On a bright January morning, we find 65-year-old Margaret Waithera in her home in Ndutumi village, Kahuro subcounty in Murang’a county.
Waithera has been doing pottery for decades since she was a young girl and it has provided her with a livelihood, enabling her to educate her children.
With her children all grown, Waithera spends most of her days vending her earthen wares in markets.
She makes cooking pots and other ceramics, energy-saving Jikos that she said use fuel more efficiently and emit less smoke, leading to reduced eyes and chest infections for users.
As more Kenyans embrace indigenous foods and practices, Waithera said buyers have been coming from far and wide to buy her cooking pots.
“Weeks ago, a buyer gave me an order to make 350 pots. She recently came and took them all. That gave me some money for Christmas,” she said.
But it has not been all rosy, she admitted saying that at times, she goes for weeks without a single sale.
As a little girl, Waithera, then in a group of other young girls, would learn to make pots from older women.
The art, however, grew on her, as she started enjoying it as the years went by and after a while, it became her main source of income.
“When I started learning pottery in 1979, I did not know that I’d grow to like it. I did it because I did not have a choice. The other girls who were in my group eventually moved on to other things,” she said.
Waithera sources her clay from Gakoigo area in the neighbouring Maragua subcounty and purchases a truckload that takes her some time to deplete.
Being the only potter in the area, Waithera explained that traditional pottery is a difficult art that discourages many people from engaging in it.
She called on more Kenyans to embrace the use of earthen-ware in their kitchens saying they are a healthier means of cooking and serving food.
Waithera said pots can be used to make all kinds of meals and that it makes beef softer and tastier as it cooks slower.
She said currently, many people are oblivious of their benefits and prefer to cook their meals using sufurias.
Young people, especially those who did not find pots in their homes while growing up have a hard time understanding their use in the kitchen and would rather use them aesthetically, she noted.
“If you slow-cook meat using a pot, it comes out soft and tender even if you don’t use cooking oil. Local women use them to make meals and when they wear out and break, they come looking for new ones.”
“When you clean it, no residue is produced unlike with sufurias. This is the healthiest means of cooking but many people don’t know”.
Waithera said the government should incentivise such traditional practices to preserve them and pass them on to future generations.
Her main challenge, she pointed out, is the scarcity
of firewood to dry the earthen ware in the kiln and the
slow sales she has been experiencing lately
