The first shipment of baskets, for what was to become the Nzuri Basket company, arrived on Cortes Island in August, 2020.
Jenny Hartwick didn’t set out to found a company. The baskets she initially brought home, from a trip to Kenya, were gifts for friends and family.
“It wasn’t until we were back in Canada and I’d given away all of my baskets. Everybody was saying to me, ‘Wow, these are amazing can you get more of them?’ I thought, ‘Gee, maybe I can look into that’ and so that’s kind of, that was the start of where it came from,” explained Hartwick.
The first shipment was meant to be a one time event, but sold out within a week.
“So, I thought, ‘Okay, well, I’ll just bring in one more order and we’ll see what happens.’ It’s snowballed now to the point that they’re being wholesaled to some other shops as far away as Winnipeg and Ontario. We’re on order six, which is actually just with the shipping company right now. On average, I’m shipping about 400 to 500 baskets at a time.”
Her story is more complex than that.
Jenny’s mother-in-law, Heather Hartwick, had been going to Kenya for the past three decades. This had been initially been as part of semester abroad program. After that ended, she and her husband operated an ecotourism business.
This was closing down in March 2020. Jenny wanted her kids to see Nana’s ‘other life’ before it came to an end. So she and her family were in a contingent of 23 Cortes Island residents that visited Kenya.
That was also when COVID 19 reached Africa, and Jenny’s family was on the last plane to fly out of Nairobi Airport before the border closed. (You can read about that story here)
While they were in Kenya, Heather Hartwick took her daughter-in-law to the roadside stand where she has been purchasing baskets for the past 15 years.
“I loved the baskets. So I bought way too many, and brought them home as gifts for friends and family,” said Jenny.
The first challenge Jenny faced, after deciding to order a shipment, was contacting her supplier. Her ‘basket lady,’ Meddy, doesn’t have a store. She spreads out a carpet under a tree and puts her baskets on it (photo at top of the page).
However Jenny has made some contacts in Kenya, “So I called up my friend, Dan and he sent another friend to visit her on the side of the road to get her phone number.”
Meddy had never shipped her baskets out of the country, but agreed to be the supplier providing Jenny looked after the other arrangements.
All of the baskets come from one village and most of the weavers are either Medi’s family or friends.
“I don’t bargain with the women. What they want for a basket is what they get,” said Jenny. “The other thing is it’s a handmade product, so I don’t ever ask for a particular basket.”
As most of the dyes are natural colours, they follow the seasons. Jenny does not receive yellow baskets in December, for example, the yellow dye is made from a flower that is not blooming at that time of year.
“I love the fact that last night, before I went to bed, I was on a video messenger call with my friend in Kenya. He had messaged me to say, ‘Hey, the next order of baskets is already.’ I ended up on a 25-minute-messenger-call with him, and he was giving me a tour of his backyard in Kenya. Then this morning I got up and called my basket lady. She was at home holding her 18 month old grand baby, who I could hear blabbering away on the phone,” explained Jenny.
She sells about a third of her baskets on Cortes Isand, largely through Mansons Friday Market, and has set up a website for the Nzuri Basket Company.
Jenny has taken over the guest cabin that her husband built and has to clear a space among the baskets when guests arrive.
“I don’t think my children ever want to hear the word basket again,” she said.
But: “They get really, really excited when an order comes in because they come in giant cardboard boxes and they get to make the most epic box forts that you’ve ever seen.”
She decided to use a Kenyan name for her company, “‘Nzuri’ is a Swahili word that means, good or beautiful. So when somebody asks you how you’re doing, the response is ‘nzuri asante’ – ‘good, thank-you.’ But it’s also used like: a person is ‘Nzuri,’ or when you’re driving down the street in Kenya, you see all these shops that have like the ‘Nzuri Hair Salon’ and ‘Nzuri Shoe Shine.’ So it’s kind of just like a catch all like, Hey, it’s good.”
Contact information:
- The Nzuri Basket Company website
- The Nzuri Basket Company operates out of 1408 Manzanita Rd, Cortes Bay, on Cortes Island.
- email – info@nzuribaskets.com
- phone – (250) 935-0007
Top photo credit: The roadstand where this story originated in March 2020 – photo courtesy Jenny Hartwick
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