The colours of Africa in Zambia

30/1/2013

By Roxanne Reid
If you ever find yourself passing through Mfuwe village on your way to the famous South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, make time to stop off at Tribal Textiles and you’ll be as impressed as we were by the creativity and skills of the rural people who work at this small craft factory.

Colourful pillars at the gate hint at the delights within. About two dozen bicycles – that icon of Zambian transport – are parked higgledy-piggledy under a spreading tree in the parking lot, many of them bought with money the workers have earned right here in the factory.

Just over 100 people produce unique hand-painted textiles that combine traditional African art with contemporary designs, using Zambian wildlife and culture as inspiration. Wall hangings, cushion covers, table cloths, bedspreads, bags, accessories, even a kiddies range, are painted with hand-mixed colours, from vibrant to earthy.

The heart of things is a tin-roofed outdoor area featuring a number of concrete tables. The process starts with soaking white 100% cotton so that the mixture of wheat flour andwater used to draw the patterns takes evenly. It’s amazing to watch one of the artists drawing huge giraffes, zebras, elephants or geometric designs with a very sure hand. Others take over to ‘fill in’ spots and stripes and other parts of geometric designs. This is sun-dried so the starch hardens before the next stage.

Each design is hand-painted using fabric paints that are specially mixed. One delicious-sounding colour chalked up on a blackboard for mixing on the day we visited was ‘chocolate blue’. Colour palettes range from bright greens and reds to more muted blues, green and mauves. My favourites were the muted yellows complemented by black and khaki.

Next, our affable guide told us, the fabric passes through an industrial oven for five minutes to make the textiles colour-fast and washable. Later, it’s soaked in a water bath to soften the starch, which is then rubbed and scraped off by hand.

The final stage is a room humming with sewing machines, where men and women use the fabric others have created to make finished articles.

You can visit the beautiful shop to nose around or buy. A table cloth or bedspread sells for around ZAR1600 or US$187, which is certainly not expensive if you consider the amount of handwork and skill that goes into these fabulous local crafts. There are lots of more inexpensive items too.

The factory was started in 1991 by Gillie Lightfoot, who markets the fabric and manufactured items in some 20 countries around the world. ‘As the business grew so did the workforce and I was able to start handing over some of the drawing and painting to a select few,’ she says. ‘Moses Musa, now the workshop manager, and I have worked side by side from the beginning. With little or no formal education but for his years of experience, Moses now leads our workforce.’

Part of the large shop, set out around a central courtyard

The factory provides jobs in an area where employment isn’t thick on the ground. It has also helped to co-found a local community school that educates 160 children.

Need to know

You can do a workshop tour from March to December (dry season), except for Saturday afternoons and Sundays.
The shop next to the workshop is open from 7:30 to 16:30 seven days a week (it's only closed on Christmas day).
For more information, see www.tribaltextiles.co.zm or email [email protected] to find a supplier in your country.

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