Times change for the carving capital of East Africa

By Joe Ombuor

The name Wamunyu (a place of salt in Kamba) may not ring a bell in the minds of many.

Yet it is here, in the old Machakos District, about 120 kms south of Nairobi, that the country’s largest wood carving business thrives.

Indeed, the dusty trading centre may well be the ‘headquarters’ of woodcarvings in East Africa.

Wooden curio products from Wamunyu are displayed in major world towns and cities.

Artists here are not trained, but born.

They chip and chisel away at wood without referring to drawings, relying only on imagination and experience.

Apart from producing Kenya’s pioneer wood carvers, Wamunyu is home to legendary Kamba leader Mulu Mutisya.

Sun-baked area

The late politician is credited with ‘lighting up’ the sun-baked area with electricity while serving as a director of Kenya Power and Lighting Company.

The area around Wamunyu, dominated by stunted acacia shrubs in an arid environment where crops hardly grow to the height of a man, gave Kenya the amazing trailblazing wood carver Mutisya Munga.

Mr Munga is said to have worked atop trees to hide the art from his peers.

He had travelled to Tanzania during the First World War where he met the renowned Makonde carvers.

Munga started by carving ornate walking sticks (‘rungus’) decorated with images of animals and objects that won him recognition and admiration from a white Machakos DC.

Through the DC, Munga’s artistic walking sticks caught the attention of other white settlers who inundated the old man with orders that he could not satisfy. This prompted him to descend from his treetop workshop and expose his skills to younger blood.

Among the first people to benefit from Munga’s skills was Mulinge Mwala, the father to Musau Mulinge, 90, who is credited with the growth of Wamunyu.

Hardwood trees

A common joke has it that Wamunyu is the grave for Kenya’s mahogany and other hardwood now on the verge of extinction.

Mr Mulinge says the trees were decimated during the boom of the 1990s when tourism was at its peak and curios were in high demand.

The frail old man, reputed to be the father of the multi-million shilling industry on which Wamunyu has grown, has seen it all. He made his debut at the age of 13 in the mid-1930s after watching his father at work.

"I sold my first ‘fimbo’ products at Sh2 apiece," he says.

Mulinge was later to work with his father, carving curios and walking as far as Nyeri and Nanyuki to sell them.

He quickly overtook his father and finally went solo.

He set base in Nairobi, but transferred to Mabebie, Machakos when the Mau Mau threatened him with death in the 1950s.

But Wamunyu people had also pestered him to take his business home, which he did in September 1954.

Reminisces Mulinge: "I put my 40 or so workers in a bus and we came to Wamunyu where nothing existed except for two small kiosks and a butchery that slaughtered one animal a day."

Their arrival brought new business and more animals were slaughtered at the butchery.

More shops, bars and butcheries were put up. Wamunyu’s growth had started in earnest.

Mulinge was a founder member of the Wamunyu Handicraft Co-operative Society in 1965, now the largest wood carving workshop in the region with more than 2,000 members and stocks worth more than Sh5 million in its display room.

Create employment

Though retired from the curio business, Mulinge is an icon in Wamunyu where he still lives, respected and admired for his contribution to an industry that literally gave birth to a town and created employment for many sons and daughters.

Scattered all over the town are shops and shacks stacked to the roof with all manner of curios.

And the names are as varied as they are interesting: Soldier Akimbo Heritage Curios, Uplands Curios, Masinga Curios, Bepta Curios, Kiambwa Curios, Kiumbuni Giraffe Curios, Dabeni, and Millenium among others.

To the casual observer, the curious thing about Wamunyu is that business appears upbeat in spite of the global economic crisis and the unfortunate after shocks of post-election violence.

Those in the know will tell you that Wamunyu is a shadow of the bustling curio hub of earlier days when tourists teemed and wood suitable for carving were easy to come by.

"That was the time when hardly a day passed without a van load of tourists pouring in with pocketfuls of money and left with loads of curios, leaving behind a prosperous and smiling people," says Mr Japheth Munyao, the secretary-general of Wamunyu Handicraft Co-operative Society.

Thriving business

He says those were the days when Wamunyu bubbled with business.

"Such was the vogue until bad wind started blowing in the mid 1990s .We paid our taxes and managed a decent living without much strain," says Munyao.

He recalls how society members, unable to cope with the hard times, left to look for greener pastures.

"We were more than 3,000 before 1986. We are now less than 2,000," he laments.

From an average Sh75, 000 taxes remitted to the Government every year before the down turn, the society today submits no more than Sh25, 000 to the taxman.

Among the members who left to seek fortunes elsewhere is Mr Benjamin Musau, who decided to start something of his own with his meagre savings.

Diversify trade

Armed with Sh100,000 gleaned from his curio work, Musau set up a shop in Wamunyu and stocked it.

"I stocked items such as polish, fillers, methylated spirit, glue, dye, files, sand paper and other items used in the curio industry," he says at his shop.

"I had to diversify to other commodities, including maize, beans, sugar and even ‘akala’ shoes when the curio business dipped.

There are those who invested their curio savings in matatu, ‘boda boda’, livestock and other enterprises that have buoyed Wamunyu.

After the curio business went down when the Government banned the harvesting of mahogany and other hard wood trees suitable for carving.