Life & Work

Exciting weekend for local kiters

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Kite fans at the Ngong Race Course during the Kite for Peace Festivals held on February 10, 2013. PHOTO | FILE

Melissa Muraya was looking for a flagship event for Urban Live, her events and communications company when she heard of kite festivals.

Like most children growing up in Kenya in the 90s, kites were hand-made of polythene papers and newspapers attached to sticks and flown using a string. “Whether or not they flew was a whole other issue. We only had bigger kites in the shops,” she says.

It was while discussing with an aunt who had studied abroad that she found out about kite festivals. In her research of the same, she was stunned by the size of the kites and the number of people the events attracted.

“I wanted to bring in an event that I also would want to attend,” she explains. The fourth edition of the Kenya Kite festival will be held this Sunday (March 14) at the Nairobi Polo grounds in Jamhuri with an expected attendance of about 1000 people. Last year’s event had 800 people.

The Washington State international kite Festival is one such event. The week long kiting affair attracts tens of thousands of enthusiasts, both professional and amateur kiters.

Extravaganza

Bristol International Kite Festival, in the UK and one of the largest in Europe, will be held in August. Organisers are planning an action-packed aerial extravaganza with international kite guests expected from as far as Kuwait and America to join flyers and enthusiasts from across Europe. The festival attracts over 50,000 people.

The arena programmes will feature spectacular flying displays, kite fighting battles, artistic kites, breath taking synchronised routines flown to music and awesome power kites as well as colourful ground-based air creations and banners of all shapes and sizes.

The previous editions have attracted expert kiters Ashley and Mari Ware-Lane in 2013. The duo showcased various designs from Nemo (a clown fish), a purple Teddy bear, a ghost kite and a squid. The South Africa couple were in the country for the second edition of the kite festival dubbed ‘Kites for Peace’.

Unique kites

Driven by his need to have unique kites, kiting enthusiast Ashley started making kites that he could not find in his native South Africa. It was as he was making these that he fell in love with the single line kites and recently created a 3.5 metre frog.

For the first edition, Melissa and her team brought in professional kite makers David and Susan Gomberg of American-based Gomberg Kites. “The kiting community is tight knit. When I was looking for kiters for the first edition, the people I contacted referred me to the Gombergs,” says Melissa.

Not strangers to each other, one of the Ware-Lane’s kites dubbed the Blue Meanie was by David Gomberg. “We have attended kite festivals all over the world, the biggest one being in New York that drew a crowd of over 200,000 people,” says David, though the Kenyan version is a much smaller event.

In Africa, the Cape Town International Kite Festival is the biggest and attracts over 20,000 visitors, including some of the biggest names in kiting in South Africa and the world, who fly in to show off their magnificent kite creations.

Giant kite

The Dubai Kite Festival was held in January attracting over 70 international kite flyers from 25 different countries.

The kite festivals showcase kites from homemade kites to giant showcase kites. The winds determine the size of the kite that can be lifted, as some tend to stretch as long as 10 feet with a similar width.

In 2013, during the Bristol Kite festival, the world record for the largest kite flown was broken by a 200 kilogramme kite which measured 1500 square metres.

The Mollusc Octopus is bigger than the 3D Kuwaiti Flag – the previous record holder – by 418 square metres. The Kuwaiti flag, which was made in New Zealand by Peter Lynn Kites appeared at the Bristol International Kite Festival in the U.K. the flag was the largest kite ever flown, has a total lifting area of 950 m² (10,225.7 ft²).

When laid flat, it has a total area of 1019 m² (10,968.4 ft²). The kite measured 25.475 m (83 ft 7 in) long and 40 m (131ft 3 in) wide. The kite was flown at the Kuwait Hala Festival in Flag Square, Kuwait City, Kuwait on 15 February 2005.

Handmade art kites, giant creature kites, kite trains, stunt kites and even kite buggies are some of the popular choices that can be seen littering the sky in the events.