From feet to fleet: a conversation with Ali Skanda on transforming mobile objects through a circular economy in Kenya

Abstract

ABSTRACT The inaugural launch of the Flipflopi, a boat made of 30,000 pieces of discarded rubber footwear and 7 tons of plastic debris from Lamu Island Kenya across the Indian Ocean attracted press releases from major organizations including the United Nations Environment, CNN International, Reuters and the Daily Mail, Australia. The brainchild of co-founders Ben Morison, Dipesh Pabari, BURN manufacturing head of product Leonard Schürg and Ali Skanda, a traditional Kenya boatbuilder, the boat foreshadows the overwhelming deluge of waste plaguing beaches and the marine environment in Africa. Such transformations involve indigenous knowledge, new mobilities and new materials in unique cultural fusions of the past and present. Interestingly, as this conversation draws out, Kenyan indigenous knowledge in modern waste management interfaces with the long histories of craft passed through families and communities. These hybrid solutions are paramount for the future of societies wherein citizens have largely forgotten how to make objects, but face community pressures to tackle waste, and even convert it useful items. An interview with Ali Skanda at his boat-building premises abridged this paper as a product of the conversation and further theoretical discussions. The key themes the interview questions gravitate towards the utility of waste and indigenous knowledge mobilities that provides waste management the application of craft traditions to new materials that they render more sustainable and meaningful.