A Soap Story

I have a beautiful friend here who grew up in the local countryside learning ancient crafts like soap making and traditional embroidery from family members on long days over tea and piles of drying herbs.  She’s a grandmother many times over now but still tends a garden with goats and rabbits, making her own goat’s milk cheese and knitted Christmas slippers for Caleb and Evan.  She tells me what so many neighbors and friends here tell me: olive oil soap is something really special, making for softer skin and hair than anything else.  Olive oil soap from this area is a tradition that is over 1000 years old – Queen Elizabeth is said to have softened her skin with “Sabun Nabulsi” from not far away.  So, as part of a series of health lessons about hand washing, I asked my friend to come teach us to make olive oil soap.  We used some modern equipment like a crockpot and hand blender instead of the large pot and stirring stick my friend used growing up.  We used oil from the olive orchard where my friend lives (harvested mostly by local hearty Bedouin women) and added rosemary from a plant nearby.  Indeed there is something special about this soap – soft and earthy with a story.