Today was the day to go to gangavati to get the Lamp holders made and to get a mould for the new size of the packaging bowl. The bowl we didnt find, but after a lot of patients and time Varalaxmi and i managed to get the holders made to the sizes we wanted. The biggest problem that the workshop has faced in the past is getting a consistency in the products. so i told him to cut pieces of wire in the size we need and then circle them around a pipe of the correct size.
Meanwhile i had also begun ideating some products using the waste coconut shells that were lying around in the workshop. I found a workshop with a fine cutter and got them to make two handles from coconut for me.
sunday:
plan: take a break. Go to Hampi, then Shamas house. Do some activities with the children of Anegundi who come there.
After talking with shama i realized that the bowls we had made for the sante would be fine, however we need to create some larger ones for parceling larger quantities of food. Here cost wouldn't be too much of an hassle, as she plans to charge a small amount for packaging.
Jenny's shop placed an initial order for 20 of the lamps that i had made, so before i left i would have to create a system for the production of those. Having made two with the women at the tailoring unit i felt it wouldn't be too difficult.
We decided earlier that the belts we would give the trainees to make at Kamalapur. Today i learnt that these were nearly ready.
The pencil cases too had been given to the women at kamalapur. Since they were working with crochet, we thought that we could try a sample completely in crochet. The design too would be made in crochet. However i felt this wasn't very successful, and infect the woman to crocheted the case said the same reason for it not working as i had in mind- it was too bulky and not attractive enough. We felt it was good to stick to using the woven sample or to try another sample with a more spaced out crochet pattern.
Plan:
-make a larger prototype for the lamp as Jenny suggested, with the women from the workshop.
-Figure out the holder and the three sizes i want , as well as colours.
- Grind paper pulp bad prepare
Preparation:
make the pattern cut outs on newspaper for the lamps.
get a holder
research lamp holder possibilities
measure holders available
-get a large tub, deckle and mesh
add some chlorine to the paper pulp early in the morning so that we can make paper by the evening.
Afternoon: -make paper from the pulp we made, sticking to small sheets to start with.
Although i knew i wouldn't have time on this trip to really do any serious paper making , some of the women at the workshop seemed extremely excited about making some, so we decided to do some paper making from the pulp we had created. Slowly all the women left other things they were doing came to make a sheet of paper!
Day 5:
Create bowls for serving from the pulp.
participants: 4- 5 people
preparation: get steel and maybe some plastic bowls of the size we need.
Early in the day i spoke to Varalaxmi, and managed to get some of the ladies to hunt in their houses and get a total of 9 bowls.
I went to market with one of the women and we found some plastic bowls too.
I have never been cursed so much in my life! the pulp smelt so awful, that no one wanted to work with it! soon the entire town knew that we were working with terribly smelly stuff.
The young bunch of 4 girls that were assigned to work with me didn't stop complaining from the time we started to the time we ended.
i washed the pulp in the middle with new water, this helped a lot, but really the stench was so bad, that anyone approaching the workshop would be able to smell it.
anyhow the entire day went in this.
It was hard to deal with the disinterest of the women,it didn't help to show them the final product or try distracting them from the smell, they were 5 and i was 1!
we ended the day after much difficulty of getting them to make reasonably ok bowls, and trying to get them to fix them. most often i would end up fixing them.
we made 70 in total. Still there was so much left! there were all kinds of ideas for how to slyly dispose of the stuff .
it took quite a while to figure out the correct thickness for the bowls. Something that would dry reasonable quick, not take too much material and yet be strong enough. We quite easily managed to find that and pretty quick infect. but getting a consistency was hard, mainly again because of the smell!
the plastic bowls were a good option, as they were cheap, reusable, and we could do many of them, while the others dried. we had a nice system in place, where we would roughly finish 30 , and while we did 30 more the first ones had dried.
although application on these was slightly more difficult because they weren't firm like the steel bowls. On the whole the steel bowls seemed to be better, but it would be hard to get so many bowls to work with. The former worked just fine.
adding some clove oil would have been good, but then again it would have been an added cost and we would have needed a lot of it. the bowls also seemed to be coming out nice and it didn't seem to make sense to abandon the task altogether.
i just kept telling them that he system we were putting into place now would prevent us having to be in this situation again!
This day, although we had managed to hit upon the solution we were looking for was quite disheartening. It was difficult to see myself being cursed, while not being able to do anything ablout it. Also the fault wasn't even mine! i hadnt kept the pulp for so long! But that wasn't the point. It hand to be done and i had taken it on!
Jenny came in the evening, and she really liked the bowls and the other products that we had created. So that was a booster!:)
meanwhile i have also been trying to set up a system of the raw material, e.g. paper. since the event is a monthly affair, stuff can be made for 3 months or so. { product storage i didn't think should be a problem but it will have to be tested out.}
for each sante an approximation of 40 bowls would be needed (keeping extras in mind)
120 can be made in a day of 6 people working, very easily.
cost of production
grass : nil
paper: nil
wages for the girls: total rs 210
methi seeds and grinding: for 120 cups approximately 10 rupees
electricity cost for grinding. grinding takes approximately and hours or so, so even during months of electrify cuts, this shouldn't be a problem.
resources:
grass stock needs to be collected and kept in storage as after harvest twice a year, lots is available.
the paper we have three main sources for:
a. the kishkinda office and shop
b. Shama's house and the guesthouses
c. the three bins kept in around the village for waste management.
This is another initiative that i have part of during my stay here. Ferdinand has been trying to set up a waste management system here. We went to schools, and got children to paint separate boxes as bins for paper, plastic and miscellaneous. wet waste goes to cows mostly. there main spots for the collection bins, one at the unesco guesthouse, one at the office and one at the workshop, where people can come and put all their waste.
so a large part of the paper waste for our production of bowls will come from here.
the waste paper bins that freddie and i made with the kids for the collection points.
