This week is the grand formation to teach the young women of Pô how to dye fabric using traditional powders from plants and animals. I don't even want to think about the piece of an animal, any animal, that can be used to dye fabric. Anyway, the formation should have begun last week, but for those of you without a calendar, last Thursday was March 8. Huit Mars, in French (pronounced wheat mars here in Pô), or International Women's Day. It's a national holiday here and in most countries on the planet. As it should be!

Then, this past Monday morning, the harmattan was blowing and the sky was red with dust. Probably not the best day to work with water and expensive white fabric. The harmattan blows south from the Sahara, through the Sahel, and into little Pô. It happens quite often, but not with this severity. Visibility was probably less than 100 meters. Personally, I love it. It's like having a snow day in Dallas. Pô shuts down and there's nothing to do but close the shutters (literally) and watch movies. Nothing else happens. No one works or leaves home.

But the harmattan finally went on its way, and it was back to work for me. So what's smokin' in Pô this week (other than the usual cigarettes)? Well, it's a wood fire made from scrounged wood with a kettle (we say marmite, pronounced mar-meet) full of hot water. I can pick up its lid with my bare hands . . . sering hot. I've got the scars to prove it. It always worries the women when I reach for the marmite cover. They know well that there isn't a woman anywhere in the U.S. who is as tough as they are. And they are correct, and indeed I've been known to go too far and attempt things that I'm clearly not tough enough to perform.

The nice folks in the country have a funny habit of verbalizing their warning after something bad has occurred. Example: Katerine, faire attention, as I've stumbled and already lie bruised on the rocks. Faire attention, after I've picked-up a handful of caustic soda that was not where I left it nor where it should have been. Again, I've got the scars to prove it. Why don't they warn each other (and me) before someone does something stupid. It's not that they merely want to laugh at me, though indeed they do. No, rather, they do the same thing with each other. Bibatta, faire attention . . . that donkey cart just ran-over your foot.

OK, so I bought these traditional powdered dyes in Ouaga many months ago. Finally, I obtained the hydroxe (what do you suppose that really is?) and the soude caustique (think dry, powdered, caustic lye . . . tres dangereuse and literally explosive in water), all of which is needed to teach fabric dying with plants and animal-piece powders. There are many ways to color fabric. Tie dye is one of my favorites . . . known well to any former Girl Scout. But my new favorite? Salade. Yep, they call it salade (pronounced sahlahd). And in fact, if/when we use green dyes, it does look like a green salad . . . some spots darker, some lighter, some almost white. Here's one of my buckets full of blue dye. I ask you, what animal or plant produces blue dye?! But equally of interest . . . note the clothing Biba and Yassine are wearing with the red check. That's the 2012 Huit Mars pagne. There's a different design each year. This year's didn't meet my high standards for pagne designs, so I had nothing made for last week's party.

But on with our story. Dying fabric with traditional powdered dyes involves mixing the color, the mysterious powder known here as hydroxe, and the soude caustique in bucket with about a liter or two of hot water. Stand back, Macbeth! Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. This stuff is truly dangerous. It's the same soude caustique used when we make hard soap. Anyone seen Fight Club? Yes, I have similar scars. Makes you want to run-don't-walk and sign up for the Peace Corps right away, doesn't it?

Anyway, the technique involves boiling your fabric (bezzin) to remove the wax that produced its white-on-white pattern (think Damask). Then wring the scalding fabric (I can do this bare-handed) and spread it on plastic. I didn't have the time nor the inclination to hunt-down a large piece of plastic, so I chose to donate one of my plastic mats. After the fabric is spread onto the plastic, start scrunching. I believe that's the technical term: scrunching. This can be done in myriad ways. The make-a-paper-fan folding method, the peak-and-valley-scrunch, or my favorite, the twist-and-scrunch in-circles method.

Then one takes a broom and flicks very strong color onto the wet, scrunched-up fabric. I believe that flick is also the proper technical term, though it doesn't translate; and yes, that's a whisk broom that I brought with me from the States. The dye isn't as caustic at this point, but getting it on your skin isn't what I'd call pleasant. Only after the dye is set and the fabric taken through its first rinse does the caustic potential end. The results, obviously, are areas of darker and lighter colors, and even areas that remain white.

You can probably picture it here. When this scrunched-up fabric is stretched out, we'll see dark and light blues and even some whites. Here, Yassine has decided to make one side blue and the other side violet. She'll then flick streaks of ocher yellow on both sides. The results will be stunning, I promise.

And then there's the traditional tie-dye, using rubber bands. The best product of the day was from good ol' tie-dye with a single color of very strong violet. It was so pretty that I'm returning with some of my old pagnes tomorrow to re-dye them. My girls at the Maison de la Femme! My oh my! Their imaginations are amazing. Proving once again that there's little I can teach here that can't be improved in the blink of an eye.

So why are we doing all this dying? It's not merely so the gals will have new clothes. Nay. It's to sell in the new boutique that we're hoping to open at the Maison de la Femme. Tomorrow we'll finish the tissue transformation formation and make some neem cream. What's neem cream? Why, I'm so glad you asked.

Pick some smelly leaves from the neem tree, boil them, drain and save the smelly water, and add to that water a bar of hard soap that's been shaved with a knife so finely that you'd never guess it was ever a bar of soap. Then add some shea butter and mix well. If you're lucky, you've found a bar of soap with a nice scent that will mask the smell of neem leaves. If you're very lucky, which we are, it will actually smell like a perfumed body cream. Remember, I've got $65 bars of soap from the Mother Ship (aka Neiman's), which I clearly can't use-up in the next several months at site. Sustainable? Not by a long shot. But one can find a decently-scented soap here. Anyway, after this is mixed, you'll have a lovely cream that really feels marvelous on your skin (it's the shea butter). But its big selling point? Mosquitoes absolutely hate it. Voila! Cheap insecticide . . . except for that $65 bar of N-M soap that I'm donating.

So the gals at the Maison de la Femme are stocking up on products to sell at their new boutique. It's great fun to watch our inventory grow, even at the expense of my diminishing over-priced soap inventory. Giving up the last of the N-M soaps makes me wonder whether I'm really ready to return to the States. And lately I've been learning the words to La Marseillaise. Probably watched Casablanca one too many times on harmattan-day. Or maybe my French is really coming along and I'm planning to move back to little Pô one day to live a simple life, off the grid, and make smelly neem cream and dye bezzin. Can anyone tell that my service in this marvelous land ends in the autumn and already I'm finding it hard to say goodbye? Maybe I should go on-line to the Mother Ship and dream of over-priced toiletries. Why isn't March 8 a national holiday in the U.S.? Anyone know of a blue plant or animal? We can only speculate.