the wooden soldiers of east africa

In a dusty corner of an African antique shop he stands to attention. He is neatly dressed in his colourful colonial uniform. With a short sleeved safari suit, brown boots and a fez on his head, large ears and squinting eyes he is the embodiment of a tourist souvenir.

Amazingly the history of these carved askaris can be traced back to one man. Mutisya Munge was a Kamba tribesman from the Wamunya location of Machakos in Kenya.  He was a skilled carver but continued his training with the Makonde tribe, great traditional carvers, from an area on the Mozambique-Tanzania border. Born around 1850, Mutisya Munge joined the army in 1914 where he served with the Carrier Corps in Tanganyika. At about this time he started creating stylised carvings of Askaris and African people in traditional dress with the sole idea of selling them to Europeans as souvenirs to take away from East Africa.

Upon his return to his village after the war, he continued with the carvings and had to recruit his neighbours and family members to keep up with the demand of a growing tourist industry. By the time of his death in 1927, his and other carving copies were a regular sight at any market frequented by tourists. At this stage they were even being exported to other east African countries.

Today the market he singlehandedly created in Kenya brings in over 200 million Kenyan shillings in foreign currencies annually. It creates employment for about 60’000 people who are entirely dependent on carving sales for family income, considering family structures this could mean that up to a quarter of a million people are partially or whole dependant on the carving industry.

As occasionally happens, something won means something lost. And in this case the trees. The carving industry has desecrated previously dense tree populations. Having used the trees, and even the roots, carvers in some areas are travelling up to 200km to find trees suitable for carving. The knock on effect is worth acknowledging as well, no trees , no animals, no birds, no insects for pollination of food crops.

Programs to address the issue and protect threatened trees are in operation across eastern Africa. In conjunction with UNESCO, Kew Gardens, WWF and the Royal Botanic Gardens, a program called People and Plants is in action to support “creative solutions for the sustainable use and conservation of plants”. With the support of governments and communities, the carving can still be done in controlled environments with sustainable resources.  Thanks to the efforts of these conscientious organisations, tomorrow’s tourists will still be able to take home their wooden curios, but with a clear mind.