Kenya 2018: the Nairobi Textile Market
We've been in Kenya for a bit over a week now, visiting our daughter Ella and her family; Liam our grandson and her husband Kenfield.
Today Ella and I made a trip to downtown Nairobi to the Textile Market. We had as our agent, so to speak, Moses who acts as sort a broker between clients and seamstresses. Available in this more than bustling market area of the inner city are streets offering drapery in one store, zippers, buttons and the like in another, traditional Kenyan prints beside another with rolls of denim and canvas stacked in aisles so narrow one must turn sideways to pass another.
Overhead are more rolls blocking the spare florescent tube lighting. I nervously noted the simple nuts and bolts holding all this weight above our heads imagining a suffocating under the bolts...did I ever say that I not only drive defensively but sort of live defensively?
But our true destination, the luscious Ghanian Wax cloth prints, was through an unmarked doorway, up a long flight of stairs into another poorly lit room about 15 by 24 feet in size where the wax cloth, cut in six yard pieces were folded and stacked four, five even six feet high. On top of these stacks sat women, about every two feet, trying to draw attention to their individual textile delights. Delights for a textile lover as I am.
I began sewing at the age of twelve and sewed most of my own clothes until I was about nineteen - due mostly to the fact that I've always been taller than most women and couldn't find pants or clothes long enough. My first job at the age of sixteen was at SoFro Fabrics and I loved helping customers find the perfect fabric for their pattern, gleaned from encyclopedia of textiles in my head.
This fabric store had quite different sales techniques: "Sista...come...look at mine...Yellow? Here is yellow, you like, how about this. Lady here is another, what about this one. This is very nice, what about this one. You like, here is another. Blue? No thank you? Do you have this? Here madam, sista' look here, I have this.... So it goes with all of four or five women above us on there stacks putting the stimulating colored prints in our faces, competing with each other for our sales. I went there, having been there once before years ago, knowing how over stimulating it could be, determined to be decisive and go with my gut.
Phew it was wild and crazy but I came away with some prints that are so AFRICA and lovely, a real treat for the eye.
We returned to Ella's home with Moses where we determined thje sizes of pillows and colors to use for cording. We discussed the options over a quick lunch and he intends to return a finished pillow or two in the next couple days.
Time to take a nap!
Today Ella and I made a trip to downtown Nairobi to the Textile Market. We had as our agent, so to speak, Moses who acts as sort a broker between clients and seamstresses. Available in this more than bustling market area of the inner city are streets offering drapery in one store, zippers, buttons and the like in another, traditional Kenyan prints beside another with rolls of denim and canvas stacked in aisles so narrow one must turn sideways to pass another.
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| Turquise or Black Canvas? |
But our true destination, the luscious Ghanian Wax cloth prints, was through an unmarked doorway, up a long flight of stairs into another poorly lit room about 15 by 24 feet in size where the wax cloth, cut in six yard pieces were folded and stacked four, five even six feet high. On top of these stacks sat women, about every two feet, trying to draw attention to their individual textile delights. Delights for a textile lover as I am.
I began sewing at the age of twelve and sewed most of my own clothes until I was about nineteen - due mostly to the fact that I've always been taller than most women and couldn't find pants or clothes long enough. My first job at the age of sixteen was at SoFro Fabrics and I loved helping customers find the perfect fabric for their pattern, gleaned from encyclopedia of textiles in my head.
This fabric store had quite different sales techniques: "Sista...come...look at mine...Yellow? Here is yellow, you like, how about this. Lady here is another, what about this one. This is very nice, what about this one. You like, here is another. Blue? No thank you? Do you have this? Here madam, sista' look here, I have this.... So it goes with all of four or five women above us on there stacks putting the stimulating colored prints in our faces, competing with each other for our sales. I went there, having been there once before years ago, knowing how over stimulating it could be, determined to be decisive and go with my gut.
 |
| Ghanian Wax Cloth |
We returned to Ella's home with Moses where we determined thje sizes of pillows and colors to use for cording. We discussed the options over a quick lunch and he intends to return a finished pillow or two in the next couple days.
Time to take a nap!
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