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From Ghana With Love: Handmade African Black Soap - Shea Butter, Coconut & Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa Ash... BSF Benefit Bar
Product Description
From Ghana With Love: Handmade African Black Soap
Traditional African black soap, unscented & rich with raw shea butter, made by hand in the Gomoa District of Ghana
Several years ago I was in need of a CPA to help navigate the complexities of a growing business, & was put in touch with Grace Quartey here in York. What started as purely practical meetings rapidly shifted to small talk, & Grace & I talked at length about her childhood in Ghana, & her work as an adult launching her non-profit Building Solid Foundations to help mitigate the effects of staggering poverty in the rural towns outside Accra, Ghana's capital city.
When Grace gifted me a block of African black soap made by a team of women in the Gomoa District, I immediately saw the opportunity to spread awareness of both the craft of African soapmaking & the need for education, sanitation, health care, & economic development in rural Ghana.
Making soap in the modern United States is such a sanitized, purified, predictable process, & it has been deeply humbling to be reminded of the hard labor that goes into the process in other countries, & how reliant we are on imported oils & manufactured compounds. I hope that the ease with which I can reach all of you can be put to good use to benefit women who are making incredible soap the same way their ancestors have done for generations.
If you've never experienced African black soap, it is fascinating, made much like my hot process soap, but using raw materials & cooked over an open fire. It is soap at its most essential, streaked like granite & rich with conditioning oils that are native to the region. There are lots of processed ABS-style soaps on the market, but this is the real thing, made by a community that Grace knows & loves personally. I cured these bars for several months, resulting in a firmer, longer lasting bar that conditions & gently cleanses even the fussiest skin. It makes a delightful facial cleanser, as well. Use the bar whole, or cut it in half for a more manageable size!
This listing is for one (1) luxurious 7-ounce hand-made, hand-shaped, & hand-cut bar of Ghanan black soap, made in the Gomoa District using traditional cocoa pod ash, shea butter, palm kernel & coconut oils. I've knotted it in a hand-cut square of vibrant African wax print cotton that can be repurposed as a neck kerchief or pocket square; the current fabric print is shown in product photo #2.
Ingredients: Water, Shea Butter, Palm Kernel Oil, Coconut Oil, Cocoa Pod Ash
$8 of the sale price of each bar will go directly to BSF, to be sent back to the women in Ghana who are actually making the soap.
Women are changing the world, one bar of soap at a time. Thank you for being part of the good work!
Product Reviews
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Incredible soap!!
Posted by Mo on Jun 20th 2020
My skin has always been combination and full of breakouts. I have been slowly switching to all natural products and have noticed my skin getting way better.
Then, I bought this soap and wow!!!! It's a game changer. After 2 uses I noticed my skin was softer and my blackheads were clearer. My skin is better than I could have imagined!!
This stuff is amazing and I recommend it to e v e r y o n e -
Amazing soap
Posted by Marissa on Jun 15th 2020
My skin is absolutely beautiful with this soap. This is the best soap I've ever used. It is so thorough with out drying out my skin! There is very little smell to this soap. The lather is beautiful. The packaging was absolutely stunning! This is the best soap I've ever used!
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Soft and ashy
Posted by Crystal on Mar 14th 2020
This is absolutely a lovely product, and I'm glad I gave it a shot. I've been using this on my face, and it lathers very nicely! Gets into all those nooks and crannies and then rinses completely off. While it leaves my skin squeaky clean (literally, my skin squeaks if I rub it after washing!), it doesn't leave it flaky the way some soaps do, and I've had to cut back a bit on my usual facial lotion routine. What surprised me most about this is the scent. It smells a bit like a campfire, which I wasn't expecting but in retrospect makes sense (cocoa pod ash is literally in the ingredients). It's not a bad scent, and it doesn't linger, meaning there's still plenty of room in my life for my other PBSW scents.