Bombolulu Salad Server Set
This wonderful salad server and apron set is a unique cross border initiative supporting artisan families in Rwanda and disabled adults living in Kenya at the Bombolulu workshop.
The cotton apron is knee length with a wide front pocket and comes with adjustable straps. The salad servers are 14” and made from sustainably harvested wood sealed with natural oils. A perfect house warming gift. Story card included
The Story
At the foothills of Virunga Mountain in Rwanda, home to the endangered mountain gorilla, you will find Virunga Artisan Cooperative, a community of Rwandan refugees that fled the cities to make their home and livelihood in the rural areas of western Rwanda. Here, they are now working to support the gorilla conservation programs that have been introduced here. Men and women work together to create handmade gifts – including these salad servers, each with a tiny mountain gorilla perched on the end. Across the borders, in Kenya, disabled artisans from the Bombolulu Workshop, many of whom lost their livelihood after the violence erupted in Kenya in January 2008, are now rebuilding their lives. Today, through a revitalized economy they create these wonderful aprons designed with an array of stylized wild animals – giraffe, zebra, monkey, elephant – that you will find roaming the vast, arid plains of the Serengeti.
We first heard about the Bombolulu Workshop and Cultural Center, a program that supports 190 physically disabled and handicapped men and women, when violence erupted in Kenya earlier this year during their elections. Many lost their livelihood due to the diminshed tourist trade that they had come to rely on.
Across the border on the western edge of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo is Volcanoes National Park, home to 700 endangered mountain gorillas, the world’s largest wildlife habitat for these primates. Today, through the Virunga Artisan Craft Initiative, preservation efforts continue to support the work of the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (www.igcp.org) and bring together craft enterprise and the support of wild animal preservation in this unique partnership.
