On my recent return from Tanzania I gave Zbyszek, an artist and my friend, a notebook with a cover made from elephant dung. He really liked it. More so, when I told him about the story behind its production.

 ‘Hunchback’

Josphat was at first easily irritable and most of the time in a gloomy mood. Life wasn’t easy – his parents died when he was still young and he had been profoundly deaf from birth. Due to a curvature of his spine, people were calling him ‘hunchback’ but the worst neglect he suffered was from the extended family with whom he lived – his disability was making him useless in the eyes of his community.

Today Josphat’s nickname is ‘he is able’ and the highly skilled paper-maker’s self-confidence skyrocketed – after a few months of training at Neema Crafts Centre, Iringa, Tanzania, started by a British woman Susie Hart, a disabled herself, not only does he sustain himself but also his extended family.

Why @ Neema they give a sh*t

It started off small. Susie Hart, who was working for the Diocese of Ruaha, began with establishing in October 2003 a Hand Made Paper Workshop, to raise disability awareness in Tanzania (to read more about the problem of disability which touches 10% of Tanzanian population go to Iwona’s posts). At the workshop she taught Josphat and two other deaf men how to produce paper from natural and recycled materials, such as pineapple leaves, or maize husks and started to sell them.

As the tourists and locals interest grew, Susie decided to establish a Beading Project, Shop and Weaving Workshop. At the moment the Neema Craft Centre employs over 60  Tanzanians (learn here about other success stories), the vast majority of them being disabled or deaf.

Manure at its best

All the materials used are environmentally friendly – they are sourced locally  and at literally no cost! The leaves are cooked for a whole day to soften them, before being pulped in a large blender to be later on mixed 50-50 with recycled (soaked, torn and pulped) waste paper and water. The pulp is then stretched across wooden frames with fine mesh and then scooped in water. The frames are then lifted up in order for the water to fall through the mesh and the maize fibres to form a sheet on top. The sheets are dry the following day ready to be made into cards, albums or picture frames.

In order to acquire pulp from the maize, initially leaves with waste paper were mixed in a standard kitchen blender but now a proper industrial sized machine is used. However, in order to avoid the hassle the Neema Centre soon came up with an idea of taking advantage of… elephant dung. Elephants eat leaves from the trees and then ‘process’ them themselves. It is enough to find a dung left by an elephant normally at night in a pool (Iringa is localized on the edge of the Ruaha National Park), cook it with a small amount of alkaline, which softens and sterilizes it, and… the pulp for beautiful paper is ready!

The centre therefore uses low technology, free waste materials and due to loads of different stages of the very process, enables a mixed ability group to take part in at least a part of the process.

The workers have already established many other skills, such as picture frames, beads, pillows, flip flops, cards, table lamps  etc. You can get a lovely album with an elephant dung cover for $8, a small double maize frame will cost you $8.30, lovely earrings are valued at $4.90 whereas for a  patchwork colourful bag you will need to pay $11.30. The crafts are relatively cheap compared to what you can get for this money in Tanzania: the Centre acknowledges that £5 pays for a "month's weekly literacy classes for 10 people" and "£10 pays for a malaria treatment for 3 people".

While in Iringa I bought a few of these and spent a lovely afternoon in the Neema Crafts Gallery Café. I bet you won’t believe me that I had there one of the best coffees I have ever drunk in East Africa, but to give you some proof let me just say that the restaurant was voted by the Telegraph magazine readers the ‘Best British Restaurant in the World’)

This year the Centre hosted BBC crew and National Geographic team, it also aims at running the ‘First Disabled Run Guesthouse in the world’.

And if you only think that it started with producing covers from elephant dung...

Susie, sky is the limit.

Credits: Photos: Neema Crafts Centre, stories adapted from Neema Craft Centre website