By David

I went to Uganda to teach psychosocial activities to trainers who work with young people, under the auspices of an NGO named AYInet (see www.AYInet.org). For years, I have been developing art-based activities to help war-affected youth, and I hoped to test my ideas outside of Europe. Unfortunately, and despite assurances to the contrary, I learned that no one would use my art-based techniques because they required paint, and paint cost money. Unless some NGO with outside funding decided to buy paint for them, local people were not going to use it for anything.

In response, I figured out how to make cheap paints using local resources available in any village. Only one group of local volunteers, led by a young woman named Sharon, decided to learn how to make this paint. As I was researching hand-made paint, I had another revelation: hand-made watercolor paints can sell for a lot of money in the right markets.

Also, absolutely everything needed to make watercolor paints can be found for free in the Ugandan countryside: earth pigments, gum arabic, and honey. The recipes for paints are hundreds of years old, and the processes are thousands of years old. No expensive technology or complicated chemistry was required to make professional paints. Just hard work, attention to detail, and care.

The next day, my trip was over, and I left Uganda, but not before Sharon said her team would be interested in further collaboration. I decided to try an experiment, in collaboration with the Ugandan team. I would support a research project to determine whether they could make artist-quality, hand-made watercolor paints for export.

It has been a difficult but fascinating lesson in working with a cultural and social background very different to my own. I assumed it would last six months at most. As I write this, the project has been going on for more than a year, but we finally have real paints and pigments for sale!