As forests in East Africa disappear, so does an industry of artisans

LUNGA LUNGA/HOROHORO BORDER POINT, Kenya/Tanzania – When Festus Tola first arrived in Lunga Lunga on the Kenyan side of the border with Tanzania, he encountered thousands of artisans just like him. It was an entire village of around 2,000 woodcarvers, who fashioned wooden animal statues and masks to be sold to a growing number of tourists in the region.

But that was 15 years ago. Tola, 50, is now one of no more than 40 carvers still remaining on the outskirts of Lunga Lunga. And he plans on leaving in the next month to look for other work back home in Machakos, Kenya, or nearby Mombasa.

“The woodcarving industry here is disappearing,” he said. “Maybe if you come back in a few years it won’t exist.”

Due to a dramatic decline in forests in both countries and tourism in Kenya, along with stricter enforcement of illegal logging and tax laws, woodcarving along the Tanzanian/Kenyan border is in dire straits. Hundreds have left for greener pastures in the last few months, says Martin Mutunga. Mutunga is chairman of the Lunga Lunga Handicraft Cooperative Society, the umbrella organization for woodcarvers in the area. Barring a massive increase in tourism, Mutunga expects the exodus to continue.

Woodcarvers in Lunga Lunga depend exclusively on wood imported from Tanzania. But Tanzanian forests have been heavily logged in the last few decades. The country lost almost 18 percent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2015, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s latest Global Forests Resources Assessment. If sparser woodlands are taken into account, that number jumps to a 27 percent reduction over the same 25-year period.

Tanzania’s government has started cracking down on illegal logging in the country and increased the enforcement of taxes for wood imports at the border – which in turn has meant less available wood for woodcarvers.

Edwin Misachi, a forest officer with the Kenya Forest Service, says Lunga Lunga woodcarvers used to avoid paying taxes altogether by having wood imported on bicycles that could evade the main border point.

According to Jackson Bambo, a forest officer at the Kenya Forests Working Group, the amount of wood being used by carvers wasn’t destroying forests on its own, but it did result in big losses to government coffers. A study conducted by the group and led by Bambo found the Tanzanian government lost approximately $160,000 a year from unpaid taxes and royalties on logs being exported to Kenya.

Tighter restrictions

With the construction of a modern new border point earlier this year, the two governments decided to move the woodcarvers’ operation closer to town so that they would be easier to monitor and tax. The carvers are currently based less than a mile from the official border crossing. Taxes and royalties are now an unavoidable reality of the woodcarving business and an additional burden on the industry. In the last five years the price of a four-by-one foot log has tripled, says Mutunga, chairman of the woodcarvers’ cooperative.

Since being ushered into the formal economy, the woodcarvers’ work pace has also changed dramatically. Carver Tola says he’s under more pressure to produce carvings. Indeed, he works at a blazing speed, creating a lion mask in under five minutes with little more than a saw and chisel. With profit margins down due to the higher cost of wood, the carvers also have to work longer hours.

“I’m always physically exhausted,” he said.

Tola and the other carvers work and live in an encampment just outside town. The small community is made up of some twenty shelters fashioned from sticks, brush, and tarps. Groups of mostly men sit under the shelters and carve from dawn to dusk. One carver sells a variety of basic amenities like corn flour inside his home. Others tend to stoves cooking tea and ugali, a porridge- or dough-like food that’s a staple food in the two countries.

Inside one of the shelters, Boniface Muthusi crafts elaborate masks from mahogany wood. Muthusi, 32, arrived here eight years ago when business was booming and says he made $14 a day. These days, Muthusi says he makes $4 a day if he’s lucky. Like Tola, his days as a woodcarver are likely numbered. Muthusi has a girlfriend and wants to get married, but can’t afford it. So he plans to go back home to Machakos, Kenya and look for other work.

“Even without rain, farming is more profitable than this,” he says without breaking focus on carving.

Looking for other options

One major reason that farming could be more profitable than woodcarving is that demand for the carvings has plummeted in the last decade. Significant numbers of tourists, the main customers for carvings like the ones manufactured in Lunga Lunga, have avoided Kenya due to concerns over security. Post-election violence in 2007-08 and terrorist attacks from the extremist group Al Shabaab have also set the stage for a dramatic decline in outside visitors. Between 2007 and 2014, foreign arrivals declined 25 percent, according to data from the World Bank.

Patrick Musyoka, former manager of the Lunga Lunga woodcarvers’ cooperative, transports every carving the group makes from Lunga Lunga to the port city Mombasa about 60 miles away. In Mombasa, the carvings are finished and then sent to tourist sites across the region or exported to Europe, Asia and North America.

Musyoka has been driving a truck packed with carvings from Lunga Lunga to Mombasa for the last 20 years. Just a decade ago, he would make the trip with a full truck every week. Now he says he’ll go once every three months. Even with the decrease in supply, the goods can stay in a warehouse in Mombasa for up to a month before being bought. It’s not surprising when he says he’s looking for other work.

“The trend for the industry looks terrible,” he said.

Widespread impact

The decline of woodcarving in Lunga Lunga is being felt across the two countries. On the Tanzanian side of Namanga, a border town 300 miles northwest of Lunga Lunga, shop owner Salome Mbuthi had to let go a dozen employees from her business selling woodcarvings to tourists. She says she gets a significant portion of her carvings from Lunga Lunga.

Since 2007, Mbuthi says business has all but dissipated from 1,000 customers a day down to 50. She’s worried that there will be violence in the upcoming presidential elections in Kenya, which are set for mid-2017. She predicts that it would be a “disaster” for the tourism industry.

Despite the doom and gloom predictions, it’s very unlikely the industry will completely disappear, says Misachi of the Kenya Forest Service. While numbers of tourists have dropped in the last decade, there were still more than 1.2 million foreign arrivals in 2014, according to the World Bank. But changes to the industry are needed, says Misachi. First and foremost, the woodcarvers need access to a sustainable supply of wood.

When asked what the Kenya Forest Service and government are doing to help the woodcarvers stay in business after clamping down on their unregulated supply, Misachi points to a tree farm next to the woodcarvers’ cooperative.

“We are helping them maintain their own supply,” he said.

However, the farm is no more than a few acres and the trees are a softwood species, which are not as valuable to the carvers as hardwood species.

“The farm has made a minimal impact on our business,” Wilson Kioko, manager of the Lunga Lunga Handicraft Cooperative Society, said.

Whether or not the woodcarving industry can survive its current troubles or not, carver Tola still plans to walk away after twenty years in the business. He doesn’t think he’ll miss working here given the stress and long hours. But he does think he’ll carve now and again, but only “as a gift to my grandchildren.”

Banner image: A woodcarver makes a carving of a rhinoceros on the outskirts of Lunga Lunga, a town on the border between Kenya and Tanzania. Photo by Nathan Siegel for Mongabay

Nathan Siegel is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Nairobi, Kenya. You can find him on Twitter at @nathansieg