In June 2022, I took on the role of the Creative Project Lead at the Twaabane Creative Centre which had been officially been opened three years prior in 2019. The following year the COVID pandemic swept across the world devastating many communities. Simonga was of no exception. As an extension of Livingstone, which lies in the edge of the Mosi-oa Tunya National Park, the land around and of Simonga is mostly farms and lodges. These farms and lodges provide for the majority of employment opportunities for the people of Simonga. When the pandemic asphyxiated the systems of movement across borders, the flow of tourism and agricultural produce came to a slow rumble and in many cases a sharp halt. This directly impacted the employment rates of residents in Simonga. In the case of the Twaabane Creative Centre which is in the heart of Simonga, the newly established flow begun to churn slowly, adhering to the global crises.

By the time I arrived at Twaabane, a team of 7 women, Bridget, Anna, Ferry, Josephine A, Josephine M, Regina and Charity had undergone a tailoring training designed to introduce them to foundational and intermediate textile skills. The women knew their craft. In the Textile Studio was the humming of the old singer machines and the vibrant chatter of the undulating ciTonga and ciLozi languages. Soon after another group from Simonga and Sinde were recruited to undertake the training programme. During that time my contract included developing a product or series of products which the women would make and put out into the local and national artisanal markets as a means of generating income and the fostering self-sustainability of the centre. It was in this capacity that the Natural Dye Project and the range of ethically tailored products of the Twaabane Creative Centre were birthed.

The first stage of the shift included teaching and implementing and in many cases resurfacing a series of design principles, and thus products, rooted in both indigenous knowledge and climate mitigation solutions. One of the first products of this kind was the ‘Scrappy Tote’, a tote bag which was sewn or quilted together using offcut or waste fabric from projects in the past. These totes make use of fabric which would otherwise have eventually landed up back in nature. Looping themselves around the branches of the Mopane Trees or around the dainty legs of the Fork Tailed Drongo. The quilting technique also carries and tells the story of the many fabrics, and in many ways stories of people, which passed through the hands of the women, and through the little magical space between the feed dog and the base of the machine. The second was a wide brimmed sunhat which was made using excess shade cloth, a lightweight netting made from low-density polyethylene and designed to block a certain amount of sunlight. The fabric was used a few years prior to create a shelter or cover of the ampitheatre at the Tongabezi Trust School and was sitting in the fabric store room. Michael, the assistant trainer and a few of the first team of 7 had experimented with creating a series of products from this material such as purses but these found themselves in the storeroom under stacked metres of chitenge fabric. The sunhat design emerged as a response to not only the excess fabric but to the sweltering hot sun of the Zambezi Valley. The third was the revival of a design of a half-cap which made use of discarded 5l oil containers as the material which formed the protective shade element of the hat.

Alongside this, I was conducting research and experiments in my kitchen and around the Mopane and Miombo Woodland in search of natural non-toxic dyes which could be found and synthesised in the Zambezi Valley. The research project was sparked by a need to develop a flagship textile product, which indeed was able to generate income and support the self-sustainability of the centre but one which was was “crafted with passion and purpose for people and the planet.” a slogan I had developed for a range of artistic and artisanal products. This is now the main motto of the Twaabane Creative Centre. The initial testing stages made use of agricultural offcuts (or waste) from the Bulimi Garden, a project running alongside the Textile Studio. The first test was conducted using carrot tops, as the women in the garden had harvested a crate of organically grown vegetables and amongst them were carrots. The goal was to nurture a cycle of interconnectedness between the two skills development projects running under the Centre. The pigment extraction and process done using the Bulimi carrot tops yielded a pale yellow/green pigment.

The second tests were conducted using wild or foraged botanicals found around the Mopane and Southern Miombo Woodlands, such as musekeseke, sickle bush pods, mopane and munzinzila bark. The goal was to reconnect the stories and fibres between the indigenous knowledge of plants and their aesthetic textile properties, such as their ability to dye, found around Simonga and amongst the Lozi, Tonga and Tokaleya communities. This is how the almost two year old project begun.