TUESDAY

Today we went into the office because we all had sight visits set up throughout the day. I was to meet with Patrisha and one of the other global mama’s. These two women had been assigned my stamps to make samples from. Nick came with me and Patrisha since he didn’t have any sight visits till Wednesday. She came and picked us up from the office and took us to her shop. Patrisha is one of the younger global mamas but she is one of global mamas best batikers. She worked under Emmi and Ella for 6 years as an apprentice and then opened her own shop a year ago. The point of the visit was to watch her batik with the stamp and explain how we want it. Full drop, half drop or sloppy. Explaining things here is hard so when it wasn’t quite how we had pictured the design was supposed to look like I started doing a little bit of it myself so she could understand. Once we were on the same page she said that she was going to start over because she didn’t want any inconsistencies in the sample. This meant that she would have to take the wax off the fabric and let it dry before she could start over again.

Patrisha said that she would finish off the sample and bring it to the office later on in the day. So she sent us on our way back to the office to wait for the next woman and the next stamp to sample. Walking back to the office was a new adventure because her shop is in part of Cape Coast we haven’t walked through. The area was a bit more residential; I think its where all the fishermen stay because there was a plethora of fishing next. I also think this is the area where a lot of the bread is made because we saw a lot of really interesting clay ovens. I also saw a woman selling egg salad sandwiches which I need to try before I leave. They looked really delicious.

Back at the office we waited on the other Global Mama to come get us. We waited around for a long while until we found out she was expecting us to come to her instead of the other way around. We had Amos (one of the quality control workers) take us to her house where her shop is. We had to hail a taxi because she lives too far from the office to walk.

When we arrived at her house she had already stamped the fabric. She was a bit irritated because she had been expecting us for a while but because communication can be hard we just didn’t know. It’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to be there to show her what we were wanting because both the stamp samples she had done I could already tell were done wrong. Its not a big deal and we can redo them but I wish we could have done it right the first time.

We had Amos point us in the right direction to get a taxi back to Elmina. Since we didn’t have much else to work on in the office we could go back to the house and work on patterning. Our walk with Amos was a lot of fun. I was humming the contagious ‘Wave your flag’ song which Amos picked up on. He told me I have a really nice singing voice which obviously he was just trying to make me feel good about myself since we all know I do not have a good singing voice. Anyway we all three had a sing along to the song and it was really fun.

We had to wait a while for the taxi to fill up but it finally did and we made it back to the house. We got to work on measuring the patterns of garments we’re keeping from the previous line. We need to make sure that all the measurements are where they are supposed to be. This is an irritating task because everything is very much unorganized. We work until everyone gets back which is hard because it’s a task I really don’t want to be doing. I have to not complain about this though because I know if I was in another internship I might be doing this kind of job all day long.

Tonight we had a bit too much fun with our newly acquired English friends. The work at NGO close to Elmina, apparently they live right next door to us every once in a while. They’re a ton of fun and a bit too generous. By the end of the night we had finished off 3 bottles of Cardinal; it is a strawberry gin. Its not that strong but after three bottle we were all a bit tipsy. They also tried to by more but we had to say no because it was getting late and we still had a “family dinner” to make. Katie, Nick and I made pasta, eggplant, salad and guacamole. Very good!!