Kamba - Arts and Crafts

The Kamba are nowadays most famous for their African blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon) carvings, although this is actually a very recent art form: the Kamba were introduced to the techniques of wood sculpture by Mutisya Munge, who had served in the colonial Carrier Corps in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) during World War I. There, he came into contact with Zaramo carvers, who had themselves been influenced by the Makonde (see my pages on Makonde figurative carvings and Makonde masks). Munge collected Zaramo models, and on returning to Kenya took up carving as a full-time occupation.
   Following Munge's efforts, a booming trade in carvings developed at the small town of Wamunyu, along the road from Machakos to Kitui, as evidenced nowadays by a welter of self-help and co-operative carvers' societies and their shops. Here, some 3000 people - many of them children - eke out a living with wood carving. Many more carvers are located throughout Ukambani, and elsewhere in Kenya (especially the coast), where they supply the tourist market.

Anyone who has been to Kenya will undoubtedly have come across the miniature carvings of elephants and antelopes, lions, reptiles and birds, as well as the necklace pendants embellished by coiled wire, which are sold in hotel gift shops and tourist stalls throughout the country. No matter where you see or buy them, chances are that they will have been made by the Kamba - even the life-size Maasai warriors, which I once saw a German couple carting through Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on the way to the check-in desk.
   These animal and human figures are far from traditional, but most the remunerative for the carvers. Spoons and ladles are an exception, as are the three-legged stools, often beautifully inlaid with wire coils.