Step by Step

James Odera, manager of Eastleigh Pottery,

tests the consistency of the new clay body recipe

for making ceramic beads.

The ceramic bead and jewelry production project is moving forward step by step. Today we completed the first batch of our new clay body after nearly six months of research and planning. The pottery staff gathered together at 7:00 am to begin the long days work of mixing, sieving, and preparing the clay for use.

Some of the pottery staff pouring the clay into mess bags. Rather than waiting several weeks for the clay to thicken in the sun, the pottery team are experimenting with hanging the clay in heavy cloth bags where it will shed water much faster than sitting in the usual drying boxes.

A bag of freshly made clay hanging to dry next to a pile of 7 tons of raw clay that our team purchased from Nyeri, near Mt. Kenya.

The project's objective is to provide skills training and employment to vulnerable Somali women in Eastleigh. We hope to begin the training phase of the project with ten women by the middle of March. Until then, we will be taking training ourselves with the pottery staff from a local ceramic beading expert. We are excited to see this enterprise reduce the number of Somali women living in extreme poverty.