Smelly skins make for fishy fashion in Kenya
Print Edition
Women sharpen their knives before setting about stinking piles of fish skins, flesh and bones that cover the floor at an unusual artisanal tannery in western Kenya.
Set up by a 39-year-old industrial chemist named Newton Owino, Alisom Products separates fish skins from the rest of the waste, then tans them to make a kind of leather used to manufacture handbags, wallets, shoes, hats and jackets.
Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, is a piscatorial place, a city where grilled tilapia and Nile perch are a ubiquitous delicacy, and from where cleaned fillets are exported around the region and the world. But Owino saw opportunity in the leftovers.
An estimated 150,000 tons of fish waste is produced every year and 80 percent of it is dumped. Owino and his dozen employees offer an alternative.
鈥淢y major business here is (to) turn fish skin into leather,鈥 he said, pacing the yard in gumboots and a polo shirt. 鈥(There are) plenty of raw materials we have around here.鈥
Fleets of bicycle transporters bring sacks of skins from fishermen, restaurants and factories to his little facility every day. There, workers strip the last pieces of rancid flesh from fly-covered skins and hang them to dry on wooden beams, like clothes on a washing line. The dried skins are stuffed inside a rusty hand-cranked drum and drenched in an acidic herbal solution, based on local fruits such as papaya or avocado, that tans them into fish leather.
鈥淲e now do what is called the drum turn,鈥 said Owino, who hopes to expand his business with a manufacturing school and training facility for prospective fish tanners.
What comes out is softer, darker and less smelly. The skins are then descaled, stretched and dried again, becoming workable leather.
The result is distinctive products, with scale patterns reminiscent of crocodile or snake skin, but at a fraction of the price. Shoes sell for 1,500 shillings (US$15) and jackets for 2,000 shillings.
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