The Women of Minyore

Kenya-based video journalist Ruud Elmendorp recently compiled this report on the Women of Minyore, who live on a dump site near Nakuru, Kenya and make art out of various plastic waste:

“‘Here is where I come every morning to collect plastics from the garbage.’ Lucy Wambui is 50 and with a stick she grubs through the garbage in the Gioto Dumping Site in Nakuru in central Kenya. It is early morning and the stench of the waste   already abhors. Lucy stays here with 30 other women forming the Minyore Women’s Group that sustains itself by selling art works made from garbage. ‘It’s not healthy living here, but we have nowhere else to go.’

‘Gioto’ in the local Kikuyu language means garbage, and the dumping site is situated one mile outside the industrial town of Nakuru, the number four city in Kenya. Echoes of morning mist and smoke from fires mix above the garbage that lingers on the foot of the Menengai Hills. The women of Minyore are wading through the waste, looking for polythene bags and plastic soda bottles. Their name is derived from the Kikuyu word for plastic bag. Most of the women ended up here after their husbands left them behind because of drug abuse, alcoholism or having died from Aids.
The ladies collect plastic bags to make baskets and other art works for sale. Lucy Wambui is among the women and she holds a dozen of plastic bags. Some blue, black or printed in the affordable colors of a local supermarket. ‘We don’t like working here,’ she says. ‘But we are not educated and don’t have jobs. That’s the reason why we came here.’

 ‘When I came here I started thinking what work I could do,’ she says. ‘So I joined the women weaving baskets and making jewelry from plastic.

Just outside the house a group of women is seated on a hill top weaving. Lucy picks some strands of plastic and joins them. ‘These baskets are very popular,’ she says while weaving. ‘They are used by mothers to go to the market, or on Sunday to carry a Bible to church. There is nowhere you can’t go with them.’  The products the women make vary from baskets, wallets, ladies bags and bracelets. They offer them on the dumping site on certain days in the week. ‘The best is to sell to tourists because then you can get a better price,’ admits Lucy. She is showing an improvised shop next to her house. A group of tourists with white legs shamelessly protruding from their shorts are admiring the products. Most of them are sent by tourist agencies and churches. ‘They come every Wednesday and that’s good for us,’ says Lucy.  If she is lucky she can make 20 Euro per day. ‘When there are no tourists it can be much less.’

(read more…)

This self-help women’s group may just be one out of the many out there who are struggling to survive and trying to have an income based on urban waste. And while the various waste fractions suggest the introduction of a pyrolysis system or any other concept for urban waste handling, it is just remarkable how these women have managed to create a business where others just see waste. “Waste = Food”? Yes.

Modified bicycles in Kenya – 100% Afrigadget!

My good friend Jagi Gakunju who runs the Kenyan environmental cyclists club Uvumbuzi club told me about this project which immediately caught my attention. It’s a collaboration with Africans and a Dutch organization.

You can read all about Cycling Blue in Kisumu on their Cycling Blue blog

modified bicycles Kenya Kisumu

The Cycling Blue Kenya workshop is providing courses, micro credit for (modified) bicycles and creating of employment, it is aimed to reduce poverty. In the workshop bicycles will be modified to create bicycle carts (for instance bicycle ambulances) for sale. Who buys them?  Garbage collectors, local entrepreneurs who want a (modified) bicycle to generate income such as the Cool coolbox, bicycles with extended carriers for transport of cabbages.

Here’s what they are cooking at the moment in Kisumu

bicycles, afrigadget

The idea that bicycles in Africa get modified and adapted for local uses is definitely 100% afrigadget.

Check out the brilliant Cycling out of poverty  website here for more photos and videos.  For more information Luuk Eickmans

Cycling out of poverty
info@cyclingoutofpoverty.com
http://www.cyclingoutofpoverty.com
0031-(0)615895529
SNS-bank 90.61.46.356

If you and your family want a great weekend out on bikes, join the Uvumbuzi cycling club here

Recycling – tyres, motorbike wheels and water pumps

What do you get if you cross tractor tyres, motorbike wheels and a water pump? Well, in Africa you could get anything! Here’s an odd combination of things related to water – recycled tractor tyres cut to make water troughs

This contribution is thanks to Bankelele (the very cool Kenyan blogger) who responded to a recent post on tractor tyres with the comment “I found a similar one last week and e-mailed it to hash, but perhaps the pics should be added to this post as its the same use of tractor tyre for livestock water”. He spotted it in Feb 2010 during funeral at a homestead in kapsowar, Kenya (note to Banks – Thanks for this, and next time send me low res pics dude!)

water pump engine used for a grinder
well it works doesn't it?

Here’s another water related gadget – a water pump turned into a grinder – and why not? This was spotted and photographed in Gikomba in Nairobi Kenya by Dominic Wanjihia.

wheel barrow

A modified wheel barrow that makes so much more sense – motorbike tyres and check out the puncture proofing on the wheel below

wheelbarrow
Puncture proof!

This was spotted on the Limuru  road works near Nairobi Kenya. Have you seen anything interesting that you’d like to contribute to Afrigadget? Don’t be shy! Send it to us – we’d love to get contributions from across the continent.