A visit to the Wamunyu Handicraft Cooperative Society

Our volunteering in Kenyan schools doesn’t start until tomorrow, yet we have a full programme of activities planned. One of our first ports of call is the Wamunyu Handicraft Cooperative Society. It’s nearby to our base at Muthoki Country Lodge in Machakos County, and clearly signed along the Machakos-Kitui Road.

It’s a series of very long corrugated-roof shacks filled with wood shavings. There, incredibly talented woodcarvers ply their trade.

I’m not, however, convinced by the unguarded use of the foot to saw this small wooden animal-to-be.

I love seeing this craftsman with an adze. It’s such an effective tool, and an ancient design.

My colleague Liz is with us on the trip. Liz appears to be her middle name, as her first name is clearly ‘Have-a-go’.

The artisans use ethically-sources jacaranda or olive wood to carve.

Wood carving has been a tradition here since 1918, when a man called Mutisya Munge, a member of the local Kamba tribe, who was a combatant in World War I, learned the craft while serving and brought the skills back to his community.  

The craftsman uses an old pair of jeans to guard his thighs as he works with a huge knife. Liz doesn’t.

The co-operative means no exploitative middle-men, with all profits going to the creators.

He really needs to watch his fingers.

After our tour we visit their showroom. I’ve got no room for dust-catchers. My house is already full of fascinating objects which tell amazing stories. I don’t need any more. That is, until I see a carved fish container with a lid which speaks to me. I stand looking at it and then pick it up. I’m still haunted by an African carving of a mermaid which I saw with my girlfriend when I was in my early 20s. It was beautiful, simple, creative, rough and characterful. It was just perfect. It was also £12 and she refused to spend the money on it. She spent years drawing and painting her memory of it, wishing she owned it. And to think we could have had it gathering dust all these years and then fought over it during the divorce.

There’ll be space in my luggage for my fish carving, won’t there? I’ll take a photograph of it and share it here for you later. Your life is clearly incomplete without seeing my fish carving. That’s assuming I get it home in one piece.

As well as the fish, I may also have bought a beautiful leather-bound printed-material folding fan.

And a bowl made of half a gourd.

But definitely no dust-catchers. No, definitely not. I didn’t succumb.

Did I?