Tie-Dying in West-Africa

Sports have always played a major role in my life. I even have documented evidence; my first photo, at age 6, for my t-ball team. Down on one knee I proudly wore my purple Vikings uniform. Back then we didn't have the standard white pants--which makes sense, we were bunch of kids--so my mother made me a matching tie-dye shirt and pants combo. I remember wearing that ensemble down quickly--there was no dirt on the field that went untouched. Now, many years later I have returned to tie-dye.

It is common among volleyball teams to make tie-dye t-shirts together as a team building activity. When I was coaching my first volleyball team, a club one of my best friends and I had started, we had a tie-dying party. So the idea to do the same thing in Africa came naturally, and like in t-ball my mother came to the rescue. She set about buying t-shirts for the girls and while she could have just bought some regular tie-dying kit at Wal-Mart, she went through the process of ordering a kit from a company called Dharma Trading Company. She even called them to ask if they shipped to Benin. They did, but at the fear it might get lost she had it shipped to her first.

Following the volleyball tournament I had all the girls over to my house to tie-dye. I couldn't explain what it was to them, but they went along with the activity with vigor. Of course we had to work around the directions a little. For example, I can't control water temperature from the pump, and instead boiled water to mix in with the cool water.

We let the shirts sit in their dye for almost 24 hours, at the girls’ insistence. The next day on a Monday, four of the girls came over to help rinse off the dye so we could hang the shirts to dry. They were all wowed by the colors and how the shirts turned out. The four girls immediately started calling dibs on the shirts they wanted. Even the shirt we were sure was going to turn out "villain" was pretty. Another sign that the shirts were a success is the girls wanting to sell them. Apparently south of our village a group of woman do tie-dying, and the girls eagerly pointed out these shirts were way better.

On Saturday the whole team returned and I set about demonstrating how they could use the fabric markers--also courtesy of my mother--to sign one another shirts and decorate the t-shirts. The girls acted cautiously at first, but after an hour they were all into it, so much that I couldn't get them to stop. They wrote messages to each other and spread "I love volleyball" across the shirts with hearts. Next year these shirts will serve as their practice t-shirts, and while I thought they might wear them outside of that, they have taken this notion seriously. These shirts are for volleyball only. It gives them something to look forward to next year and like my photo from t-ball, it gives them documented evidence for the future.

(See slideshow for pictures)