Kitengela Glass Factory

Kitengela is a neat place way out in the middle of nowhere. It is a community of artist, a place to be creative and I imagine learn lots of new skills. Abigail and I took a preschool field trip with her Nana (Lane's mom) and some other mommies to see these beautiful art creations first hand. Anyone can go to the store in town, but it is something else to make the hour drive through fields and rivers to the actual factory, where you can  see the artist AT WORK in their element. Here are some pictures from our field trip...

 This is the restroom or the "Loo" as the British have influenced the culture. Yes, the circle  in the middle of the floor is it.

Beautiful glasses, each one hand crafted and unique.

They incorporate a lot of recycling in the factory. Here each bin is for a different color glass.

This is a picture of inside a glass bead kiln. The Kenyan lady is using these long sticks to dip into a bowl inside the fire and lift out a glob of glass melted to a consistency of honey. Then she takes the glowing red hot glob of glass out of the kiln and rolls it on a flat table. A few taps on the stick and then she slides the glass bead off to cool. Each bead is made by hand like this.

Here is one of the other ladies is soldering little legs onto these cute glass insects.

We all  enjoyed our field trip to see the glass artists of Kitengela!

Finally, as a civil engineer, I can't forget to include a picture of the broken bridge to the glass factory. Thankfully, we were in a friend's car that could take us through the low river safely. Maybe I could trade a new bridge design for some new Kitengela glasses. :-) Oh, wait, but I am not licensed in Kenya. Oh, well, fun idea! Hopefully, they can get it fixed soon. During rainy season I imagine, the river crossing would be impassable.

By the way, one of the other gals from our outing, Naoma, wrote about Kitengela on her blog called "Lees On the Go". Click here to read her story and see her pictures of Kitengela. She has lots more to tell about the history and background of Kitengela. You'll enjoy her writing and photos.