museums here in Accra there are samples of kente cloth over a hundred years old.

Enough of fabric.  Let me say a few things about fashion and footwear.

I would characterize the fashion of Accra, in general, as being either Daily Casual, which I would describe as American Goodwill (I would venture to say that most of the t-shirts, button shirts/blouses, pants and skirts worn here are American donations),

A rare single car accident without a light post involved.

Makola market

or Sunday Best, which I would describe as Fabric on Display (none of which is American donation.)

Batik dress and head wrap; kente cloth on the shoulder.

The exceptions to these two styles are the children and teenagers who are required to wear uniforms to school,

and the Muslim women, who always have their heads covered (see blog entry dated 31 January 2011.)  In regards to Daily Casual, both men and women tend to wear clothing that is modest: t-shirts or button up shirts/blouses with long pants, knee length shorts, or dresses.  They will occasionally wear muscle shirts/tank tops, but, for the most part, there is very little skin exposed.  Even when the men are working hard they tend to keep their shirts on.

Many of the t-shirts are reminders of American culture of the 80's/90's and the early 00's.  I have seen a lot of Chicago Bulls and Miami Dolphins tops, reflecting the immense popularity of these two teams when they were winning, and the quick donation of tops to Goodwill when the teams started losing.  I have seen t-shirts advertising high school proms and family reunions, athletic events -- a lot of 5K and 10K runs, popular foods and drinks, and charitable events such as a t-shirt this week with "Kid's Food Basket" on the front, and "Attacking hunger in Grand Rapids" on the back.  I am very confident that the Ghanaians understand the meaning of the shirts as little as I would understand a shirt advertising African tribal traditions.  

In contrast to the Monday through Saturday casual dress, which is pretty homogeneous, and quite truthfully, monotonous, the Sunday dress is a visual feast.  On Sunday all of the businesses shut down and everyone goes to church.  Because a large part of the residents of Accra do not drive private vehicles (hard to believe when one looks at the crowded roads) the Sunday pedestrian traffic is a walkway for Ghanaian fashion. All of the women are dressed in their best outfits.  And they are all stunning.

They wear colors that look OK on a white person -- fuscia, orange, pink, lime green, red, etc. -- but, as Marsha describes it, against the African's skin these colors "pop."  The men frequently wear traditional tribal clothing which consists of a long sleeve pajama type pullover made of brightly colored fabric with matching pants.  

Kathy Froerer and Marcus Ogbonna

If the men are not wearing traditional tribal clothing on Sunday they wear white shirts and dress pants.  They like long sleeve shirts (I cannot understand why the long sleeves, I am uncomfortably hot in short sleeves) with cuff links.  I would dare say, again, that all of the white shirts are American donations because of the frequent number of Ghanaian men I have seen wearing tuxedo shirts, proudly displaying their cuff links but totally unaware of why there are multiple folds on the front of their shirts.


I am very impressed that the Sunday dress for both men and women is spotlessly clean, disproportionately so for the amount of dirt and debris that one has to navigate through on a daily basis.  I can hardly go to work and back each day without coming home with dirt or a stain somewhere on me.  I don't know how the Ghanaians keep their Sunday best so clean.   And it is hard to understand why this Sunday dress can be so immaculate when the daily casual dress often appears to be one week overdue for laundry.  The Ghanaians obviously love their Sundays and the clothing they wear on that day.  


Footwear is an easy description.  This is a photograph of the footwear of the day, worn by most of the Ghanaians on the street.

We have seen these open toe sandals so thin, especially the flip flops, that they would better be described as cardboard sandals.  And we have frequently seen these sandals repaired with tape to get a few more months of wear.  The street hawkers all wear them.  Marsha and I cringe as we watch these street hawkers move in and out of traffic while dodging the motorcyclists who are driving between the cars, all the time oblivious to the fact that their feet are in constant danger of being run over.  Last week we observed a woman sitting on the sidewalk in Tema sobbing and holding one foot, we assume because it had been run over by traffic.  We are amazed that we don't see it each day.  Here is one of the many places to buy open toe sandals. I think the boxes are where one sits when trying on the shoes.

The other style of shoe seen occasionally on the streets, but most of the time in businesses and at church, is a closed toe shoe.  Both the open toe and closed toe shoes are second hand donations.  When you buy these shoes you don't ask for a size, say 8 1/2 B, instead you choose the style/color and look to see how much the shoes are worn.  Here is another place where one can buy shoes.

I honestly do not think that one can purchase new shoes, those that come in a box with tissue paper wrapped around them, anywhere in Ghana.  Even the biggest shoe store in the Accra mall carries only used shoes.  Just like any shoe store in the USA this store has the shoes on display on racks.  However, only one of the pair of shoes will be on the rack.  If you are interested in the shoe the clerk will obtain the second one and you can examine the pair closely and try them on assuming you don't mind wearing someone else's shoes.  We  found some Ferragamo shoes in a smaller store in the mall one time, and they looked like new ones, but they didn't come in a box which means they were still second hand, or we suppose, surplus.

We have recently noticed a shoe style worn by the Ghanaian men that we hope is not fashionable in the states.  I call the shoe a Pinocchio shoe, something that one would imagine an elf, or a leprechaun, or some other imaginary creature would wear, which, just like Pinocchio's nose, looks like the front of the shoe has grown out of proportion to the main part .  I recently stood next to a man and glanced down at his feet and noted this style of shoe with the tip of each shoe at least four inches beyond where his toes would have been with a central line of small, sequin type shiny stones from the top of the shoe to the tip of the toe.  I wanted so badly to discretely take my camera out and photograph these shoes but I knew it might have been perceived as being rude.  I should have commented on how stylish his shoes were and asked if I could take a picture in order to find similar ones, but by the time I had decided to follow this line of reasoning we had parted.  This is a picture of similar shoes, just not quite as long and pointed.  Look carefully at the man in the middle.

So much for fabric, fashion, and footwear.  If you're still reading this I hope your water hasn't boiled over, or your dog hasn't made a mess in the house.

I have invited Marsha to write Fabric, Fashion and Footwear, Part Two.   She is working on it.

Final comment.  We are still occasionally asked what we do here in Ghana.  One would think that it is obvious that a physician in Africa would do doctor type things.  But some who read this blog think I am a photographer (that's a joke as evidenced by the quality of the pictures) and/or a writer (another joke.)   I am not.  What I write in these entries represents what we observe while going about our full time doctor work.  For the majority of each day I am on the phone or the computer dealing with missionaries throughout West Africa having  medical problems.  Because of confidentiality issues I cannot write about most of that doctor work.  I can write about what I observe in our travels.  My time spent on writing blog entries occurs at off hours --  night time and on the weekends.  And most of the time the entries are random thoughts prompted by observations made during the previous weeks, nothing which requires a lot of thinking, this current entry being the exception, where I have had to work really hard on a topic I would have not otherwise written about.

It's Sunday night and I'm tired.  And the new week begins in the morning.  With only twelve weeks of time remaining on our mission I am going to have to be selective about entries.  There is so much more I would like to write about than I have time.

I don't know if I'll get to the four levels of sweat.