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How Buba Produces his Batiks
Display and Ordering of Batiks
Illustrations of How We Have Used Batiks

Buba Drammeh

Buba is a talented batik artist from The Gambia. Vic and I admired his work on our first visit to The Gambia in 1997 and during subsequent visits have become friends. His batiks have been incorporated in the design for the CD "Mansalou", featuring the kora playing and singing of Jali Sherrifo Konteh. (follow this link for details of the CD). This is available from Compound Sounds. Pictures, prices and suggestions for use of these batiks follow this article.

Batik is a way of decorating cloth by covering part of it with a coat of wax and then dyeing the cloth. This process is usually repeated several times, using different dyes, until the final effect is achieved. The waxed area keeps its original colour and when the wax is removed the contrast between the dyed and undyed areas makes the pattern. During the dyeing the brittle nature of the dried wax will cause it to crack, allowing small quantities of dye to penetrate to the cloth. The resulting spider-web pattern adds an unplanned and interesting effect to any design and is a special characteristic of most batik work.

Buba normally buys his cloth, which is usually white or a very light colour, from the town of Serrakunda. He buys whatever amount of cloth he can afford, together with the dyes, salt, caustic soda and wax crayons.

Then he cuts the cloth according to the size of the pattern he has decided to draw. He spreads the cloth flat and draws straight onto the cloth (which is always 100% cotton) using a crayon which is not the same colour as the first dye. If the same colour were to be used the pattern would not been seen when it came out of the dye.

The first picture shows lighting the charcoal to heat the wax, the second is heating the wax and the third is putting the candles in to melt.

He then melts the candle wax and uses a small stick with wire wrapped round it, called a tjanting, to dip in the wax. The wire will hold the wax and will permeate and seal the parts of the cloth it covers so that the dye cannot penetrate. He paints the melted wax onto the parts of the cloth he wants to remain white.

The first picture shows him dipping the tjanting into the wax, and the next two pictures show him using the tjanting to outline the design.

In the first picture he is using a brush to fill in the spaces with melted wax, the second shows melted wax on the cloth and the third shows the dye-bath.

Next he prepares the dye-bath, mixing the salt and caustic soda with the dye powder, using gloves to protect his hands from the caustic soda. The soda and salt helps to fix the colour to the cloth. The first colour will be the lightest colour he wants to use. He then puts the material to dry but has to take care not to leave it in the hot sun for too long as it could melt the wax!

When the cloth is dry the wax is melted again and those areas that are to retain the colour just dyed are covered with wax, and the material is dipped into a dye of a colour darker in tone than the first. This process continues until the darkest shade (black) has been reached. There are usually five or six colours in the final batik, including the original white of the material and the final black. Since the colours are superimposed in the dyeing process, a particular colour-scale must be planned. For example, if the first colour was blue, then yellow could be used for the second dye and that would make green, or red to make brown.

The first picture shows the first dye drying in the sun, the second shows the first dye results and the third is demonstrating that the cloth is used double to produce two batiks at the same time.

Finally Buba buys firewood and builds a small fire to boil water, soap and salt together in a big container and the boiling water will take the wax out of the cloth. Then it is washed and ironed. The ironing will remove any final small particles of wax from the material. He has no electricity so the iron is a flat iron that holds heated charcoal in the top.

The final batiks then make a very colourful display round the walls of his small workshop.

When I asked Buba where he got the ideas for his designs from he said that he likes to promote the traditional African way of life. Things that his forefathers would also have done, such as hunting, fishing and pounding (rice and other grains), and also scenes of life in a compound or traditional musicians such as a kora , balafon or djembe player. He has also heard stories from his mother and grandmother, perhaps about an animal, and he will draw that, so, as he says, "Children can come and say, oh, look these animals are existing in The Gambia." He also gets ideas and colour schemes just by "looking at what is around me". This of course, includes the Baobab tree, which can live for hundreds of years, and is a very important tree in The Gambia. People depend on it for food and for cures and many believe it has magical properties.

Buba Drammeh was born at Nuimi Nemakunku village, in the Upper Nuimi district on North Bank. His father's name was Saikou Ba Drammeh, who was a hunter. He died very early but Buba has been told that he was a hunter of crocodiles and other creatures. His mother's name is Jankang Nass, now married again and living in Nuimi Lamin where Buba now lives with his wife, three children, adopted nephew, parents, sisters and other friends. There is a large and very productive vegetable garden which is run as a co-operative by all the hard-working women. Their vegetables are renowned and lorries come from Senegal as well as various places in The Gambia to buy the vegetables.

He attended Bakalary primary school in the Upper Niumi district and then Berending Secondary Technical school. He then decided to learn to do batik as an occupation. His uncles, Lamin Anta Jarju and Pa Ousman Jarju taught him.

After doing batik for some years he applied to the Education department and was chosen as a teacher's aid. He taught in primary school, mainly grade 2 but when he went to another school he taught grade 3. He taught every subject, but not quite the same subjects as are taught in England. General Science, Mathematics, Social Environment, PE, Agriculture.

"Yes, that's my main subject, I'm very good at agriculture!"

English language is compulsory. I said that I had spoken to a lot of Gambian children and most of them speak excellent English, much better than a child of 10 - 12 years in an English school would speak a foreign language.

"Yes, a lot of Gambian people speak English, even if they do not go to school, (it is the official language) but reading and writing could be their problem ,- even grandpeople at home they will speak English sometimes."

In 1996 Buba decided to go back to his "own occupation of arts", and "embarked on feeding his family. Everything depends on this batik, that's what I am doing. It is a hand to mouth existence because you have a lot of families that depend on you and there is very little. That is the main problem. Whatever you have that is what you eat. It depends on every day you work, whatsoever you have, that is what you will eat."

I said that although people are very poor you don't see people that are malnourished or ill because they have not got enough to eat.

"No, it is not common here, you can identify someone by their structure if they have a problem with hunger, but no, it is not common here. There is no drought, but even if you can see that they are hungry and you offer them food, they will say Oh, I'm alright."

Most people will have at least one meal a day, the basis of which would probably be rice. A 50kg bag of rice will cost the equivalent of about £16 and will feed all the people in a compound for a month.

I said that I found the Gambian people, although poor, to be very cheerful and generous. If you bought something from their stall or did something for them they would have to give you a present - maybe a necklace from their stall or an extra tomato in the bag.

"Generous? Oh, yes, definitely!"

Tina Smith