by Gentille from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I have just returned home after being at the North Sea island of Juist for one week. There, together with three colleagues from my placement, the Evangelische Bildungswerk Dortmund, I accompanied a mother-child-grandmother’s leisure time. My colleague Gerda told me before, that I should buy a white t-shirt and take It with me. She told me we would dip the t-shirt during our time in Juist in beautiful colours. I couldn’t imagine what we were doing exactly, but I bought a t-shirt.

One morning we started with the Batik-technique. We have wrapped different knots in a t-shirt with a long thread. Each of us could wrap as many different knots as we wanted. Then we touched four different colours in a bucket: turquoise, red, blue and Green. I choose three colours. I dipped my t-shirt about 30-40 minutes in each colour. Some others kept their T-shirts up to an hour in each colour. After each colour we have washed out the t-shirts in a bucket of clear water. All in all, the batik took maybe 2 hours and we hung all the garments on a long leash for drying.

In the end I was very happy about my t-shirt: a new technique that is so simple. I’m thinking a lot about the system now. I am considering whether I can use this technique to start a small business in my home country. Not only t-shirts, but also pillows and curtains I could design with this technique.