Friday, June 11, 2010
I woke up at 5 am on Friday to meet Milka at the Mololine matatu station to go to Nairobi. We had an appointment to meet with the Jacaranda Workshop, a workshop that employs mentally handicapped graduates of the nearby Jacaranda Special School. Milka met Tina, the Operations Director of Jacaranda earlier this year at the European Union conference in Nairobi, and Tina had expressed an interest in helping to sell the Nina bags. We arrived with a large supply of both the recycled bags as well as a few leather bags and some jewelry that Milka and the women have started making as well.
Jacaranda has a serene campus in Nairobi, and we took a tour of the facilities, which included four buildings that serve as workshops and a gallery. Jacaranda focuses its efforts on creating jewelry, and the employees do everything from making the beads out of clay, glazing them, firing them in the kiln, designing brass ornaments and assembling full jewelry designs. The beads are beautiful and the designs are simple and interesting. After our tour, we met with Tina in her office in the main design studio. She explained that while Jacaranda sells some of its products directly from it’s gallery, most of the pieces are sold in the states through Ten Thousand Villages, one of the top US based fair trade organizations. (It is actually based in Pennsylvania). We discussed pricing options, and decided to leave ten recycled bags and one leather bag with Tina on consignment to see if she could sell them through her Ten Thousand Villages connection. She seemed confident that the bags would sell well, and we agreed on prices that would give her some flexibility to earn a small income for Jacaranda as well as a fair payment price to Nina.
I was interested to learn about the Ten Thousand Villages connection, as Ten Thousand Villages has been a very helpful resource for me before I came to Kenya when I was investigating possible US sales methods for Nina. Ten Thousand Villages was very helpful, but strict about the fact that they did not want to add any new artisan groups in Kenya. Tina explained that this is because they have a very difficult time getting the artisan groups to deliver their goods on time for their scheduled shipments in Kenya. While it is worth investigating further, perhaps working through Jacaranda now will serve as an introduction for Nina to become a partner in the future.
Milka and I had planned our next stop to the office of Cooperation for Fair Trade in Africa (COFTA). I had the address in my notebook, and we asked Tina if she could direct us. After some significant debate between Tina and a few of her staffers, we were given some directions that has the interesting ability to be bother elaborate and completely vague at the same time. Milka and I packed up the remaining bags into large sacks and set off to catch a matatu. We took two matatus and as Tina’s directions indicated, ended up in Yaya, an upscale shopping district of Nairobi (my interpretation). We started asking around to see if anyone could direct us to the COFTA office. We received lots of answers, none of them were the same. “Go back that way for two kilometers and then find such-and-such road and then go further…” As Milka and I stood with our heavy sacks full of bags, we decided to get a second opinion before walking several kilometers in any direction. We asked a security guard, who didn’t know. We asked a passerby who looked like a businessman, who told us to walk in the opposite direction from the first man, and then ask someone else for directions somewhere along that way. This process repeated and we walked in every direction without finding the office. We called Tina and still couldn’t find it. We called COFTA, and there was no answer. We finally reached a street where Milka realized she could easily catch a matatu to her brother’s home, where she was staying, so we decided we would get better directions and try again another day.
While it might have been a disappointing end to our day, Milka and I agreed that although we hadn’t made it to COFTA, we had a better understanding of what steps we need to take to get Nina connected with a fair trade organization. We are getting on the radar of one of the most recognizable organizations (Ten Thousand Villages) and have a great resource in Tina and Jacaranda Workshop. We can take some time to do more work and set up the fair trade status, so that we are ready for any opportunity.
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