>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Good afternoon and welcome the African Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress. I'm May-Jane Deeb Chief of the Division and the delighted to see you all here for a very interesting program on the African Heritage House that's, that was an art gallery showcased African arts and crafts and hosted Kenya's African Heritage Festival that is a national monument but more of this later. I would like to thank the speaker, Alan Donovan who has been the architect of this project and for making, for coming here and making this presentation. And I would to thank Owen Cylke, a member of the USAID Alumni Association who has offered to have the association co-host this program today and who will introduce the speaker in a moment. As most of you already know, our division is made up of three sections; The African, the Middle Eastern and the Hebraic sections. We're responsible for materials from 78 different countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caracas as well as from the entire continent of Africa, North and Sub Saharan. Our Hebraic and Judaica collections come from all over the world. We also show these materials [inaudible] is here in our reading room and organize programs, exhibits, conferences and other activities that highlight these collections and that inform patrons about the countries and the cultures that these publications come from. The staff are themselves, publish scholars with a knowledge of the languages and cultures of the countries for which they're responsible. The African section is very active in acquiring and developing collection, briefing visitors coming from all the countries of Sub Saharan Africa and organizing programs [inaudible] workshops such as this one. For example, in partnership with the Poetry and Literature Center and the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, the African section has been hosting for the past four years a series of conversations with African poets and writers and we've had some exceptional people come and talk to us and read from their work. In fact, on Thursday, May 21st at noon in our reading room, we'll have an interview with Nigerian novelist and political issues, Okey Ndibe and you're all invited to attend. And now to introduce the program today, we'll have our own Eve Ferguson, reference librarian for East Africa in the African section of this division and she's also a scholar, a writer, a journalist and much more. Eve. >> Eve Ferguson: Thank you very much. And again, let me extend my welcome to you for attending this program this afternoon. I have the honor of introducing Mr. Owen Cylke who will then introduce our speaker. So, Mr. Cylke is a development professional with a broadly recognized expertise on the complex relationships between economic activity, social structures and the environment in developing countries. His most recent work is senior fellow and director of the Macroeconomics Program for the World Wildlife fund and in collaboration with a wide range of development organizations in Africa focused on the conditions, approaches and prospects for structural change and economic transformation in Africa. That work built on a distinguished career in development promotion at USAID and with a set of not for profit organizations in Washington, D.C. Mr. Cylke served in Africa with the Peace Corps, U.S. AID and the African Development Bank. He continues to be active in African and developmental affairs as a guest contributor to the council on foreign relations blog, Africa in Transition. As a founding chair of the African Development Forum organized around the recent Africa Summit in Washington, D.C. and as a chair of Development Issues Committee of the U.S. AID Alumni Association. He's a graduate of Yale College and also Yale Law School. So, let me welcome Mr. Owen Cylke who will introduce Mr. Alan Donovan. Thank you. >> Owen Cylke: Thanks to you. That's a long list of introductions, I'm not the speaker today. I just merely going to introduce Alan, but I'm here to represent also the USAID Alumni Association and that's important today because I met Alan in 1966, that's some 50 years ago when we both joined AID and then encountered each other again in Nairobi in 1971. Al had left AID at that point but I was stationed there. Then over the next 35 or 40 years I've been back and forth to Africa, stayed with Al all of those times. I also do want mention which is a little off subject, is that I'm pleased to be here today because my brother was the Library of Congress for 30 years as the director of the National Library for the Blind and the Handicapped. Well, my thought this morning to introduce Al is to give you a few things to listen for when he's making his presentation because Al's house is more than a house, it's more than a home, it's really a salon, it's an environment, it's a venue for considering Africa's heritage and I really want to emphasize that, that word "heritage" and as we think about the art, many people think about African art think about tribal arts and traditional arts. The distinguished feature of Al's career has been to try to draw on those traditions for promoting indigenous innovation in art, design, dance and music. He's well-known in Kenya for that and I think that's really important that it's how do you build out of the cultural heritage of Africa to draw from that into more modern and contemporary art, dance, music and design. Secondly, as you look at the slides and the films that Al will show, keep in mind the environment, his house is located on Nairobi National Park one of the great urban wonders of the African continent and my career extending to World Wildlife Fund. Al was a founding member, or founding chair of the Save the Lions Program and Nairobi National Park and so another part of the heritage is to preserve that natural beauty which Kenya is so well known for. And then thirdly, as we think about heritage, Al has done a lot to try to identify people in Kenya's history who youngsters and people who can look to as founding fathers much as we do in the United States with our founding fathers, so the children don't have to look outside to people like Obama but can look internally to people like Murumbi who Al will talk about today. So, I will close with that as I introduce Al, but just to mention that his house was just named a National Monument to be preserved by the Kenyan Government. This, not without a great deal of hard work as the Chinese were planning to build a railroad right through his living room. But, fortunately through public pressure, newspaper work and a lot of lobbying, the house was recently declared a National Monument which is really a tribute I think to Al's work over time. So, I would just to end with this sentence, but behind these elements accessible to the eye, is the sensibility of a true artist, Al Donovan and I hope you keep that in mind as he's talking today. Al my friend. [ Applause ] >> Alan Donovan: Thank you Mary-Jane. Thank you Eve. Thank you Owen. Thanks to the Library of Congress and welcome to African Heritage House. You've heard from Owen that I arrived in Africa in 1967 with the USAID. I was a relief officer during the Nigeria-Biafra War which was a terrible tribal war. The worst they'd had in Africa up to that point and I was trying to feed people that were starving in Biafra and watching Biafra as it shrank smaller and smaller; many millions starving mostly women and children. And I quit after two year and I went to Paris and I bought a Volkswagen bus and I drove across from Paris to Africa across the Sahara where I saw a lot of the wonderful mud architecture of Africa. The very early African architecture made of mud. The mud masks in Mosque in Mali and the Emir's palaces in Nigeria and the painted houses in Ghana and Burkina Faso and I just want to bring your attention to this book called "Butabu" it's by James Morris about the mud architecture in Africa. You can pass that around because I didn't bring my photos of the various structures that inspired me to build an African Heritage House and it was from that trip. Then drove from Nigeria across the Congo to East Africa and I arrived in Kenya in April 1970 and I wanted to see some part of Africa that had not been so influenced by outsiders and by colonialism so I was told I could get a permit and go up to the northern frontier district of Kenya and there I would find people who had never seen an outsider. So, I went up to Turkana, around Lake Turkana for three months and I was very fascinated at the Turkana used everything in their very harsh desert environment to make everything they needed in their lives including a lot of wonderful ornaments, body ornamentation. So, I decided I would sell my Volkswagen bus and make a collection of all their art and material culture and I did that and I brought my collection back to Nairobi and my friends at the American Embassy said though you must have an exhibition because nobody's seen these things, they don't even have them in the National Museums. So, I had my first exhibition in October 1970. The only African to attend was Joseph Murumbi who was the former vice-president of Kenya and the first foreign minister of the country and also the greatest private African collector in Africa. He has a collection of books over 12,000 published before 1900. He has a wonder pan-African postage stamp collection which the Library of Congress helped me to display in Nairobi. It's now on the mezzanine floor of the National Archives in Kenya. Anyway, Murumbi said to me, "Would you go back to Turkana and get me one of each?" I was planning to go home to America but he said, please would that before you go and I said, "Yes, I'll do that." So, I went back to Turkana and I made a collection for him and while I was there the Turkana would take me on crocodile hunts and they would give me full sets of crocodile teeth and python vertebrae and of course the ostrich eggshell beads made out of ostrich eggshell that the women wore as their dowering and we would melt down cooking pots, aluminum cooking pots and make all sorts of wonderful earrings and necklaces in clay molds similar to what they do in West Africa as lost wax. So, then I got all these long strings of things and I thought, well I have to learn how to make jewelry, so I went down to Mombasa and I found an American Peace Corps volunteer there who had setup of workshop for Kenyans who had been very traumatized, in bad accidents like car accidents and fires. The only requirement was the had to have one arm or one leg and I joined that class, many of them were blind and I learned how to make simple things like hooks and to solder a bit and make other kinds of things for jewelry. So, one day I was, I brought all my things from Nigeria, Mali, Ghana all the small things and I started putting them into the jewelry and a lady walked in and she started tearing our hair saying, "Oh, my God these are wonderful! These are beautiful. These are fantastic. What are going to do with them?" And I said, "Well, I don't know put them on my wall I suppose." She said, "No you have to have an exhibition." So, she was a writer working on a book for Denys Finch Hatton who was the love interest of Karen Blixen for the movie "Out of Africa." So, she got me very involved in that movie and I went to Nairobi and had my second exhibition of African heritage jewelry and about 4 O'clock in the afternoon before I opened the exhibition, a Texan walked in and he started pulling things off the wall and I said, "Wait a minute, I don't know what I'm going to see and can you wait till 6 O'clock and he said, "But I want them all, and I want the boards and I want the walls and I want this room." And he said, "Do you have any more at home?" So, I said, "Yeah." So, we went to my small flat and he bought everything I would sell and he took it to America on a three year tour through Neiman Marcus Galleries, Bergdorf Goodman, the Corcoran Gallery of Art here in Washington and many other places. And he said, "Now, I want you to get busy. I want to represent you." And I, he opened a business called "Dr. Livingston, I Presume." He turned his swimming pool into a store and the cabanas around it into packing areas. I went back to Kenya and I leased an old stable and some of the crafts people I had met, I employed them making African heritage jewelry and later on Banana Republic stores a decade later came and said, "Oh, would you do jewelry for us? We'd like you to open a hundred stores of jewelry and accessories in America and we'd also would like you to setup workshops in India and Bali and other places because we want to market it as global jewelry." So, I started that and I did go to India and Bali and I did collections for their catalogs and stores and the original owners of Banana Republic then a falling out with the Gap which had bought them and they walked out and left me after I had bought a house across from Banana Republic in San Francisco. They had an argument with Gap and they left and they, so I finally also left so my career with Banana Republic was quite short after we bought our first big supermarket to make into the first jewelry and accessories in San Francisco. Anyway, to go back to my jewelry workshop, Murumbi came I one day and he was very angry with me and I said, "What did I do to you?" And he said, "Well, I was walking down the street and I went by a shop owned by a Indian and I saw a beautiful mosque in there from Mali, a very big mask a helmet mosque and I walked in and I said, "Where did you get that?" And the man said, "Alan Donovan sold it to me." And he said, "Why did you do that? You knew I would want it, so why didn't you come and ask me first?" So, I said, "Well, we both know this man. Let's go there and I'll get my money back and we'll, you can have it." So, that day he said, "It's my dream to setup a pan-African gallery in Kenya where artists from all over the continent can come and show each other's work and sell it to visitors that come to Kenya and would help me do that?" And I said, "Well, I'll stay another year. That was in 1971 and so that's how we started African Heritage which that mosque become the logo of our gallery. It was a big helmet mosque from Mali called Enymba [assumed spelling] and this was our first catalog in, early 1970s which was for the first pan-African Gallery in Africa and before I closed the gallery in 2003 we had 51 outlets around the world. More than 500 crafts people working full-time and over several thousand who were working on a consignment basis producing items for export. So, that's how we setup the African Heritage Gallery and then the first secretary I had at African Heritage said to me one day, "My father has built me a house because I'm going to get married but my fiancé has bought me an island in the West Indies so I don't need that house. Would you like to come and see it and see if you'd like to have it?" So, it was about 10 miles of Nairobi so drove and drove and drove and even this was before traffic; if you've been to Nairobi you know traffic how terrible it is but now it was quite a nice drive but I said, "No, it's too far. I couldn't do this." But when I walked in and I looked out the front door I saw the Nairobi National Park, the view that you see here is that on the screen? >> This, the house? >> And so I said, "Yes I'll take it." And I was so busy because I was getting, doing lectures in America. I was visiting 20 countries to buy art and visit artists and so on, so I slept on the floor of that house for several months before I finally got that houses ready but then I planned to build African Heritage House which was next door to that house which you'll see on the screen later. Ah, then 1976 we setup Kenya's African Heritage Festival. This was a traveling festival a cultural outreach program which had a troop of models, dancer, musicians, acrobats, chefs, hair dressers that traveled around the world and I started the African Heritage band with a man named Ayub Ogada I think you'll hear some of his music today and this is the music from the "Constant Gardner." If you've seen that movie he's done films for movies and he's been in many movies including "Out of Africa" himself. He just released a new album last week. So, that's Ayub Ogada. Then African Heritage Murumbi in 1976, the gallery burned down completely. We lost everything, all our stores, workshops, everything completely gone and he sold part of his collection to the Kenya government to make money so we could reopen a new gallery and it was at that time that he moved from Nairobi down to build another house in near Maasai Mara. Now, the Kenyan government bought his house and he agreed to sell it on condition that they make it into a Murumbi Institute of African Studies and he got UNESCO to agree to fund a kitchen, a library, a hostel for visiting scholars and he then went on down to Maasai Mara and built another house down there but the government did nothing about that plan and they allowed the house to deteriorate until the roof started leaking. We had to move everything out of the house and put it in the basement of the present National Archives and the house was finally torn down. Well, Murumbi got ill and he was flown back to Nairobi and when he heard that his house had been destroyed he also heard they were cutting down his trees, his indigenous trees which he loved so much and he went there in his wheelchair and he saw them cutting down his trees and he had another stroke and a short time later he died in 1990. So, eventually after that I worked with African Heritage with Mrs. Murumbi until she died also in 2000 and then setup the Murumbi trust to deal with their legacy. There are many thousands of pieces of artwork, the books, the postage stamps and now that the Murumbi Gallery occupies the ground floor of the Kenya National Archives. The stamps are on the first floor and the books are on the third floor. We also have another museum for the collection left behind by Mrs. Murumbi and there is a Murumbi Peace Memorial where they're graves are in the Nairobi City Park. African Heritage went bankrupt itself in 2003 because of the terrorism we've suffered in Kenya over the years and corruption in the government. So, I setup the Murumbi Trust to do the Legacy Projects and I also wrote a book at that time which is called "African Heritage" about my life in African and the Murumbi's. And now, I'm doing another book on Joseph Murumbi's life. I found that there was an American who interviewed Murumbi and made several hundred tapes back in the 1970s and I thought those were lost and I contacted her, she's living in Hawaii now and she's head of an organization that deals with archives and she said that she had a complete set of the tapes in England and I got all those tapes and now, next month I plan to print this book. This is just a prentice book. And as I once said, it was January last year that I was sitting in my pool house, a Kenyan soldier walked in with an AK-47. He said, "You have to get out your house." And I said, "Who are you?" And he wouldn't tell me and I said, "Where is your ID?" He wouldn't tell me. And said, "Who do I see?" And he said, "Well, you can see the Kenya Ministry of Lands but the train is going to go right through your house." And then I saw two Chinese standing behind him and I said, "Are you going to tell my neighbors that as well?" Cause we live along the rim of the National Park and we protect the park and prevent poaching and also a lot of other things that would happen if that land were uprooted and we were made to move and he said, "Yes." So, I called my neighbor who was an old lady and I said, "Don't be alarmed. There may be a Kenyan soldier walking to your house and say you must vacate." So, that happened and as Owen said in his introduction, there was a big outcry about tearing the house down, demolishing it. All over the world people signed petitions and so on. And so the Kenya government Gazzetted the house as a National Monument in January this year and it became effective April 1st. I think it was real even though that's April Fool's Day, but that's what has happened now. Now, I plan to make the house into an African Heritage Trust and I'm negotiating and discussing plans with universities and libraries. I hope to also talk to the Obama Foundation and Library and make the house a link to the Obama Foundation and Library in Kenya and I think that would be a good way to preserve it and protect it. I'm also talking to the American University who's agreed to have an exhibition of all the artists that who started through African Heritage that will come to Washington in 2017 and we hope to travel it around the country. Some of the artists who started in Kenya during the 60s, 70s and 80s who we call the Pioneer Artists of East Africa. So, we're looking forward to that in 2017. The last thing I'm doing is a project called the Borderlands. There's 100 acres of land along the park next to me since the train is not going to go through that land. We want to make a community of the lost architecture of Africa with building hotels and cottages and conference room and other facilities based on the lost architecture of Africa like you see in that book the mud architecture, the first architecture of Africa. And now the house is open and TripAdvisor has just given me an award as the best attraction on Nairobi and also the best bed and breakfast, so it is open for events and people come out on the train which you'll see and also I sponsor a lot of fundraisers for the Nairobi National Park and things like that. So, I think that's all I have to say about African Heritage House and it's trials and tribulations until it became a National Monument and it's preserved and we're going to show you first a short film on the Kenya's Cultural Festival which is also called the African Renaissance Show and I'm planning to make a permanent museum of those collections of costumes and fashions nearby the house as well and then after that film we'll have two short films on the house. Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Video Playing ] >> Okay. [ Video Playing ] >> Alan Donovan: That was Kenya' African Heritage Festival and the last time I did a very big show it was 1998, although I'm planning to revive it again this year at the end of the year for a big program they're having in Africa and what you saw was it became the African Renaissance Show that was shown in South Africa in 1998 and they couldn't find a hotel big enough for the show so they bought an old warehouse and they bulldozed out the interior and I put in catwalks and they designed toilets and kitchens and parking lots all within three weeks for 4000 people for the first Telecom's Conference in Africa and that was the first African Renaissance show which you saw. >> Okay. So, let me queue up the next film. >> Alan Donovan: The next film is, there are two short films on the African Heritage House both, one filmed in South Africa and one in Kenya. >> Okay. Let's see. [ Playing Video ] >> Hello everybody and welcome today's show. I am Jacquie Thom. Today, we're at African Heritage House and on today's show it's all about the heritage. What makes [inaudible]. But, first take a tour of this vision of house. >> Alan Donovan: I'm [inaudible] at the African Heritage House. The house is based on a lot of architecture of Africa. The elevation behind me is [inaudible] Emir's palaces of the houses in Northern Nigeria. And as we move across to the front, the front part of the house based on the mud mosques [inaudible] in the Sahara Desert. Now, come in come in whoop. There we have the symbol of Africa Heritage. It was a mosque like this that now stands at the entry of the Nairobi Gallery of [inaudible] Archives. The [inaudible] represents fertility from Guinea, West Africa. Here is a pot by who I call Kenya's most famous artist, although she lives in London, so she's not [inaudible]. Her pots now sell an astronomical amount today. All the [inaudible] museums of the world, if you go to the British Museum the first thing you see is [inaudible] pots. [ Playing Video ] >> We get to meet the man himself, Alan Donovan. Welcome. >> Alan Donovan: Thank you. >> Very good to see you Alan. Stunning place. And stunning necklace may I say. Gorgeous. >> Alan Donovan: On a stunning woman. >> Thank you very much. Okay, just to kick off Alan, who are you? There's a lot of people that know you from that time before when the African Heritage was really strong in our market. But there's a new generation coming through. Who is Alan Donovan? How did African Heritage start, you know, let's start right there. >> Alan Donovan: Well, first of all I arrived in Africa in 1967, July 4th and I came to Nigeria. This was the time when Biafra broken off with Nigeria so there's a terrible [inaudible] war and the Nigeria and I became really focused in trying to bring food in to feed people especially the children [inaudible]. >> So, you would volunteer coming out to? >> Alan Donovan: No, I was with the USA Department. I was a USA [inaudible]. And then I decided I [inaudible]. [ Inaudible ] Anyway, I quit and went to Paris and bought a Volkswagen bus. I drove across the Sahara to Nigeria, camped there for until the war was over, then I drove across the [inaudible]. And then I went out to Lake Turkana. I was told that that was one place in Africa [inaudible]. [ Inaudible ] >> Yeah. [ Inaudible ] >> Okay, so what about Joseph Murumbi as you were going around the country and you collected all the artifacts, wasn't that what you [inaudible] by Kenya? Or, I mean said you had traveled a lot around Africa. What inspired you guys about this subject? >> Alan Donovan: Well, that's an obvious just look out there over my horizon. It's such a fantastically beautiful country every part of it. [ Inaudible ] >> Okay, so your relationship with second Vice-President Joseph Murumbi. How did you guys [inaudible]. >> Alan Donovan: Well, first of all [inaudible]. [ Inaudible ] >> Was he was great with culture and all that, he was really good at cultural aspect [inaudible]. [ Inaudible ] >> And he actually had a great sense of Kenyan culture and managed not to abuse it somehow. >> Alan Donovan: Well, he did. [ Inaudible ] >> What does heritage mean to me? It means my country, my people, my place where I am my own environment so to speak. But back to you. What inspired you to write the your book "My Journey through African Heritage"? >> Alan Donovan: Well, I wanted to record all the great artists, all the great designs how to accumulate [inaudible] about the heritage, but also my memories so that the [inaudible]. [ Inaudible ] >> What is the aim of the African Heritage nights? I know you used to have your African Heritage nights years and years ago but this is coming into a source of a revival again. >> Alan Donovan: Well, I hope so. >> Yeah. >> Alan Donovan: I really hope so because you know, the thing of having a festival is a collection of cross dealings and jewelry and fashion that has been collected for the last 40 years and [inaudible]. And I think we must revive African Heritage nights which was started when the [inaudible] asked me way back in 1971 if I would do a monthly cultural nights. I tried to do it [inaudible]. >> To do it. >> Alan Donovan: So, they started with it annually. >> Yeah. [ Inaudible ] >> Okay. The African Heritage House has had world renowned celebrities visiting. Can you share that and some of the names and personalities that have visited here? >> Alan Donovan: Well, probably the most famous who should have been was George Bush. >> George Bush? >> Alan Donovan: The U.S. Government asked me if he could use my house for his first press conference, so he was coming here in 2003. And I thought oh that's wonderful. It was after the bombing of the coast, not that I'm a fan of George Bush, the fact that the U.S. President [inaudible] and he was to do this in my upstairs room for his press conference and [inaudible]. Where we sitting Colin Powell [inaudible]. >> The American powerhouse such as he. >> Alan Donovan: He had all that secret service [inaudible] where the helicopters would land because they would come in and setup a [inaudible]. >> Yeah. [ Inaudible ] >> Yeah. [ Inaudible ] >> Recently, you've had Desperate Housewives Terry Hatcher here. >> Alan Donovan: Yes. This is true. >> Yeah. >> Alan Donovan: I have a lot of others, we had Richard Branson, we had a sendoff party for Linda [inaudible]. But this whole year has been a disaster because I was planning on adding some suites to house guests and all the reservations I had to cancel that from September [inaudible]. Thank you for coming [inaudible]. >> Yeah, okay. I want to thank you very much for inviting us here and thank you for coming with me on the show. It's been great and I'd love to have again. >> Alan Donovan: We'd just showed the images. >> Yes. >> Your house and [inaudible]. Thank you very much. It's beautiful place and space. >> Alan Donovan: You have to come back. >> Yeah, I will. I will. I definitely will. >> Alright, so you [inaudible]. >> Alan Donovan: Oh, thank you very much. Now we're going to have a images of the house and that will close the day. Thank you. >> Okay. Okay. I don't know how to put the music on. We were supposed to have some musical accompaniment but forgive the silence. If maybe you want to describe some of the images we're seeing. >> Alan Donovan: This is a slide that's based on the Emir's palaces in Northern Nigeria. This is a bit of decoration. We made these forms out of Styrofoam and then we put plaster and we copied some of the designs from the mud architecture of Africa. This is a swimming pool looking from the pool up to the house. And that's the side of the elevation that's based on the Emir's Palace. This is the living room that you just saw during that interview. And that's the mosque that brought Murumbi and I together that started the whole thing African Heritage. This is the modern sculpture by John [foreign name spoken] who we will hope will come to Washington to the exhibition of Plan Your Artist. This is Kuba cloth from the Congo. [ Pause ] That's another by John [foreign name spoken] made of iron. This is a cast bronze foot from Benin it's a copy of course. This is the swimming pool near the house. Another of John [foreign name spoken] mini sculpture. Living room. That's Own Cylke and myself after many years in Africa. That's the upstairs room called the Wolf Room which has hand-painted wolves by Carol Beckwith. [ Pause ] That's a mosque in the living room. My bedroom, chair looking over the park. This is a sculpture by Francis Nnaggenda from Uganda that stood in front of the Murumbi's house for years. This is the Murumbi Museum at the oldest building in Nairobi this is the entry you're looking at now and that's the collection left behind by Sheila Murumbi. These are textiles and costumes part from the African Heritage Festival. That's photograph by Angela Fisher from her book "Africa Adorned." She started at African Heritage. This is a decoration taken from a Kuba cloth. That's the front door of African Heritage. And that's another sculpture by Francis Nnaggenda from Uganda. And that's the side door of the house. These are Lambo doors. Pool shot again. [ Pause ] And that's the end. A sunset. [ Pause ] Okay, I don't know if we have time for any questions. Does anybody have a question, one or two? Yes. >> The groups of crafts people who worked until 2003, is there a [inaudible] group? >> Alan Donovan: No, there isn't unfortunately. One thing that happened was I used to have a Tuesday buying day when all the artists and crafts people would come to collect their orders and leave deliveries and when I closed down there was no room for them anywhere else. They moved down to around about in Nairobi and eventually that become knowns as the Maasai Market and now it's every day and it's split all over the city, so that was sort of the residue of African Heritage crafts people. Ah hum. >> Anything else? >> In following up this question. Where did they actually produce the jewelry, your cloths and so on was it in different parts of the country? Where there rug shops? I mean did they actually create them? I suppose you designed [inaudible] and then people actually produced them right? >> Alan Donovan: Yes. Well, several of the jewelry workers that I had, I had more than 100 at one time have setup their own workshop and they still produce my designs and do designs of their own, so that has carried on a bit. The sad thing about the textiles of Africa which I think is the greatest gift of Africa to the world is the textiles, the hand woven and hand printed textiles. Most of all of it has disappeared. There's hardly anybody weaving or printing the hand woven textiles, hand printed textiles in the past. It's all been disappearing so quickly in the last 20 years that with all the Chinese imports and the second-hand clothes from America coming in, the cotton industry is now failing and there's hardly anybody weaving or printing cloth like there used to be in Africa, so it's a big shame. I hope that we find a way to revive a lot of those crafts. >> Okay. Any other questions? No? Okay. >> Alan Donovan: Thank you so much. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.