Day one morning:
sit and try to explain and understand all the things on the mind map together. Assess what parts of these would be problems and what parts wouldn't. get the women to do the analysis and give relevant inputs from my own assessment and my understanding of the situation by having talked to Shama.
Outcome: a combined diagrammatic and critical assessment of the issues, strengths and hence the possibilities for paper making and related activities.
time: 1 hour
preparation: papers and pencils. my mind map on the computer for my reference.
participants: the supervisor (she would know the functioning and possibilities at a higher level), two women- one who is involved with working with the removal of fibre and one who works with dyeing the fibre and treating it.
Day one afternoon: Start with papier mache. Explain the process. Show the sample i have. Talk about the products that Shama has suggested that we make.
Look at the pulp that they have mede and try moulding a bowl from it. Talk about moulds and the effectiveness of moulds.
preparation: take some sample on the internet .
Materials: bowls for moulding. Today i wont take many other materials, we will look at the up that they have made.
Day one didn't start off the way we i had imagined. There was so much excitement on working with something new that the women had asked Shama if they could make the pulp before i came, and Shama had told them to take some waste paper, rice grass and methi and grind it in their paper making machine into a pulp. This pulp turned out to be quite a disaster, as they too realized. The consistencies of the paper and the grass and the methi were all three very different from one and other. The grass strands were large and hard, the paper became a relatively fine pulp and the meth seeds remained unaffected. I told them that since the three materials are so different they would have to be treated differently- the grass would have to be cooked.
* in my experience grass needs to be cooked in an alkali solution to "Digest" the material. This process removes lignin and other components of the wood from the cellulose fibres which will be used to make paper. Lignin is the "glue" which holds the wood together; it rapidly decomposes and discolours paper if it is left in the pulp. It is possible to mechanically crush the fibers to an extent where most of the lignin comes out, but this process is time consuming and not very effective. Considering that fact that we will be using our pulp to making products for packaging food, using caustic soda or any other chemical substances doesn't seem viable. Also any plant matter would need to be cooked and it seems like the added energy would be such a waste for a packaging product.
however the grass that was used in this pulp was dried rice grass, and so the chances of it rotting or discoloring weren't an issue for us.
After we looked at the pulp , i sat down with the three of them, and we discussed the mind map. It was a fun process, they seemed to enjoy having to think of all the nitty grittys. They began to see the larger picture and came up with some great solutions.
In the after noon we boiled a bit of the pulp as one of them was persistent that we do so. She realized that it wasn't really working after half an hour of boiling. Then we decided that we could grind it. Here we realized that the pulp got much better and finer, however this process was very labour intensive and time consuming. BAD IDEA FOR THE FUTURE!!!
Meanwhile i created two small packaging bowls from the original pulp, just to see how successful it was.
Unfortunately i couldnt get a scan of the mind map we made together, i did take a picture but i turned out terrible. However this exercise was helpful in many ways. Firstly it was a great ice breaker. We got into simple conversation where they told me a lot about their village and lives. It also made them stop a moment and think about all the details of the map. For instance when we were speaking about the electricity being a possible problem, i told them that the grinding of large quantities of pulp would take around an hour and a half in the machine. One of the women said that even during power cut times, they have two hours of electricity at night and so we could have one person just come in at night to do the grinding.
When it came figuring out simple logistics i found that all three women were very proactive and came up with a lot of ideas. However when we were talking about the marketing and tourist expectations parts of it, it was great to have the supervisor there. She was the bridge between me and the other two women.She knew how to explain to them what kind of quality was expected.
The hardest aspect for any of them to critically think about was the environmental aspect. Thank fully i had done a lot of research on the impact f using chemicals such as caustic soda and alum etc, and so i could tell these to them. However it still was a difficult concept for them to grasp.
Although today we went into great detail of every stage related to paper making, i felt that within the time i had now, it was better to focus on just the packaging products. However i could see a lot of excitement for making paper and i hope that we will be able to explore some of that too:)
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