TO READ MORE ABOUT NJABINI AND HOW IT HELPS PRESERVING ENDANGERED BIRDS AND HABITATS CLICK HERE (SORRY, IT'S IN ITALIAN...)
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By Sammy Bakari, one of Njabini's workers
This period marks the end of the year 2009 and the beginning of 2010. This has been a very difficult year for every one in Kenya due to the prolonged drought. This drought heavily affected the farmers and all the people of Kenya, including here in Njabini and on the Kinagop plateau, which is a traditional agricultural and pastoral area. Up to now, the rains have not yet resumed and the situation is getting very bad for everybody, even though we all hope that good rains will eventually resume in March, with the next rain season. [LUCA’S NOTE – YES THE RAIN EVENTUALLY RESUMED IN MARCH ]
But on the bright side, despite the drought, over the last three months, spinning and weaving have undergone a tremendous improvement here at our workshop in Njabini.
Our spinners – Emma, Margaret, Regina and the others - have been able to improve the speed, quality and at the same enjoy spinning. Washing the wool before working on it is one of the big tricks that the Njabini is practicing, this is after getting a wonderful training session with Janice who has been visiting us regularly in these last months, and her experience and teaching has brought much improvement to our work! Our workshop now produces an increasing amount of fine wool yarn that comes in many bright colours and that we sell as it is to other workshops, or we weave or knit it into our own products.
This period has also seen us learn a number of things regarding the market requirements, because we now produce a range of very good products, but we still are not able to sell them to our customers. In mid-November, Janice introduced us to the American community here in Nairobi, and we were allowed to display a sample of our new colourful rugs. Over a period of two weeks, more than half of them were sold. This was the first mega sale that the Njabini workshop experienced! It gave us an opportunity to understand what the market needs. We are now adjusting to the market taste.
We also continued to explore other outlets. We have advanced our contact with Goodie, a Nairobi shop where we have our products on display. This has attracted one order from the shop. Other contacts have been established and the most promising is with the African Pro-poor Tourism Development Centre. This is a recent contact and we are pursuing to see if we can make a deal with them. Our wall hangings are also displayed in the shop at the National Museums of Kenya at Nairobi.
Over the same period, our workshop enjoyed media coverage from the Kenya National Broadcast Television. These involved visiting the Nature reserve and some of the sheep farmers that we work with.
