So Joey read about this place in Scholastic News with his 3rd graders and wanted to go there while we were in Nairobi. It was sooo cool!
They collect discarded & broken flip flops from the beaches of Mobassa and from the Kibera Slum (where we did our outreach) and turn them into pieces of art!!! Not only does the project clean up & declutter the environment, but it generates employment for local Kenyans.
We took the free 15 min tour....
Collection bins:
First they have to wash & sterilize each flip flop:
Then they sort them according to size (for which sculpture that size can make):
For the largest sculptures they use foam for the inside and then cover the outside with flip flops:
They have to assemble the various parts with screws:
For smaller animals, they glue layers of flips flops together and then carve the shape:
Each piece is completely unique (in the combination of colors and because it's hand carved) but the end product looks something like this:
Then they are sanded down to smoothe the rough edges and washed a final time (to get all the dust off):
The tour ends at the gift shop of course:
Joey recognized the owner from the Scholastic News and asked for a photo:
No comments:
Post a Comment