An ignorant environmental artist

She seems even busy for an interview with Solomon, in her craft factory inside her room in Nankulabye – one of Kampala’s sprawling suburbs. She looks to be in love with the whole craft making activity. She makes her crafts from waste material like banana fibers, waste plastics and waste paper materials just because they are cheap and easy to get. Using waste material is good for the environment but for Namatovu Beatrice, that’s not why she uses them.

“I make necklaces from papers and plastics, table mats, door mats and balls from banana fibers,” says Namatovu a student of business at Makerere Business institute. She says, her business course will help equip her with the required marketing skills for her crafts. 

She gets some of the material like Banana fibers from as far as Mpigi district where her mother comes from. Namatovu gets the waste papers especially expired calendars for making necklaces from friends who work in offices and only buys threads for making table mats.

Namatovu who has helped train many young people to do crafts was inspired by her friend called Nora who even taught her to make crafts and Namatovu has never looked behind. She adds that her background in fine art during her secondary school days gave her an added advantage to learn faster and do better crafts. Besides, getting some income from the craft business, she enjoys what she does.

Although having quite a busy schedule, Namatovu has never failed to get time to do her crafts work, “I have my lecturers from morning to 1pm, I get time for my crafts work in the evening.”

Her efforts for making good quality crafts seems to be paying off because she never fails to get market, “many people buy my crafts like friends, well wishers, tourists and organizations and on a good days sale, I can earn roughly Uganda shillings 50,000 (which is good enough for any Ugandan student’s side activity).”

Namatovu has a number of places to sell her crafts including her home, her friend’s homes or work places and a crafts shop of Joy for Children Uganda – a non governmental organization based in Kampala, which also helps promote the talents of young people. The organization has a display board and visitors especially whites many times get attracted and buy them, says Namatovu.

She also exploits a number of opportunities such as exhibitions like a recent one at the Baptist Church in Kampala, which unfortunately never reaped good fruits because few products were sold. She blamed the poor sales to an abrupt and poor organization of the event and therefore, people were not prepared to buy.
The young and promising craft artist says the only problem with the crafts business is lack of a stable local market because Ugandans aren’t good consumers of craft items and most times, she depends on people from the western world, who rarely come making the craft business very unpredictable.  

As hardworking as always, Namatovu isn’t sleeping and has big plans for the future in line with her craft business, “I expect to buy a plot of land, build a house and start my own big craft shop and recruit more people to make crafts.”