![]() When I returned to my native city of Munich at the age of 19, I felt very foreign (fig.9).Ībove all, I was surprised by the undifferentiated view of Africa. I grew up in the 70s and 80s first in Kampala, Uganda, then in Nairobi, Kenya. Today, the Netherlands still dominates the market for wax-print fabrics, although it has now received competition from English, Chinese and Ghanaian companies. In addition, the missionaries (fig.7) had an interest in enforcing a European dress code, as the nakedness of the population was not compatible with the laws of Christian morality to be implemented (fig.8). To increase profits, these findings were taken into account in production. Through contacts of Dutch traders with mission stations and targeted market research, detailed information (fig.6) was gathered about the clothing behavior of the Gold Coast inhabitants and their preferences for certain fabric patterns. On the West African Gold Coast, today’s Ghana, there was a great demand for the colorful patterned fabrics. So at the end of the 19th century, the Dutch East India Company looked for an alternative market for its product and offered it for sale on its trade routes. The attempt failed because the Indonesians preferred their own traditional handicraft to the mass product (fig.5). The Dutch wanted to market these industrially produced fabrics in their colony of Java at the time. The reserve material is applied, drawn or stamped onto the fabric so that these parts of the fabric are protected in the dye bath and a bright pattern appears when the reserve material is removed. The Javanese term batik refers to a reserve dyeing technique, where the dyeing is done with a color repelling liquid or paste such as wax, resin or starch. Originally, the wax print process was developed in the Netherlands in an effort to copy the patterns of Indonesian batik fabrics and produce them industrially as textile prints. Wax-print fabrics, also known as Dutch Wax or Wax Hollandais, are printed cotton fabrics with colorful patterns on both sides. ![]() Although these fabrics are indeed worn in large parts of the continent, including the Congo, their history is a colonial one (fig.4). The interesting thing is that wax-print is by no means “traditionally African”. ![]() She is right – the capulanas of Mozambican women are also made of this fabric and are therefore omnipresent. When her mother heard that my brother, who lives in Mozambique, was getting married and that I would be travelling for the wedding, she had a dress made for me out of wax-print fabric, because it would definitely dress me adequately (fig.3), as wax-print is worn all over Africa. My daughter was friends with a Ghanaian girl in primary school. From a European point of view, that seems to suffice for the whole continent. In general, I am an expert (fig.1) on Africa, because I grew up in Uganda and Kenya and own a traditional African wax-print dress. Ask me anything about Congo, because I was there for four days, I know my way around.
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