A Little Blacksmithing, a Lot of Culture

There are kids everywhere.  All I have to do is
"high five" and we are instant friends

A couple weekends ago we went to the Jua Kali blacksmith market deep in the heart of the industrial district of the city.  Jua Kali literally means "under the hot sun" and it refers to producing goods in basic conditions.  These were about as basic a set of conditions as you can imagine.   You are going to have to imagine it, because for reasons I will explain later we did not take any photos.

They seem to love getting their photos taken,
then I have to show it to them, then repeat!

There was quite a bit of interest by our cab driver as to how it came to be that we were going to this place.  All I really knew was that this was a market and they had blacksmiths here.  It turns out John knew a lot more about what we were getting into than we did.  


We drove into a pretty densely populated shanty town and as John was parking the cab we were immediately greeted by two men who wanted 10,000 shillings from us, about 120 dollars, to walk around.  I only learned this later as the initial negotiations were all in Swahili.  John  insisted back to them that we be taken to the office to have this be paid formally. Suddenly everyone stopped talking and we were led through a labyrinth of twisty passages surrounded by metalworking stalls, absolutely packed with people doing hard manual labor with the most basic tools.  Everyone was stopping their work to look at us as we went by.  Eventually we reached a real concrete building, went through some narrow corridors and into a small room, maybe 6x12, with a small table.  It was quickly crowded with men speaking Swahili and I still had no idea why we were here. It turned out the first guys were still hoping to get some of the 120 dollars they asked for initially.  The new men were the officers of the region and it slowly becomes apparent that this is a immensely large coop of some kind, a business that has been created to market these goods.  Next came long conversations discussing how much money would be extracted from us to look around.  Some English, some Swahili.  I was trying as hard as I could to understand it as it went.  The price went down pretty rapidly and the biggest remaining issue was the strongly held belief that if we were to take pictures we would need to pay an extra 3000 shillings, about 36 dollars.   We quickly decided that photos did not need to be part of this trip, much to the regret of the close community around us.  After a particularly long Swahili exchange the 2 who initially met us with the 120 dollar request took their leave. It turned out that the officers had to make it known that we were only paying 1000 shillings instead of 10,000 shillings so there would not be a big push to share the proceeds from us.

After that was done we had a fantastic tour.  This was the most heavily populated industrial area I have ever seen.  Mostly men, but some women too were working incredibly hard.  Other women were preparing food at random places right in the middle of the workshops.  Lots of Children about as well.  Everywhere it was terribly loud with the beating of cold metal and the hearing loss from this place must be staggering.  Much of the work was cold shaping of 16 to 20 gauge materials, large boxes, cooking pots of many shapes, buckets.  All cold worked with folded seams.  The few bending breaks present were described as recent technology innovations.  The most common anvil for the work was a 10 foot piece of railroad rail, tilted up an angle, the butt end used for the work and the middle as a seat.


What hot work that was done was using techniques I am very familiar with and go back hundreds of years.  A striker with big muscles was using a sledge hammer to hit hot 1.5 inch rebar on a 150 lb London pattern anvil to make a 6 foot crowbar.  The "forge" was a shallow pit in the ground with charcoal for fuel, no ventilation required.  The blower was powered by a wheel the size and configuration of a bicycle tire, A man was assigned to manually crank the tire.  In one shop a dozen or more men were forming wok sized bowls with heavy, long headed hammers cold.  The noise was overwhelming. 

If we go back I will get some photos.  But it was not a really welcoming place to start with.  I will be working on the negotiating skills and see how it goes.
.

 After leaving the market we went to the National Museum, said to be the finest Museum in the country.  It was quite interesting with displays on the big game, natural history, and cultural history of the country.  One room was filled with cases upon cases of stuffed birds and that is where I got a photo of this cute little guy.

.

Giant map of Kenya made from stained glass in the Gardens

Close up of the faces in the glass.  Very nice art.