The Full Story
Behind Kamba
My Name is Andrea Ngabo Woods. I am 42-year-old Croatian, living and working in Kilkenny, Ireland, for the last 7 years. I am a mother to two beautiful children, a teenage daughter Laura, and a 5 year old son Elijah.
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As a depression, anxiety, and childhood trauma survivor, I found great peace and calm in making art with my own hands. This is how it started: making art and daydreaming.
Then positive feedback from my friends became more and more obvious, and my husband’s persistence to go ahead and register my small business started to look more realistic.
I quit my 9-5 job, old anxiety kicked in telling me I cannot do it, and that I will fail. But The God always has last word in my life. As He gave me new family when I was alone in a foreign country, a son after I was convinced, I will not be able to have more children, and a good health after serious medical issues, now He is giving me my own story about a small business that is making me an artist and allowing me to work from home.
Kamba Design and I became the story I was daydreaming about. I am a real person, I do not always have it all together, but I am extremely happy and blessed not only to share my artworks with you, but to say to anyone who is daydreaming and doubting themselves, it is possible.
Vision
The word “Kamba” itself in Swahili means “rope, cord, strap, canopy”.
Also, an agricultural people of central Kenya, renowned as traders and woodcarvers, are called Kamba.
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Kamba means connecting many pieces patiently into one final magical piece of art. Many tiny knots of a different sizes, colours, strength, and origin creating one unique artwork.
Kamba means not only fibre art.
To create a design that is so beautiful to see and to admire, we freely use all that crosses our minds: we connect unconnectable colours, we combine cords of different strength, some are rough some are fluffy and soft, we order from a premium supplier, always expecting the best design to flow out of our minds. Each cord can be knotted into an art, and even the tiniest leftover is being put back together into a different piece.
Mission
Today more than ever, it is hard to love one another and put up with one another, with our differences and opinions. Kamba wants to visualize the strength of human relationships and the strength of unions.
We aim to create, and while we create, we think of how amazing human beings truly are, and with a piece of art we want to remind us that patience, perseverance, and togetherness create an amazing piece of one art. Be it friendship, marriage, family, church, company, or a nation.
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That is why with our artwork, and those who stand behind it, Kamba stands against discrimination, racism, any form of abuse, and division.
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With our artwork, Kamba represents nature, patience, healing, and a relationship between two or more human beings as a masterpiece.
