Baskets starting from the garden

Baskets have been part of the daily life of Ugandan women for very long. Before the globalization came, before the plastic bowls, the shelves, the polyester sacs... Baskets were there, ladies were making them from the plants around to manage their homes: they are used to collect the corps from the garden, for storage at home, to serve the food...

These traditional baskets start from the garden, indeed from the big matoke trees. Matoke is a green banana and the most popular dish in Uganda, they just love it.

 

They cut long leafs from the tree, and separate it's fibre.




They leave these fibres under the sun to dry. After a week, all the water has gone, and the thick fibres are now dried thinner sticks.

Once they are dry and ready, they will remove in thin strips the exterior part, the cover. 

They will leave them to dry again, until they become very thin long straws. 

This is the material that fills the baskets in this side of Uganda. Other groups or regions use a different plant for the filling, papiro, but it grows only in humid areas, and in this side there is plenty of matoke, but not swamps. 

So, we have the filling part, what do they cover it with? With another plant. 

The traditional one in Kikooba parish is the “enjuru”. It's a long bush that grows everywhere. The proccess with this one is very similar: they remove the leafes from the main stem, cut it by half and let it dry. 

When it's the moment to wave, they will put these dried strips into water, to make them soft, and they will wave the previous matoke sticks with the enjuru strips. 

For the modern baskets, they will use a different kind of matoke leaf for the waving. This kind of matoke is not around in this area, so they get them from other ladies, and it's called “sisal”. The proccess is very similar, cut the leaf, take the fibre and let it dry until create the strips:

For sisal baskets they will first do the colouring. With a plant called “ina” or another one called “nyarwehinduria”, they can colour the sisal in greens, and with the root of the plant called “ekifumbwa” they can colour in yellows and browns. For the very colourful ones, they treat the sisal with ink. 

For the natural colours, they have to peal the root or to separate the leafes from the plant, and smash them in the mortar. When it is ready, they put them to boil with the sisal. To create different tones of colours, and to fix the colour, they will add ashes to the water. Once it has boiled and the strips have taken colour, they let them dry. 

Before waving, they will clean them a couple of times, to make sure the remaining ink comes out, and the colour stays clean and in it's place while waving. 

For waving they just use a needle, their hands and a lot of patient. However, it is an enjoyable time, as they like keeping themselves busy and creating something. Keep moving to bring better things for them and their families.