Kate Grillo:
      Samburu Weavers

These Samburu women are basket weavers from the remote area of Ngurunit in northern Kenya. The Samburu and other pastoralist groups in Ngurunit rely on domestic animals for their survival.  Several hundred women have formed the Ngurunit Basket Weavers cooperative to help reduce poverty through marketing and sales of pastoralist crafts. To this end they have revived a nearly-lost Rendille basket weaving tradition. Rendille baskets were in the past used for milking camels, but new designs are now being created by the weavers for the tourist art market.

For more information contact Laura Lemunyete at lemunyete@wananchi.com.

These photographs were taken by graduate student Kate Grillo during her doctoral fieldwork in Kenya. She is conducting ethnoarchaeological research on Samburu containers, examining in particular how a complex system of pottery production and use developed within a highly mobile pastoralist society. (Summer 2009)