Scientific Old-fashioned Soap

My mind has been thinking and thinking and thinking ever since I went to Uganda last year.....how can I help these people without giving them a hand out?  What would be something lasting that could improve their lives?  I have lots of ideas, but I hadn't really thought I'd be able to work with them to make soap....their would be a lot of obstacles to deal with. 

HOWEVER... it occurred to me this week how I can make soap from scratch scientifically.  So...this week I begin the process to make my soap the same old fashioned way our grandmas and great-grandmas always did, but I am going to actually measure my leached wood ash water (the lye solution) with a pH meter.  If I can replicate how I make soap now and replace the lye solution with an old fashioned lye solution of the same pH and same volume/or weight, then they could possibly make soap in the bush without needing expensive ingredients!

So I will document this process in hopes of helping others reproduce this same effort in other parts of the world.

Stay tuned!