Roslyn Car­ring­ton

"You get the mois­tur­is­ing prop­er­ties of oils, the ben­e­fits of es­sen­tial oils, and an at­trac­tive scent," says soap mak­er Colleen Mal­wah-Aqui, ex­plain­ing why any­one would choose hand­made soap over com­mon com­mer­cial bars. "There are oils with re­ju­ve­nat­ing prop­er­ties; those that help you take care of your skin long term." There is a small but grow­ing in­ter­est in hand­made soaps, par­tic­u­lar­ly among women, as Tri­nis be­come aware of their se­duc­tive pow­er; gen­tle and ef­fec­tive, as com­pared to mass-pro­duced bars, many of which are sim­ply de­ter­gents-harsh chem­i­cal prod­ucts-mas­querad­ing un­der the ban­ner of 'soap'. To women who aren't in the know, shelling out any­where be­tween $20 and $35 for a bar of hand­made soap seems out­ra­geous, when the stuff the fac­to­ries are spit­ting out re­tails for around $8 at the su­per­mar­ket. But those who have in­dulged in the in­com­pa­ra­bly creamy lath­er and wrapped them­selves in es­sen­tials such as laven­der, gera­ni­um, lemon­grass and patchouli will tell you it's easy to be­come ad­dict­ed to the stuff. And like most soap­mak­ers, Mal­wah-Aqui be­gan ex­per­i­ment­ing with mak­ing soaps, an ac­tiv­i­ty that's part craft, part cook­ing, part chem­istry, to solve her per­son­al skin care prob­lems. "I want­ed to take bet­ter care of my skin." A nat­u­ral­ly cu­ri­ous and ex­per­i­men­tal per­son, the for­mer craft and gar­ment con­struc­tion teacher moved from read­ing soap mak­ing books to work­ing with a chemist friend at CARIRI to learn as much as she could. "I love to find out 'what's next'."

What was next, as it turned out, was the es­tab­lish­ment of her own soap and can­dle sup­plies busi­ness called Rod­co Home Es­sen­tials, lo­cat­ed at the Mal­oney Shop­ping Mall. She al­so teach­es soap mak­ing to grow­ing groups of ea­ger stu­dents, both at the UWI School of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies and pri­vate­ly. And busi­ness is good. And even though her own stu­dents some­times en­ter the busi­ness in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with her, Mal­wah-Aqui sees this as healthy. "Women are sup­posed to be self-suf­fi­cient. We shouldn't be look­ing for hand-outs. If women learn a skill they will be able to help them­selves and be an ex­am­ple for their chil­dren, so the chil­dren can see Mum­my do­ing some­thing for them­selves. Let it de­vel­op in­to a fam­i­ly busi­ness. You cre­ate your own des­tiny." Sa­da Creese, one of Mal­wah-Aqui's 'soaper' ac­quain­tances, was lucky enough to jump on­to the soap mak­ing band­wag­on at an ear­ly age. While still in her 20s, the UWI Chem­istry grad­u­ate has found­ed her own soap mak­ing busi­ness, called STC and Com­pa­ny. Her taste for ex­per­i­men­ta­tion made it a nat­ur­al choice. "When I was grow­ing up, I was al­ways mix­ing things, sham­poos and lo­tions, to cre­ate my own." And like Mal­wah-Aqui, she fell in­to soap mak­ing in her search for a so­lu­tion to her prob­lem skin.

Even with a de­gree un­der her belt, she found the job mar­ket frus­trat­ing. "I did every­thing ac­cord­ing to so­ci­ety's stan­dards. I did all my ex­ams; I start­ed to work, but couldn't get a per­ma­nent job. I de­cid­ed to start my own busi­ness, some­thing I love." She is far from bit­ter about the fact that the 'big-job dream' didn't hap­pen for her. "If I had got­ten that sta­ble, high-pay­ing job, I wouldn't have gone in this di­rec­tion." In just about two years, she has de­vel­oped a line of soaps, cra­dled in ex­quis­ite pack­ag­ing of her own de­sign, and has been sell­ing at craft mar­kets and to friends. "At my first Up­Mar­ket in De­cem­ber, I sold out." (Up­Mar­ket, for you lovers of ar­ti­sanal prod­ucts and gourmet foods, is a fine, up­scale mar­ket that takes place at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty, usu­al­ly on the first Sat­ur­day of every month. The page is avail­able on Face­book.) She's al­so not afraid to ap­proach spa and bou­tique own­ers to stock her prod­ucts. This year, she fear­less­ly ap­proached the or­gan­is­ers of Harts Car­ni­val band, with the re­sult that they agreed to in­clude her mi­ni-soaps in their good­ie bags for mas­quer­aders. She has great plans for ex­pand­ing her line be­yond soaps, to in­clude lo­tions and oth­er bath and body prod­ucts. "I'd like to do the en­tire range, but every­thing will hap­pen in time." Creese has just been award­ed a schol­ar­ship to at­tend the Hand­craft­ed Soap mak­ers Guild's an­nu­al con­fer­ence, in Port­land, Ore­gon, in May. While she shares Creese's lament about the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty and high cost of oils, lo­cal­ly, Mal­wah-Aqui has high hopes for the growth of this small but promis­ing cot­tage in­dus­try, but says they'll need the gov­ern­ment's help to do it. "If we could have a few years in which we could bring in our oils with­out VAT or du­ty, just to al­low the in­dus­try to grow to a point where we can ex­port our prod­ucts at a com­pet­i­tive price, we could see this in­dus­try flour­ish."