MyWeku

This series is a voyeuristic compilation exploring innovation and creativity at the ‘margins’ of the contemporary African society. Africa has long been known as the continent of 4Ds- Disease, Despair, Destruction and Death. Nevertheless, Myweku set out to explore how ordinary individuals in the backstreets of East Africa are solving modern problems by means of technology, art, and culture.

In Nairobi, we hang out with individuals and groups from all spectrum of the society; artisans, artists, architects, students, hawkers- the one thing they surely have in common is an empowerment mindset. They were engaged in proactive, sustainable projects to enhance the quality of African living. Some of these projects are ingenious in their simplicity, like Kamau’s ‘mobile lamps’, while others rehash old philosophical problems; the individual responsibility vis-à-vis that of the collective- ‘Adopt-a-tree’. All in all, the lack of NGOise in their vocabulary is a welcome reprieve. Talk of donors has been replaced by that of investors, assistance by contribution-the question on their lips is not what society can do for them, but what more they can do for society.

Myweku uses ‘margin’ here to refer to those individuals or groups away from the main stream of policy or industry, in this sense, it should not be seen as a peripheral place, a place of defeat and deficiency, but rather as a place of resistance, possibility and creativity where new and critical ideas are born….it is a location which nourishes the society’s faculty to transform and imagine alternative new worlds.

Finally, this series is a study of how society’s ‘marginality’ creates the possibility of deriving new ways of living. How seemingly simple folk are learning to see everything with new eyes.

Kenya Series: Part 1 – Jua Kali

Kenya Series: Part 2 – Goggled and Capped by Cyrus Kabiru

Kenya Series: Part 3 – Adopt-a-tree