It’s a happy situation to be in I suppose, but all three of us here at 10,000 Birds are really struggling to keep up with all the posts we want to write (darn those day-jobs which pay the bills, eh). Mike and Corey have just spent a fantastic week in Guatemala and Honduras respectively and are posting every thirty minutes or so, and I’m just back from a very good day in Cape Town (which needs writing about). I still haven’t managed, though, to get everything online from my Nairobi (Kenya) visit back in February when I helped count the Endangered pipit-like Sharpe’s Longclaw with Dominic Kimani, James Wainaina, and other members of the Friends of Kinangop Plateau (FOKP) - and frankly that’s the one I’m desperate to focus on as I want to be able to create a central page that puts all the information I now have on Kinangop in one place so that it’s easier to find…

First off, though, I want to fulfill a promise I made to update the information I have online about the Njabini Woolshop, a small but joyous co-operative run by the FOKP (if you have no idea what I’m talking about or why the woolshop is so important to the future of the Kinangop grasslands my first visit was posted here).

So, we headed to the woolshop in the afternoon of my visit (straight after a lovely hour spent with the children of Mugumoini Primary School), with the express intention of photographing everything in sight. As well as catching up with some of the nicest people in Kenya the plan was to get photos for an information leaflet we’re producing (with Luca Borghesio and Dr Muchai Muchane of the National Museums of Kenya) to promote the woolshop as an eco-tourism destination - part of a circuit for birders/eco-tourists looking for the Sharpe’s Longclaw that we’d like to get established over the next few years.

When I last went to the woolshop in October 2008 I found a very small, under-equipped workshop which was nonetheless a hive of activity. All of the spinning equipment had been made in-house, the spinners were all volunteers, and the designs and products (mostly small rugs and wall-hangings) were - I think it’s fair to say - a little basic. That’s not say the products weren’t good, because they were, and they were certainly better than a team of of novice spinners might be expected to turn out - but there was room for improvement (which was something the spinners themselves readily acknowledged).

This time round there had been a noticeable leap forward. The small space available had been re-organised so that one area had been partitioned off to display the products that were on sale and there were more machines. The woolshop had taken on two knitters (introduced to me with a broad smile as Knitter 1 and Knitter 2) who were additionally producing sleeveless sweaters, children’s gloves, and bags (including a novel hand-knitted laptop case - the world is a small place indeed!). Most of the original team are still there (it was a day off and those that had come in had done so specifically to show their support for the woolshop), and the atmosphere is still one of optimism, smiles, and hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What it’s noticeably lacking though is any sort of information about why the woolshop exists, the threats facing the Longclaw, or any pictures/photographs - and though pictures on the wall may seem a little like window-dressing it’s both what overseas visitors are used to when they go somehere and will be important to help visitors understand the links between wool, the grasslands, and Kinagop’s specialised birds. My intention - and I will be doing this as soon as the next ‘day job’ pay-cheque hits my bank account! - is to have enlarged prints made of some of the photos I’m posting on the blog and sending them out to the woolshop: photos of the team at work, for example, the machines, the products, and of course the longclaw.

It’s a small step perhaps, but I believe in building something one brick at a time and helping FOKP and the woolshop present a more professional-looking exterior is part of the process of making it better-known and more enticing to overseas visitors (I may be wrong, of course, and if anyone reading this thinks so then let me know). We’ll of course also be getting the labels (which is basically very similar to the logo I’m using top left of this post) and information leaflets we’ve been working on printed up as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is of course just a selection of the hundred or so photos I took in about twenty minutes. When I finally find some time to put together the ‘central page’ I mentioned earlier (which will be similar to the one I created to explain our involvement with BirdLife International’s ‘Preventing Extinctions Programme) I’ll put many more online, but hopefully this shorter post gives another flavour of the woolshop and of the wonderful people who work there. It’s a remarkably uplifting place to visit, and if you’re in Nairobi with time off you really ought to go…

All photos copyright Charlie Moores 2009.

10,000 Birds is proud to support the efforts being made to protect the Kinangop Grasslands and Sharpe’s Longclaw by -

      - The Friends of Kinangop Plateau

      - Dr Muchai Muchane and the National Museums of Kenya

      - Nature Kenya (the BirdLife International partner in Kenya)

Would you support the work we’re doing by having this 200×252 pixel badge on your site (like eg Bubo Listing and The Birder’s Report)? Either download it straight from this page or mail us and we’ll send it you.

Please link the badge to our ‘gateway page’ at http://10000birds.com/FOKP/

Thankyou.