Against all odds to keep tradition alive

Seventy-year-old granny struggles to ensure traditional Nubian handicraft known as kuta (food cover) and tabaga are not extinct  

By Iddi Musyemi

Mwacha mila ni mtumwa, a Swahili saying states. Mama Habiba has worked all her life to ensure that a set of important cultural item central to the Nubian community is not discarded.

For over 50 years, the 70 years old mother, and grandmother, has weaved traditional Nubian handicrafts known as kuta and tabaga. These are products made from intricately woven reeds with colour patterns.

Kuta is a cone-like item used for covering food in the as it is served. Tabaga is a flat round tray used for winnowing rice or beans to remove chaff.

Every Nubian housewife must have kuta in here house, mama Habiba says.

“You cannot serve food without covering it with kuta,” she says emphasising the importance of the cultural item. “It is disrespectful to serve food without it.”

She has made these items since she turned 18 years, the age when girls were encouraged to take the art seriously.

Back in 1940 when she was growing up girls were never sent to school. Their fathers did not entertain the idea of sending children to the only missionary schools that existed at the time because they believed it was against the teachings of Islam, a religion they were loyal to.

“When we were not out playing, our mothers taught us housekeeping and cooking at home,” Mama Habiba takes me down the memory lane. Boys went to either Madrassa schools or went to British colonial military schools for vocational training.

During their games as girls they would gather reeds thrown away by their mothers and train their hands on weaving using thorns as needles.

Nowadays she is the only one making this important handicraft around her home in Kibera. Most of the women of her generation are dead and the tradition is slowly disappearing as if it is also being buried.

“Young girls are not interested in this art any more,” says the elderly woman. Although filled with lively laughter, her voice is hollow with age and tiredness. She jokingly says that the girls of this generation do not like difficult jobs.

Making kuta is a long process. Mama Habiba buys the amount of reeds she needs from Ngong where they are grown. She also has to buy the dyeing paint from industrial area because it is not sold in retail.

“You wake up at dawn to boil the reeds before you even think about putting in colours,” reveals mama Habiba. “It is a process that takes at least two days to have the reeds readied.”

Even though she never went to school experience has been the best teacher for the illiterate woman. “I start with yellow during the colour adding process and I know which colours to mix to get a different one.” There is no wastage of water during the process as everything is done in the same pot.

The reeds are then dried after which they are ready for weaving. It is at this point when the weaver’s patience is tried as one has to sit down for long hours with eyes fixed on the work at hand alone.

“You will not do anything else for the whole day.”  This is particularly so for the kuta which by shape and colour designs poses a challenge.  “If it’s an urgent order then you will be busy for at least two weeks.”

But this is a business that pays for itself. A set of these items can go for as much as Sh3000. The holy month of Ramadhan is one time when mama Habiba will have a good business.

At Nubian weddings the family of the prospective husband must send sets of kuta and tabaga laden with gifts of flour, lessos, blankets or traditional dresses to the family of the prospective wife.

Other people use kuta for home decorations especially tourists who buy them as souvenirs to their friends and families.

In the old days, girls would make kutas themselves but the art has left the new generation who have to buy the handicrafts.

“So I can sell sets of kuta worth Sh6000 to Sh18000 during such weddings,” says Mama Habiba adding jovially that the cost of nikkah (Muslim wedding) includes a visit to her home for the important items

This strenuous art is becoming hard and harder for Mama Habiba to continue with. She is losing her eye sight to her diabetic condition. While she still expects orders and weaves more to sell during the forthcoming Ramadhan, it is evident that she will have to stop making soon.

Some of her children have learnt weaving from her although they do not practice it as much as she would like. She believes she has prepared them to take on the tradition when the inevitable thing comes.

Tradition is something that endures even when one generation vanishes from this world to the afterlife. Will this culture survive when Mama Habiba dies?

“God will bring other people who can continue the tradition,” she prophesises. 
Source-The New Dawn.