As I wrote on my first post about my amazing day-trip to Nairobi last weekend (see Life Changing Moments in the Kenyan Highlands) one of the highlights was a visit to the Njabini wool-spinning workshop run by the Friends of the Kinangop Plateau* with Nature Kenya (the Birdlife International partner in Kenya).

The Njabini Wool-spinning Workshop run by the
Friends of Kinangop Plateau with Nature Kenya

Now, ordinarily, I’d spend any time I have in the Kenyan Highlands looking for grassland specials like Sharpe’s Longclaw (of course) or Jackson’s Widowbird and Hunter’s Cisticola - but, without any reservation at all, the hour I spent at the workshop was as special a time as I’ve spent anywhere recently. It was motivating, inspiring, and - in a twist I simply didn’t see coming - extremely touching. I was made to feel that the small (but in context I guess relatively large) efforts we’ve made on 10,000 Birds to help protect the Kinangop grasslands were valued and important, and I’m going to remember the visit for a very long, long time to come.

That sort of enthusing requires explanation of course, and I genuinely hope I can do justice to what I think is a remarkable achievement by a small group of community-based conservationists, who have come up with a far-sighted strategy to protect the grasslands whilst at the same time trying to ensure that the people who live in them benefit also. It’s worth bearing in mind when you read this that the workshop project started with the question, “How can we protect Sharpe’s Longclaw?” and the answer had to include benefits to local people. Why? Because though the obvious answer to protecting the longclaw may well seem to you and me to be “Create reserves”, since the 1960s as much as 50% of all the grassland on the Kinangop Plateau has been converted for crop cultivation or to eucalypt plantations, and the vast majority of what’s left is already owned by smallholders who have families and very low incomes. There is simply very little land available which could be turned into the sort of areas that many people envisage when they think of ‘reserves’: ie fenced land where people are largely excluded and the habitat is managed for wildlife first and foremost.

What the workshop does instead is to operate an excellent example of wise-use which basically centres around persuading farmers who might otherwise cultivate and sub-divide the remaining grassland on Kinangop to rear sheep instead. The workshop then buys the wool produced and trains local women and young people in all aspects of preparing the wool fibres from “carding” and grading them right through to spinning and weaving them into mats and other goods. These are now being sold (on a small scale) to local people and tourists.

Written down like that, the strategy I’m eulogising hardly appears to be much more than an obvious plan to follow, but it actually took some remarkably intelligent lateral thinking because of two separate factors that had to be taken into consideration.

1. Sharpe’s Longclaw is highly dependent on the thick tussocks that grow in this particular type of grassland for nesting sites. Graze the land too heavily (with cattle) and the tussocks are lost. Cultivate crops and - again - the tussocks are lost. Put sheep on the land instead and they - like the antelopes that originally lived on the Plateau - tend to avoid the tussocks, which are very tough, and feed on the grass in between creating fairly natural feeding conditions for the longclaw.
2. Whilst sheep are probably the best domesticated animal to have on the land, rearing them has never been an especially profitable exercise and therefore not popular. The meat of course has value, but wool is treated as a useless by-product of animal husbandry with no value whatsoever. It has no value because no-one is willing to buy it because no-one locally knows what to do with it. In fact the farmers themselves have to pay to have it disposed of, which costs them a percentage of whatever profits they make from the meat.

Simply put, the conservationists prefer sheep to crops or cattle, the farmers don’t. How then do you add value to the sheep so that the farmers do want them? I’ve thought long and hard about this in the last few days, and I can’t honestly say that my answer would have been to get hold of some suitable premises, get hold of spinning wheels, get hold of some enthusiastic volunteers, and then train them to spin woollen goods from scratch!

Fortunately for Sharpe’s Longclaw, the FOKP and the simply unstoppable Luca Borghesio (who has organised funding for the workshop and advises on it constantly) are made of sterner stuff and weren’t going to be put off from evolving an ideal win-win situation just because they didn’t know about wool-spinning, didn’t have any equipment, and didn’t even have a place to set up a workshop. They just went ahead and did it anyway… and the real genius of the wool-spinning project is that it gives the farmers a financial reason to keep the land as it is by buying their wool, gives local women (who have otherwise low rates of employment and virtually no incomes of their own) a skill and a means to earn, and is on the way to producing a cottage industry that will attract visitors and ‘tourist dollars’. And all the while this is going on the highly threatened habitat of the Endangered Sharpe’s Longclaw is conserved.

Weaving wool at the Njabini Wool-spinning workshop

Spinning wool on a locally-made spinning wheel

It’s a remarkably simple idea in hindsight, but it’s worth remembering that the people who came up with this project are not trained scientists or well-resourced conservationists - they’re mainly local people who looked around them and wondered what they could do to save the birds that were disappearing off the land. There is virtually no environmental education in the region, no “Nat Geo” on the TV, no part of the school curriculum (at least until Dominic showed up) dedicated to “green causes”. Most people here have no idea of the link between habitat loss and population decline in the Sharpe’s Longclaw because they have no idea how small the global range of Sharpe’s Longclaw is and they have no idea that the rough, tussocky grassland they own is globally unusual and globally threatened. How could they? No-one’s ever told them that Sharpe’s Longclaw is found nowhere else in the world, and very few of the local people here will ever get an opportunity to leave Kenya to see for themselves how different the rest of the world really is. It’s a quite sobering thought that I’ve been going to Kenya for almost twenty years and I live for this sort of information - and I only found out in June this year about the Kinangop Plateau and about the longclaw, and that was thanks to internet access, jet travel, and having the money to afford the leisure time to go see a Sharpe’s Longclaw for myself.

If you remember all that, then the fact that the wool-spinning workshop at Njabini exists at all is remarkable and it becomes a wondrous and very precious thing indeed.

‘Wondrous’ and precious’ it undoubtedly is, but luxurious and well-resourced it most certainly isn’t. Frankly I’m amazed that the organisers - which include our friends Luca and Dominic (who are ably assisted by a young man called Sam Bakari) - set the place up at all and were then able to persuade the small group of people that work here that there is a future in producing woollen goods. Judging by the tremendous pride the men and women I met have in the workshop, the organisers must be heroically inspirational because there is a spirit here of hope and optimism that you can’t fail to be affected by. It’s a wonderful, wonderful place and writing this I feel genuinely emotional and very proud to have been invited specially to see it.

Having said that, conditions are basic (there’s no electric lighting that I could see, the spinning-wheels are powered by treadles, and the weaving is all done by hand), and at the moment very little income is being generated. I realised after about thirty minutes that at least some of the people who’d come to meet me were under the impression that I was some sort of overseas marketing expert with a Blackberry full of contacts in the wool trade! There was a slight pause in the proceedings when I chose to explain (as I felt was only proper) that I was not, that I was a blogger, that I was a conservation-obsessed birder, that I cared deeply about Sharpe’s Longclaw, but that I knew next to nothing about marketing wool products. I hate to deflate anyone’s opinion of me, but on the other hand I also don’t think its right to imply that you can do more to help than you’re actually capable of doing…

As I talked with them though I realised that I probably do know more than I give myself credit for, and can probably do more for them than I first thought.

For instance it struck me almost immediately that there was no indication anywhere of the purpose of the workshop and how intimately it was involved in the conservation of Sharpe’s Longclaw. If ever an outlet had a Unique Selling Point (USP) this was it. You need a signboard I said, and I’m happy to supply photographs if you want them. A good suggestion apparently. You also need a label on each mats saying where and why it was made, something that would clearly explain the link between the product and the longclaw. Another good suggestion. Do you have any leaflets here at the workshop giving background information or contact details for people wanting to donate to you or to join the Friends Of Kinangop Plateau? Not yet, they said…

I can do all that I thought. And the things I can’t do? Well, I’m incredibly lucky because I have 10,000 Birds and 10,000 Birds has a whole army of wonderful readers. For example, the workshop needs new designs: I’m not a pattern designer, but I’ll bet that someone reading this either is or knows someone who is. They eventually want to market their products overseas: I don’t know how to do that, but - again - I’m willing to bet that someone reading this does. So, if you want to help please mail me, and let’s try to make a difference and change a few lives, because it’s easier than we all think - it really is. And in doing so we’ll be making a great contribution to helping prevent Sharpe’s Longclaw from heading ever-faster towards extinction. Which is quite a thought, isn’t it?

I said at the start of this post that something very touching happened at the workshop, but didn’t say what. Basically what happened was this. When I first went into the workshop a small group of women were finishing off a woollen rug which depicted what was clearly a Sharpe’s Longclaw in its natural grassland habitat. I’d already decided that I was going to buy something at the workshop, and that rug was just what I wanted. I asked Bakari how much it was, and was disappointed when he said that he was sorry but that it wasn’t for sale for any money. It was special, he said. It certainly is, I replied, but realised that he wasn’t going to change his mind so - a touch reluctantly - got on with looking at the other rugs and wall-hangings, and got down to the business in hand. I guess we spent about an hour all told talking and taking photographs, an hour which included the rather difficult conversation about marketing and the feeling that I was in some way not quite the person they’d hoped I was. We wrapped up with me stating how determined I was to help out, that - no - I wouldn’t forget my visit, and - yes - I would do whatever I could. The group nodded and smiled and looked relieved. One more group photo Bakari suggested? A semi-circle was formed and I was ushered into the middle. I turned to face the camera when I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked round to find Bakari holding out the rug showing the Sharpe’s Longclaw. You couldn’t buy it, he said, because it’s already yours: we made it for you when we were told you were coming. To say thankyou for all you’ve done.

Bakari (left) and yours truly (right) plus a whole bunch of new friends…

It’s hard to put into words what that gesture meant to me. I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to make the rug - I do know that it was time that could otherwise have been spent making something to be sold. For people I’d never met before to even think of something so special and so personal is almost overwhelming. I tell you, as the saying (sort of) goes, “They had me at ‘welcome’…”, but when that rug was passed to me…well, I was amongst friends and as my friends will tell you, once you’ve got me, you’ve got me for life!

* ‘Friends of Kinangop Plateau’ (FoKP) community group was founded in 1997, by a group of Kinangop residents concerned about their environment. The Group aims to conserve biodiversity and ensure wise use of the environment in Kinangop plateau and its surroundings especially the area’s unique highland grasslands. Membership has grown tremendously spreading across the plateau to four sub-branches in Murungaru, Engineeer, Njabini and Magumu/Nyakio.
The Group has a spinning and weaving workshop at Njabini in South Kinangop, a small honey refinery at Engineer Township in North Kinangop, as well as a Resource Centre and a new campsite and community bandas.
Kinangop is an Important Bird Area (IBA) and ‘Friends of Kinangop Plateau’ is a Site Support Group of Nature Kenya. ‘Friends of Kinangop Plateau (FoKP) will endeavour in partnership with others to dedicate efforts and resources towards conservation of biodiversity - elegant and graceful wildlife, scenic beauty and rich socio-cultural heritage, especially in the unique native tussock grasslands of the Kinangop Plateau.

Photos copyright Charlie Moores 2008