Riding the Waves of Change: Sailing with the Flipflopi Project
Mick Warwick*
Abstract
This essay chronicles the author’s transformative experience with the Flipflopi Project, a grassroots environmental initiative focused on combating plastic pollution in East Africa. Following his career in the British military, the author joined the project and embarked on a journey through Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to raise awareness of plastic waste in Lake Victoria. Led by a diverse team, the project utilized the innovative approach of building a dhow boat from recycled flip-flops, merging art and activism to engage local communities. Through workshops, artistic installations, performances and collaborations with local artists and policymakers, he witnessed firsthand the power of creativity in raising awareness and advocating for policy change. By engaging communities across the region, Flipflopi’s journey showcased the potential of collective action to foster environmental sustainability and influence legislative reform. This essay reflects on how the intersection of art, environmental advocacy and conflict transformation can drive meaningful change and empower communities to address pressing global challenges. The Flipflopi Project has inspired Warwick to continue his commitment to environmental artivism, demonstrating the lasting impact of community-driven approaches and innovative solutions in shaping a more sustainable and equitable world.
Keywords: Flipflopi Project, plastic pollution, artivism, environmental advocacy, community engagement
Towards the end of my career with the British military, I was presented with an opportunity to work as an outdoors activity leader and facilitator with the British Army overseas. I was based near Mount Kenya, in Nanyuki, within the Laikipia region of Kenya, which is a former British colony in East Africa. During my assignment, I had many opportunities to work with local outdoor activity service providers, such as Dipesh Pabari, who was a Managing Director and Partner in a local wilderness adventure company on the edge of the Rift Valley.
Shortly after our first meeting, I learned that Dipesh was also involved in an innovative, creative “not for profit” organisation on the Kenyan coast. As our friendship developed, he gradually shared his passion for something called the Flipflopi Project. It was an unusual collaboration designed to address the local challenge with plastic waste. Over time, Dipesh and I had fascinating conversations about the vision and mission of the Flipflopi team. And he tentatively floated the idea that I would be welcome to come and volunteer with the project when my career with the British Army came to an end. His passion and enthusiasm were infectious. Plus, the Flipflopi team seemed to fit my needs for exciting, new things to do to fill my “retirement time.” Intrigued, I went to their website to read about how this project came about and what they were seeking to do:
“The idea to create The Flipflopi Project came to founder Ben Morison in 2015 after he was struck by the amounts of plastic, especially flipflops, littering the beautiful Lamu, Kenya beaches he deeply loved. He thought that building a boat from this plastic waste would be an effective way to celebrate the centuries old traditional craft of dhow building that is a cornerstone of the Swahili culture that thrives along the East African coastal region, while also sharing a positive message about the need for change. Together with Ali Skanda, a renowned dhow builder from Lamu and Dipesh Pabari, a plastic pollution campaigner, they set about building a traditional sailing dhow entirely from waste plastic.” (The Flipflopi Story)
The pictures showed a powerful dhow—an iconically shaped sailboat familiar across the Indian Ocean—with a hull covered in multi-coloured plates built from discarded flip flops. The sea, the dhow, the community activism and the mission were a powerfully attractive combination. Throughout my life, I have traveled extensively, observing some of the world’s most intractable problems. Now, through this opportunity to join the Flipflopi Project, I would be actively responding to a critical global challenge. I wanted to explore the intersection of creativity, environmental advocacy and collective action where I could witness first-hand the role of art in conflict transformation.
Bordered by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest freshwater lake with a surface area of over 26,600 square miles. It serves as a crucial resource supporting the livelihoods of over 40 million people who inhabit around its basin, and it functions as the source of the river Nile. Lake Victoria’s life-threatening environmental challenges with climate change, pollution and overexploitation are well documented (Biginagwa et al.). It was against this backdrop that the team of volunteers from the Flipflopi Project launched their Lake Victoria expedition, the second journey of the dhow, in March 2021.
The Flipflopi Project’s home base is on Lamu Island, which is situated along the northern coast of Kenya. Lamu communities are no strangers to Lake Victoria’s environmental challenges. Indeed, these struggles are common factors that unite across both communities. Unified in this cause, from ocean to lake, the journey inland was deeply felt and personal for all the members of the Flipflopi team.
Flipflopi’s journey to the start of her third expedition on Lake Victoria began in early 2019 with a road journey from its boatyard in Lamu to the city centre of Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Flipflopi would be present at the fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly taking place in March 2019. Once the assembly concluded, Flipflopi was again transported by lorry to Kisumu, Kenya, which was the starting point for the expedition on Lake Victoria. Unfortunately, COVID-19 struck in early 2020, and the journey was halted in Kisumu before it had even begun. But, undeterred, the team waited until conditions were conducive, and re-launched the expedition in March 2021
The expedition’s aim was simple and clear, to tackle the growing problem of plastic pollution in and around Lake Victoria. Essentially the goal was: “to take the message upstream to engage inland communities on plastic issues & the circular economy and to lobby for region-wide legislation on single-use plastics” (“Flipflopi Lake Victoria Expedition Impact”).
The journey was conceived and planned both meticulously and sensitively. Flipflopi anticipated four outcomes in each of the three East African countries that border the lake, to:
- raise awareness
- advocate for policy change
- engage with as many local communities as possible and
- showcase the principles of a circular economy based on use and re-use.
I joined, albeit virtually, in early 2021, as humanity limped and stumbled through the COVID-19 era. I was literally the “newboy” on the block with the project and for this expedition. But it wasn’t my first-time on an expedition, and I felt very confident I could fit in with the team playing my part to help to shape, plan and execute this journey. Still, I knew very little about this eclectic band of people from many different socio-economic backgrounds and experiences. Indeed, I had met only two of the people involved. All of my knowledge about Flipflopi came from Dipesh, social media and website browsing. I had never even been to Lamu let alone on a dhow. Little did I know that to the team my lack of local experience was not a hindrance. My hesitations vanished as I was swept along with the enthusiasm, energy, exhilaration and exuberance of this diverse group.
To join the expedition, I flew from my home-base in Kenya to Kampala in neighboring Uganda, then traveled by land north through the countryside to the town of Jinja—the first stop of the Ugandan leg of the expedition. By the time I joined the expedition, Flipflopi had already completed the Kenyan part of her journey starting in Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria. Jinja is a melting pot of cultures, primarily home to Uganda’s two main ethnic communities, the Basoga and Baganda. This cultural diversity is reflected in the city’s vibrant music, dance, food, and traditional ceremonies. Jinja is recognised as the “Source of the Nile” and also regarded as “the adventure capital of East Africa.”
As I boarded the Flipflopi dhow in Jinja, I was struck by the symbolism of this recycled plastic sailing dhow. The dhow’s distinctive indigenous shape is the heritage of Indian Ocean trade routes from centuries past. Overall, Flipflopi is 9m long by 3m wide and weighs over 7 tonnes. She sits proudly 1.5m out of the water with her single mast extending 6m towards the sky and is colourfully covered by over 30,000 recycled flip flops. Comfortably holding 15 people on the deck and seating area, the Flipflopi dhow can be sailed by a skilled crew of four. To all of the volunteers, and to me from that point forward, this dhow was more than just a boat. She was a statement; a loud, proud declaration that waste could be repurposed and turned into something meaningful and useful. An innovative example of “artivism” (activism through art), the Flipflopi dhow, which we lovingly refer to as “ndogo” (“small one” in Kiswahili), has become a mobile platform for education and engagement. Her bright, colourful design playfully highlights the irony of pollution while transforming 10 tonnes of discarded plastic from Lamu and the surrounding archipelago into a beacon of hope.
Onboard Flipflopi, I was allocated the responsibility of making sure that the crew and team were safe. This included minimising the inherent risks of sailing and carrying out the day-to-day operations of moving around Lake Victoria. Amongst my most challenging tasks was to understand and apply the regional customs requirements and COVID-19 protocols when moving from place to place and across the country borders from Uganda to Tanzania and then back to Kenya.
After departing Jinja, we made planned stops along the lakeshore to engage with local communities. We ran eco-market exhibitions for groups and individuals to showcase their recycled products. We convened a network of recycling business and entrepreneurs to showcase solutions and inspire innovations like Ghetto Research Lab, building toilets out of eco-bricks in the slums, Taka Taka plastics who build construction materials from waste, and Benedicta Nanyonga from Kinawataka who makes beautiful bags from discarded plastic straws. East African singer-songwriters, including Juliani from Kenya with Navio and Sandra Suubi from Uganda, used their voices and performances to call for urgent action to address climate change. Dancers from the Nantea Dance Company, in Tanzania, performed in front of an art installation created out of discarded plastic bottles.
Over and over, I was struck by the power of the visual arts, theatre and music to gather people from different backgrounds and perspectives into a common purpose. I saw firsthand how art transcends multiple barriers including age, education and geography. As we moved through Uganda south into Tanzania, the Flipflopi dhow unified communities. Schoolchildren, local artists, fishermen and policymakers were united by the urgency of addressing plastic pollution.
Particularly powerful was the creation of a giant plastic-stuffed Nile perch sculpture in Kampala by Arinitwe Peter. Arinitwe, a Ugandan mixed-media artist, joined our expedition to help draw attention to the catastrophic impacts that are occurring to the Lake Victoria ecosystem. As populations and activities on the shores continue to grow, the lake faces increasing threats, including chemical contamination from industries, illegal and overfishing of the Nile perch, deforestation and an enormous risk of plastic pollution.
Arinitwe’s giant perch installation was made out of only waste materials and filled with plastic trash. During a conversation with local media, he made the following statement as to why he wanted to use his sculpture to engage the local community around the challenge of plastic pollution: “The suffocation of the Nile perch was my alarm as an artist to act. The fish is a symbol to end plastic pollution. People will not fail to understand it, even those who can’t read will see the plastic in the fish, and what that means for humans eating it” (“Flipflopi Lake Victoria Expedition Impact”).
This conspicuous art piece gave a tangible, visual representation to observers highlighting the extent of plastic waste in the lake, making the issue palpable even for those with little reading or writing skills. The draw of the sculpture ignited the local communities into action. Clean-ups were organised and the local population mobilised to wade knee deep into the lake’s polluted shoreline to pull out waste. I saw that communities and individuals reacted positively to the sculpture and understood the message without spoken words, reinforcing my belief in the universal language of art and its inherent power to translate messages without boundaries.
In addition to the contributions of visual artists, I experienced how storytelling was also able to foster deeper connections, especially from an emotional perspective, to these challenging environmental issues. With our links to community group members, we were able to facilitate discussions and provide spaces for the sharing of personal narratives about how pollution was affecting their daily lives.
I distinctly remember one unscheduled session as a beautiful example of how storytelling connects communities. For several weeks, Bahati Mayoma, Assistant Lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and researcher on the ground-breaking study on microplastic pollution in the city of Mwanza, had been on the expedition journey. Bahati led the Flipflopi team in carefully collecting plastic pollution data across the three countries. We arrived on Rock Beach in Mwanza on the last leg of the journey. We were delayed arriving onto the beach due to wind and sea conditions, and we anchored off shore waiting to come in when conditions improved. Local fishermen were returning from their morning work and made a detour towards the Flipflopi out of sheer curiosity. Taking advantage of this unexpected exchange, Bahati was able to listen to the fishermen’s stories, to hear about the challenges they faced and to share some of his initial scientific findings with them.
Storytelling sessions like these cemented my realisation that art was a portal not only for creating awareness but also for healing and fostering a sense of urgency. This reinforced my understanding that art can be an essential tool in conflict transformation by allowing people to see their struggles reflected in creative expressions and motivating them to act.
In situations where resources are limited and need is great, conflict can easily develop. Food insecurity and lack of clean water cause tensions between communities. Throughout East Africa, in contexts like Sudan, these tensions can easily escalate to full-scale violence. While serving with the British military on Operational Deployments and Peacekeeping Operations, I witnessed first-hand how destructive conflict can be. This has led me to support alternative methods for de-escalation of conflict through the creation of community-based problem solving. We, through Flipflopi, tried to create just such spaces for dialogue and collaboration. I took part in these discussions and saw how they empowered local communities, giving them a sense of ownership over environmental solutions. Through these experiences, I saw that conflict transformation requires not only a military and political approach but is also nurtured by fostering shared understanding and mobilising collective efforts.
Throughout our expedition along the shoreline of Lake Victoria, across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, we facilitated and participated in numerous workshops and talks designed to stimulate discussion and create sustainable platforms and groups that could continue to work through these challenges after we were gone. Some of the most inspiring sessions for me involved working with school children and youth groups and watching how the next generation(s) embraced the concepts of sustainability and innovation. I recall one of the team recounting the story of a young boy they encountered on a clean-up in Jinja city. He was a proud member of the Jinja Scouts Association of Uganda, dressed in his highly pressed, immaculate fawn-colored shirt and trousers emblazoned with various badges for community service, life skills and mentorship. Drawn into the conversation, he was aware enough to suggest to his peers, “If we start now, we can save our future.”
Powerful and insightful words for one so young but a stark reminder that most, if not all, change originates from small steps forwards no matter who you are in a social hierarchy. Observing this exchange between generations inspired me to believe that if we can empower local individuals, communities and groups to take the responsibility then they can work collectively and collaboratively towards local solutions to the challenges faced.
Alongside our formal Flipflopi engagements, I saw a variety of informal examples of artistic and environmental advocacy within grassroots movements already igniting and taking shape. Initiatives, driven by a local community, included recycling clubs in schools and waste-collection groups in villages. The abundance of these existing activities showed that people were not waiting for external interventions but were in the midst of actively seeking solutions for themselves. This reinforced my belief that collective action is not just a concept but a lived reality that can lead to long-term change.
Change happens at the grassroots level but also, of course, on the governmental and policy level. Using community engagement, Flipflopi’s activities are utilised to influence policy, the policy makers, government officials and even royalty. The team effectively engaged with many legislators, using compelling narratives to leverage for regional action against single-use plastics. Events were staged, conversations facilitated and many key moments planned where Kenyan county governors and even the Queen of Buganda in Uganda could publicly voice their ongoing commitment to tackling plastic pollution. The presence of policymakers and political leadership was a visible demonstration to all and a reinforcement of the team’s drive and determination that art could bridge the gap between grassroots activism and legislative change.
The integration of artistic expression into policy discussions made complex environmental issues more accessible, even to the politicians. I saw how policymakers responded to art in a way that many traditional methods of advocacy often could not achieve. During one of many exhibitions, which showcased upcycled art installations, I observed how government officials excitedly engaged with the attending artists to discuss, amongst other things, their creative process and its connection to environmental preservation. This intersection between policy making and artistic engagement demonstrates how long-lasting changes require multidimensional approaches that include intellect and emotion to be wide reaching, sustainable, accepted and effective.
Watching the Flipflopi team in action demonstrated their impact as a driving force behind the drafting of a bill on banning single-use plastics across East Africa. This bill had, and continues to, gain widespread public support with over 16,000 petition signatures to date. In 2024, the bill was approved for consideration in the East African Legislative Assembly. This is evidence that artivism can be a driver of systemic change. Conflict transformation isn’t just about raising awareness, it’s also about influencing government structures and public institutions to create long-term solutions.
Beyond community-based and political advocacy, Flipflopi introduced me to the great power of innovation in addressing environmental issues. I was particularly inspired, during and after the expedition journey, to learn of plans for the establishment of a plastic recycling centre in Lamu, at the boat building home of Flipflopi. The plan has now come to fruition and utilises additional recycled materials to enhance boat-building techniques. Participating in discussions on how waste could be transformed into resources has changed my perception of pollution from being an intractable problem to becoming an opportunity for creative thinking and innovative solutions.
Going forward, to expand its global reach, the Flipflopi project is committed to sharing knowledge and practice. Open-source, free toolkits are available for recycled plastic boat building or for starting a plastic recycling project. These efforts will ensure that Flipflopi’s impact extends far beyond Lake Victoria. This expansive approach reinforces Flipflopi’s belief that sustainable solutions emerge from collaborative collective effort and shared innovation. Seeing Flipflopi’s firsthand example encourages people and groups to think about ways they, too, can contribute to similar initiatives in their own community and space.
Circular economy principles are not just about waste reduction, but they are also about reimagining how we interact with materials in our everyday lives. Learning about how communities repurposed plastic waste into marketable products, from furniture to bricks, opened my eyes to the economic potential of sustainability and has made me wonder how different industries could integrate similar practices to create lasting change.
Writing about my journey around the lake, and so far with Flipflopi, has made me reflect on the privilege of this profound learning experience. Through the creative use of a recycled plastic dhow, I have seen how art can raise awareness, mobilise communities and influence policy. Now I understand that art is not merely a form of expression, but it is an inclusive tool for transformation.
The project’s continued efforts to scale up innovations, establish recycling centres, and influence global policy, continue to encourage me to remain engaged in environmental advocacy. My experiences motivate me to explore new ways to combine creativity, education and activism to address pressing challenges in my life and to continue to encourage others to do the same.
In conclusion, the Flipflopi project has, and continues to, demonstrate that even the most urgent challenging global issues can begin to be tackled through creativity, collaboration and a renewed commitment to act. I’m able to see that we all have a role to play in shaping a more just, equal and sustainable world. The Lake Victoria journey initiated and then deepened my, and many other people’s, appreciation for the power of art. It has empowered communities, and me, to act in ways they may never have imagined before. Moving forward we remain determined to continue to use artistic and community-driven approaches to contribute to meaningful environmental change and conflict transformation.[1]
In appreciation, I share with you the collective statement of the Flipiflopi team commitment:
“We, at the Flipflopi Project, are proud of our Lamu heritage and have been championed as a pioneering environmental and social initiative. We concentrate on combating plastic pollution (on Lamu Island, the archipelago and parts of the adjoining mainland) while promoting sustainable practices and circular economy principles. Art for us is a powerful collaborator that we have used since our inception alongside deep community engagement to inspire action, influence and drive sustainable change.”
Endnote
[1] Additional articles about the Flipflopi expedition to Lake Victoria can be accessed here and here.
Bibliography
Biginagwa, Fares, Bahati Mayoma, Yvonne Shashoua, Kristian Syberg, and Farhan Khan. “First Evidence of Microplastics in the African Great Lakes: Recovery from Lake Victoria Nile perch and Nile Tilapia.” Journal of Great Lakes Research, 2015. Accessed 8 Feb. 2025.
“Flipflopi Lake Victoria Expedition Impact.” Accessed 8 Feb. 2025.
“The Flipiflopi Story.” The Flipiflopi Project Accessed 12 Jan. 2024.
*Mick Warwick was born in Banbury, England. After completing his education, he enlisted in the British Army. During a full career in the armed services, he had extensive and broad-ranging experiences in programme, project and operations management. He has led teams across diverse landscapes—from peacekeeping missions to sustainability initiatives. He currently works as a volunteer for the Flipflopi Project and as an outdoor activity facilitator with Rift Valley Adventures in Kenya. Discovering his love for, and the power of, storytelling he has extensively woven narratives into his leadership practice in both adventure and social impact projects. The process of crafting stories that inspire action, stimulate thought and connect people is one of his passions. Whether it’s managing large-scale expeditions, championing sustainability, or sharing experiences from the mountains to the sea, Mick believes everything is a story—and he’s committed to shaping and sharing it. You can contact Mick at https://www.theflipflopi.com/ and https://riftvalleyadventures.com/.
Copyright © 2025 Mick Warwick
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #31, June 2025
e-ISSN: 2409-7411
This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
