Tie-Dye for Beginners

'No bus, lady’. ‘Sorry, lady’. ‘Where you want to go? I don’t know. Goodbye’. ‘No, bus not running anymore’.

Several phone calls and visits to public bus companies later I still haven’t found a way to get to Chambak, 80 km south of Phnom Penh, on the way to Takeo. I really do want to go, though, because I want to visit CYK (Caring for Young Khmer, http://www.cyk.org.kh/), a Japanese NGO which teaches women of all ages the art of weaving beautiful pidans – intricate silk textiles that are used as decorative objects, often in Buddhist temples.

For curious tourists and junkies of anything-that’s-natural-workshops like me the NGO offers an introduction to tie-dyeing with natural colors, so at 9 am on a Wednesday morning I just have to be there. “Take the bus!”, CYK had kindly advised me by email. Finally, the ever helpful tuk tuk driver Poly assures me he can get me to the bus I need to take, no problem. He picks me up at 6.30, sleepily driving through the quiet suburbs of Phnom Penh, under the sweet smell of countless Frangipani blossoms. I’m just as sleepy and dreamily marvel at a few peaceful Tai Chi performers, until suddenly all hell breaks loose – we have arrived at the local transport station, where hundreds of people in and around tuk tuks, cars, busses and mini vans are ready to start into the day. We are instantly surrounded by a large group of men, each of them shouting and gesticulating and looking at Poly and me, inquisitively and with urgency. Whenever a vehicle is packed with passengers and luggage it heads off to its respective designation, so the drivers try to fill their cars as fast as possible by running around and asking every newcomer where they want to go. Of course, I don’t understand a single word of what everyone is yelling, I just hold on to my shoulder bag and try to smile politely, but Poly quickly learns that -  ‘No! No bus, lady!’ - that I will have to get a taxi. I get ushered into a car nearby, ‘Yes, yes, to Chambak!’, only to see that the men outside produce a map and apparently try to locate Chambak. Oh dear. Together, we manage to find its approximate whereabouts along the highway, and when I want to get back into the car I get a sudden bout of self-consciousness: the men very kindly tell me that I could get two seats, for just a little extra money.  – Do my hippie pants make me look that fat? Or do I look that unwilling to sit next to another person?? I hope they just want to speed up the process of filling up the car, and when, some time later, I am still the only person wanting to go to Chambak, I grudgingly decide to pay for not one but all the potential other passengers, so that I can get to my tie-dye workshop in time. Good, kind Poly re-emerges from somewhere, helps to sort out a reasonable price and then – I’m close to tears – he insists on exchanging phone numbers with the taxi driver, so that he can be sure I am well and will arrive where I intend to! Aw.

My taxi driver heads off and we settle into a comfortable silence, because we can’t find another language we could communicate in. Again I am moved by people’s friendliness when, half an hour later, he suddenly pulls over and gets us breakfast from a street vendor: two very yellow, tasty, coconut bread rolls and a bottle of water for each. Peacefully munching and listening to the radio we carry on, through Cambodia’s beautiful countryside.

Some time, confusion, phone calls to Poly and charades with local elderly ladies later where I’m trying to re-enact the process of weaving, much to their toothless delight, I’m finally there – a peaceful little place, surrounded by trees and bird songs. The driver happily climbs into a hammock and strikes up conversation with the villagers, and I am immediately presented with a white silk scarf that I am to tie in a creative and beautiful pattern to prepare it for dyeing. Hmm. I set to work under the friendly giggling of several girls and women who then return to chitchat while working on beautiful pieces of art on large weaving chairs. No one speaks English, and I prepare for a long day of communicating with hands, feet and facial expressions when, suddenly, a Khmer lady sails into the room, together with two Japanese girls, and apologizes for being so late, she has just come from Phnom Penh and the roads were so busy. I carefully ask if the girls got a ride with her, and she nods cheerfully, yep, they had all met up at CYK’s shop in Phnom Penh’s city center. Aw well. My taxi driver seems to have a good time in his hammock under the trees, apparently enjoying his escape from the loud, dusty city. If nothing else, at least that’s what that trip was good for.

So we tie and make knots and use marbles and pieces of bamboo to prevent bits and pieces of our scarfs from gettind dyed. I’m not very good in making very tight knots, I come to realize. Nor in imagining exactly what kind of floral design will appear when I fold the piece of fabric three times like that and then back and then use two small and one big marble on this side of the scarf but no! – not on THAT side! The young woman who’s trying to help me and I are having a ball, even and maybe especially because of language problems. We constantly misunderstand each other and what kind of patterns we want to create and what it should look like. We laugh a lot, and once I’m done, she takes me into the dyeing room and there’s more laughter and giggles, because the ladies (who are busy with washing silk in water and ashes) think that I’ve got a very long nose and very good teeth.

 

The former is easily communicated by indicating a nose as long as a carrot, minimum, and the latter are immediately put to test by offering me some brown, little things to eat, covered in salt. I joyfully accept, of course, only to realize that they are rock hard. Am I to chew them? To spit them out? Is this a test? What are they, anyway? I awkwardly try to make conversation as in pointing at things and grinning, while pushing those pebbles from one cheek into another. Finally I manage to crack them, and later that day I will learn that they were roasted tamarind seeds, and I get a glimpse into the sad past. Tamarind seeds, the lady running the workshop will tell me, was what she would collect as a child, during the time of the Khmer Rouge, when she and her family had been forced out of Phnom Penh and into the countryside. Precious food, when everyone was hungry and starving.

Meanwhile, the two Japanese girls are done, too, and we learn that our scarves will be dyed with ground leaves from the Indian almond tree. There’s also a pile of lac in the workshop  - a red powder, made from the secretion of lac insects. The results, after dyeing, are beautiful warm colors. 

Leaves of the Indian almond tree

Lac, prepared from insect secretion

CYK also runs workshops over the course of several weeks in order to teach women how to work with Indigo, the plant that’s used for dyeing fabrics beautifully blue. We hear about that over delicious lunch at the roadside, while our scarves are being soaked in 80°C hot Indian almond tree dye.

  

After I have finally managed to communicate to my friendly taxi driver that we are heading out for lunch and that he should come, too, I am happy to see that he jumps onto the pickup truck, only to then realize that he is not actually joining us for lunch, but rather chooses to sit in the same restaurant but far away, at a different table, all by himself. It’s not done, I am told, that the driver eats with us. If not the driver, then what about the person, I think, and remember the breakfast he bought for me this morning. At least he seems to enjoy his lunch.    

We dig into chicken with caramelized ginger and a sour and spicy vegetable soup and talk about weaving. Up to now I had thought I misunderstood the traditional technique of making the beautiful pidans, because it seemed impossibly difficult to me. So I ask again and am in awe when I realize that it is, indeed, that complicated: 1) The artist designs the patterns and pictures of the pidan. 2) He tie-dyes the silk threads in exactly the way he needs them to be for each millimeter of the pidan, that is he has to know BEFOREHAND where every single thread will end up! That involves multiple consecutive processes of tyeing and dyeing, until every millimeter of a thread is dyed in exactly the color needed for the respective image. And then, 3), the threads can be used for weaving the one and only pidan they were dyed for. The production of a single pidan can take months, and these days only few people still know how to do it. I take a sip of my tea and think about my clumsy attempt to tie marbles into a silk scarf.

Silk threads in a wooden frame, tied and ready for dyeing, and bundles of threads that are ready to use.

When we return from lunch our scarves are already dry. Mine is, well, quite special. The Japanese girls produced intricate patterns which look like beautiful snowflakes, while my scarf looks like something has dragged its tail over it. “Oh, that’s – interesting!”, the workshop lady says and smiles politely.  Then she breaks out into a huge grin, pinches my arm, says I need to work on my knots, and that she wants to take a picture of us, and that I should come visit her in Phnom Penh – she would have fresh mangos in her garden! The Japanese girls want to exchange email adresses so that we can all go out, and the Khmer women insist on sharing fresh slices of green mango with chili and salt with me and keep discussing my nose. Life is beautiful, and all the way back to Phnom Penh, side by side with the silent taxi driver, I have my soft, sunny scarf on my lap and let my fingers run through its tassels.