Peace Corps Tanzania is making commemorative kangas for us all, for the 50th anniversary celebration stuff last year (50th anniversary of Peace Corps itself, and Peace Corps in Tanzania, one of the first posts to open). Last year was also the 50th anniversary of Tanzania, so lots and lots of celebrations, and after a lot of arguing over design, this kanga is now finally going to production. The reason I know about this is that the largest factory in East Africa is 21st Century Textiles, which is apparently in Morogoro, and they are making our kangas. Which I still wouldn't have known about except that I and my sitemate were nominated to go proof some kanga samples pre-production on the basis of geographic proximity. It ended up taking three hours, between waiting for them to set up a machine, prepare the dyes, run the sample through the washing and drying machine to ensure the dye would set, and have me approve the start of production. We took the waiting periods to wander around the factory, during which time I had flashbacks to every story I have ever read featuring orphans suffering in the terrible, noisy, hot, and dangerous factory conditions of back in the early days of the industrial revolution, when girls working at looms in textile factories had to cut their hair short or risk it getting caught in the machines, and sometimes they'd lose fingers, and have to work 10 hour days for about 2 cents an hour, and stagger home exhausted to abusive parents who took their wages and spent it on booze. At the end of the tour and having approved the kangas, we were asked to speak to the factory owner, because he was extremely confused about why 2 American girls who lived in Morogoro were wandering around his factory.
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| the factory |
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| newly printed fabric coming off a machine |
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| barrel thing for printing the peace corps design |
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| Prepping the barrel things: dye is pumped inside, and the machines turn the barrels. As the fabric passes underneath, the barrels, it picks up the dye, 1 color per barrel. I do not entirely understand how this works. Why do the white parts stay white? |
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| preparing the dye |
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| making some adjustments to the barrels |
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| our kangas! |
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| other fabric being printed |
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| and more fabric |
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| a folding machine |
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| piles and piles of fabric |
