Dubai: Meet Kenyan engineer who dances in waste dumps for sustainability

Wearing overalls and dancing in a waste dump, Kenyan Nzambi Matee is trying to raise awareness about sustainability. The mechanical engineer, who has been making bricks out of plastic for over a decade now, is in Dubai to share her journey that has now been made into a documentary produced by Hollywood actor Orlando Bloom.

“The climate story is always very sad and negative and has a lot of fear mongering, for the lack of a better word,” she said, speaking to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the the Global Resilience Forum on Thursday, where she addressed top Dubai Police officials and sustainability experts from around the world.

“So, my approach is not fear. We don't need any more fear. We need hope so that people have the courage to do something. So, when a documentary film was being made about me, my director suggested dancing because I love dancing. And I liked the idea. I wanted to show hope and not fear.”

Making bricks stronger than concrete, Nzambi has been at the forefront of a sustainable initiative that has helped recycle large amounts of plastic in her hometown of Kenya. For her efforts, she was honoured as a Young Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2020.

A nine-month journey

Qualified as an engineer, Nzambi was inspired by the work of Nobel-prize winner Wangari Maathai and decided to do something for her hometown. “We had a huge plastic problem, but no one was taking it seriously,” she said. “They thought of it as a government problem and not something that we could change.”

Nzambi then decided to test out different ways of converting the plastic into bricks in her mother’s backyard. “It took me six months to get the formula right,” she said. “Then it took three months to test it and replicate it. In total, it took me nine months to make it. I often joke that I gave birth to the bricks.”

Once, she started selling the bricks, people were still unsure of the quality of her products. “Our first order came from a mosque and a church, who needed it for construction of their parking,” she said. “I believe that from those projects, we got God’s blessings. After that more orders started coming in.”

Today, she has 250 people in her organization’s value chain. “We do collection plastic processing and we have made about 14 roads in Nairobi,” she said.

Challenges

According to Nzambi, the hardest part of this has been getting people to take her seriously. “Being a woman in a field dominated by men is hard,” she said. “It was hard when I started out and it is still very hard. That is why I love my overalls. Once you put that on and wear a helmet, people don’t realize you are a woman. So, the clothes shield me in a way.”

She admitted that despite all the progress she had made, her family did not accept what she was doing until three years ago. “It took them seven years to take my job seriously,” she said. “In fact, one of my family members said that couldn’t take me seriously because I was always laughing and joking around. So, I wanted to prove to them that even with my personality, I could make a difference.”

The Global Resilience Forum, which takes place over two days, has been a platform for sustainability experts to discuss matters about climate change and natural disasters. “With floods, droughts and natural disasters happening all over the world, we wanted to give a stage for experts around the world to share their knowledge and learn from each other,” said Amna Kazim from Dubai Police.

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