• About 1,500 women have been trained to improve their bead-making skills to get more income.
• Ekaran said she makes ornaments such as earrings, belts, handbags, bracelets and decorates rungus.
Image: HESBORN ETYANG
For many years Turkana women have been making beads to wear on the neck for beauty.
Girls wear beads to attract wealthy men in society. The more the beads on neck, the more she attracts wealthy men.
Teenage girls in Turkana are seen as a source of wealth because parents receive a lot of livestock paid as dowry when they are married off.
This has exposed many girls to gender-based violence, early pregnancies and forced early marriages.
The narrative is, however, changing gradually thanks to the efforts of the Turkana county and national governments.
The two levels of government have introduced the Ushanga Kenya initiative under the department of Sports and Culture, which has trained about 1,500 women to improve their bead-making skills to get more income.
“We started beadmaking a long time ago just for beauty and culture, but we didn’t know it could bring us income,” Aberu Kori Lokichar Ushanga Cooperative chairperson Mary Kari said.
Aberu Kori Lokichar Cooperative secretary Mercy Ekaran said the training has helped improve the products.
She said after they were trained getting a market for their finished products was a big problem.
“We have been trained on how to improve the beadmaking. We have also been trained to sell our products on a digital platform called ecommercial market,” she said.
Ekaran said they have realised the importance of beadwork after Baraka Women's Centre bought baskets and ornaments from Turkana women worth Sh3 million.
She said they are now able to pay school fees for their children and afford other basic needs.
Ekaran said she makes ornaments such as earrings, belts, handbags, bracelets and decorates rungus.
Betty Ekiru, member Ushanga Initiative Kenya, said they had not seen beadwork as a business opportunity and were just making them for beauty.
“We thank the Ushanga Initiative Kenya, we have been taken to countries like Dubai where we have learned how to make quality products for sale,” she said.
Ekiru said Turkana is facing the challenge of insecurity that has forced women to sell their products from home, but the digital platform has helped improve their sales.
Africa Women Entrepreneurs chairperson Jane Kijiko said they have partnered with Baraka Women through the Ushanga Initiative to empower women by buying their products.
“We have come to buy the products of women here in Turkana. For many years Turkana had been forgotten. We see Turkana in the media as underdeveloped, faced with drought and hunger,” she said.
“We have been empowering other communities, but Turkana has not sold their products to international countries because no one has helped to establish the market.”
Kijiko said they go to buy bead products in Turkana because they are unique and to cut off middlemen who exploit beaders.
Teresia Njora from Baraka Women Centre said they have been working with the Ministry of Culture to sell the products.
“We have come all the way from Nairobi to Turkana to meet women and buy their beautiful ornaments,” she said.
She said they buy products and take them to Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi and abroad to sell them.
Dorothy Mashipei, the Ushanga Kenya Initiative coordinator, said the programme aims to empower women from pastoralist regions.
“Women from pastoral regions struggle a lot and so the government decided to come up with this programme of Ushanga and to look for the market of their products,” she said.
Mashipei said 1,500 women in Turkana are in cooperatives and are running the programme in Samburu, Marsabit, Baringo, Kajiado, Narok and West Pokot counties.