Our Director of Brand Communication, Christina Polychroni, is documenting her current trip to Burkina Faso. This is her third post.
So...let’s start with L’OCCITANE’S presence in Burkina Faso...why Burkina Faso? Burkina Faso is the epitome of Women’s Gold, or in other words...the place where shea trees grow abundant and offer us their valuable shea nuts!
How is it done? When visiting one of our L’OCCITANE shea production centers in Burkina Faso, I was once again moved at the fact that at L’OCCITANE we honor the traditional way of producing shea butter. The women do exactly what their ancestors did, and pictures below prove this beautiful way of making this miraculous beauty balm.
Step 1: the shea nuts are first selected after being washed and dried so that only the best quality ones are used.
Step 2: the nuts are then crushed.
Step 3: ...and boiled/roasted in medium heat.
Step 4: grinding follows with a grindstone, where a dark-brown paste is produced (looks exactly like chocolate!)
Step 5: the dark brown paste is mixed with a little bit of water and churned until the mixture becomes whitish and creamy.
Step 6: the mixture is mixed with cold water, so the oil of the cream stays at the surface, and this oil is then cooked with water and filtered 2 times We now have our shea butter but I guarantee this is not an easy process and requires help of many experienced hands (that, by the way, are very soft from the nourishing properties of shea butter!)
Most important, all that is done with a smile, or many...from the minute we arrived at the production center, the women were there to smile, hug and also..dance with us- check the video, I really enjoyed being sent from one woman to another, in a very dancing style ;)
More to come soon…
Barca (“thank you” in More, native language)!
