Watamu Marine Association, Kenya: Managing Kenya's premier beach resort.
WATAMU NEWS
Here we'll bring you regular news and events from Watamu, keeping you informed of life on the beach!
Here we'll bring you regular news and events from Watamu, keeping you informed of life on the beach!
Bottle art! Steve Trott, our host, in the Watamu Marine Association's Eco World Recycling Centre, in front of a spectacular sculpture of a dolphin made from salvaged glass bottles
WMA is a community organisation coordinating several organisations involved in marine conservation, environment and sustainable tourism as well as running several projects on their own.
One is the Recycling Centre which we visited and were guided by the project-leader Mr Steve Trott.
He was very informative and devoted.
Beach hotels bring the centre all kinds of plastic, wine bottles and vegetable waste, the latter is being composted, the glass-bottles used to build walls.
Once week a group from the centre collets trash from the beaches, mainly flip-flops and plastic bottles.
The plastic is sorted for type and colour and then grinded to chips which are sold for recycling to a factory in Mombasa.
Especially flip-flops are used to produce many kinds of souvenirs sold in the hotel-shops.
The centre, launched on Sept. 24th 2015 has just finished a building where sorting etc. is done and is now planning extension for showroom, shop and office.
Steve also wants to show people how they can improve their livelihood and preserve the nature.
He has already installed a press for briquettes from garden waste, a kiln for making charcoal of coconut shells and a biogas generator.
As an extra bonus Steve brought us to a Snake Park driven by the Sita community group.
We finished with lunch at the Crabshack Dabaso restaurant, another community project.
You reach the restaurant after walking a winding boardwalk through mangrove at the fringe overlooking Mida creek.
Low water exposing expansive mudflats when we arrived and while having our fish lunch the water came in.
Our very able birder and photographer Doris noted eight spices.
It turned out that Steve also is a birder and while waiting for the food he gave us an extra lesson on Mida Creek, Watamu Marine Park and the Crabshack, which started as a platform for bird watching.
They are specialist on crabs which they catch and breed to size. I must mention the very tasty crab-samosas we were treated with.
For the full article please see Coastweek Culture Kenya Article by Lars Asker Friends of Fort Jesus
Also see: www.watamu.biz