Woodcarvers count losses as handicraft demand falls

Overcome by the hot Mombasa weather, he wears a brownish vest, originally white, and chisels away a piece of wood to make a buffalo.

Smoke billows from a small heap of trash burning beside him. He uses it to chase away mosquitoes, which have made the place home due to the bushy environment.

Sounds of other woodcarvers working fill the air. "Tang, ting, tong, ta, ta, ta...!" It’s a sort of competition of chisels, and the playground is the Akamba Handicraft Industry Co-operative Society (Ahics) in Changamwe.

Like others, he has been here for many years, making beauty out of wood and money out of the beauty.

When he began in 1976, it was good money, he says.

“Teachers used to resign to come and learn hand carving. In the 80s and 90s, members here were top clients in banks. Every end-month, we were the first to queue in banks for earnings, followed by refinery workers and then City Council workers,” he says.

Most woodcarvers at the facility are from the Kamba community, who picked the art from their forefathers and transformed it from just a cultural activity and artistic form of expression to a business.

With the art flowing from the blood of the community, most of them required few days' training from their self-taught seniors before becoming talented woodcarvers themselves.

Ahics secretary general Stephen Mainga says the industry started in the 1960s with few members. It grew to more than 10,000 people earning directly and indirectly from the industry in its heyday.

At the facility, woodcarvers make decorative crafts like masks, functional crafts, including furniture, drums, walking sticks, bottle openers and jewellery, like earrings, necklaces, bangles and combs.

When the business was still thriving, I bought land, built a beautiful house and educated my children with wood carving proceeds. But today, I eat chapati choma, and earning is hand-to-mouth

Other items made at the facility are bird, animal and human sculptures and utensil items like cups, spoons and trays.

The items are displayed at a shop and the primary target market is foreign tourists. Middlemen also buy in bulk and export to clients outside the country, while the rest of buyers are local.

FALL FROM GLORY

“When the business was still thriving, I bought land, built a beautiful house and educated my children with wood carving proceeds. But today, I eat chapati choma (chapati mixed with soup), and earning is hand-to-mouth,” Kaseki says.

The business began to nosedive in the late nineties, when politics began being chaotic.

“Tourists stopped trusting Kenya’s peace because of dirty politics,” he says.

In 2007, Kenya plunged into a crisis after supporters of presidential candidate Raila Odinga disputed the announcement of President Mwai Kibaki as the winner.

According to the United Nations Human Rights team, “More than 1,200 Kenyans were reported killed, thousands more injured, more than 300,000 people displaced and around 42,000 houses and many businesses looted or destroyed.”

Following the turmoil, business changed drastically as fewer tourists visited the facility to buy artefacts.

To make matters worse, terrorism and violent extremism took root in the county and the larger Coast region, further disrupting business.

TURNING POINT

Morris Mulu, a physically disabled woodcarver who began the trade in 1985, traces his business woes to the 2007 political turmoil.

“For us disabled people who are not lucky to get jobs in government or agencies, we work best when sitting down in jua kali industries. But the chaos disrupted our job here and we have no clients to buy our products," he said.

“My son dropped out of school in Form 2 and this morning, someone had to buy me a cup of coffee,” he says, finishing up on a carving of a young Maasai woman.

In 2011, a British tourist was killed and his wife abducted after gunmen stormed a beach hotel in Lamu.

Deaths of Muslim clerics thought to be fuelling the wave of radicalisation in Coastal cities triggered demonstrations and revenge attacks from radical youths and insurgents between 2012 to 2014.

A  policy brief noted that the impact of the attacks have been most felt on infrastructure, physical and human capital, productivity and economic growth. 

The brief, produced by the United Nations Development Programme, was titled, ‘Articulating the pathways of the impact of terrorism and violent extremism on the Kenyan economy.’ 

“Kenya lost a quarter of its visitors in the first five months of 2015: 284,313 down from 381,278 in 2014,” the brief dated October 2017 stated.

“This was followed by a fall of 4.3 per cent the year before. This resulted in a decline in tourist receipts of 16.7 per cent in 2013, with about 10 per cent decrease specifically in hotels and restaurants in Kenya, which continued in 2014.”

Mainga says tourists visiting the cooperative society to buy artefacts dropped significantly since then to date as result of political instability and terrorism over time, with daily visitors plummeting from 200 to just two or three.

“You can imagine those three tourists versus the more than 2,000 members remaining now,” he says.

The situation was exacerbated by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit foreign countries hard, with many initiating lockdowns and issuing travel restrictions.

Mainga says the pandemic took away the scores of tourists visiting the facility, putting the livelihoods of members and their families at risk.

The situation was so dire that it closed for three months and sent staff on unpaid leave.

Members had to rely on well-wishers for food donations, which came through just once via the county government and Red Cross and thrice via other partners.

APPEAL FOR HELP 

Members say if supported, the industry can return to its glory days.

Benjamin Nyumbu, a woodcarver, says while it is expensive to buy raw materials of wood logs, it's not guaranteed returns as the carvings you make out of it are not likely to get a client.

“We need brokers to be eliminated so we have direct access to the market,” he says.

His monthly earnings from sales of his products have nosedived from Sh90,000 in 1996 to a speculative Sh20,000.

Mainga says at the tourists' shop, some artefacts have overstayed on the shelves for 10 years, depreciating their value.

The most expensive item currently is a giant elephant priced at Sh900,000, which took six months to carve and is one of the items that have overstayed. Its owner died and if bought, proceeds would go to the family members.

Mainga says other items that have overstayed are taken off-shelve for repainting and reconditioning to make them newer and taken back to the shop.

The items sold for the least amount go for Sh500.

Due to low sales, Mainga says the co-operative is operating in debt. It has been forced to cut staff from 138 in its earlier years to 14 in 2019 to the current eight.

“Once an item is sold, we get 10 per cent to pay expenses, which add up to Sh300,000 per month. It means we need to have made Sh3 million sales that month, which we don’t achieve.

“As a result, we have many debts on salaries, taxes and land rates, and we are calling on elected leaders and government or any well-wisher to help us settle the bills,” he says.

He says the government should also lower freight charges of the carvings as many buyers are discouraged after realising travelling with the purchased items abroad will incur high charges.

The members also want well-wishers to help renovate and build proper working sheds for them. Their current sheds are dusty, rusty and old, hence unattractive to clients who visit the woodcarvers.

“Recently we had agriculture cooperatives from Makueni county come to benchmark the relationship of leadership and members of our cooperative, so you can see we are an important facility,” Mainga says.

Ahics chairman Julius Mwatu says the most important aspect is for the state to revive the market for their products.

The society has been forced to lease some of its properties to businessmen to supplement their monthly earnings.

Sabina Mwikali started out in the industry as a young woman 22 years ago, inheriting the trade from her father after his death.

Her work is to do finishing for the carvings and pieces of art, including painting and creating patterns on the ready pieces.

“I came here as a girl, I got all my four children here, and I had a lot of work to do here. But nowadays, life is hard and I struggle to educate and feed my kids,” she says, while applying red paint on a devil mask.

She speaks in a low tone, slanting her head sideways. She is wearing a T-shirt with stains of different colours, which makes it look like a manufacturer's design, but actually portrays the reality of hard but non-paying work.