When he is not in his studio in Kitisuru, making lamps, coffee bar stools, or the coffee bars themselves, all out of recycled materials, you will find Oliver Weichelt in the kitchen making fresh meals for his wife, the German artist Milena Weichelt and himself.
“I love to cook,” Oliver tells the BDLife when we visit his home and taste his freshly-made banana and lemon sweet bread that he has just baked. He had even made the dough, rolling and pounding it until it was ready to mix in the almost-spoilt bananas.
“This is the best way to use bananas that most people would throw away. But it’s an example of my philosophy of recycling,” he says as he takes it out of the oven for us to have a piece or two.
Having spent much of his professional life as a trained economist, doing feasibility studies all over Africa, from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi to Uganda, Kenya, and even South Sudan, but once his employer ran out of money, and declared bankruptcy, Oliver was out of a job and had to start a new life, he told us cheerfully.
“I’m an optimist, so I had no choice but to see my situation as an opportunity to use another set of my skills as a trained graphic designer,” he says.
“I’m also assisted by my friend Kahindi who I work closely with,” he says, an amazingly humble man who has been blind for the past five years.
So, when he says Kahindi assists him, he means it as an understatement since he is fully prepared to give him all the credit for implementing his ideas. That includes assembling of all the recycled spare parts that they collect from friends’ garages where the owners stash away what they see as ‘useless’ auto junk.
They collect all the ‘junk’ and take it home. They might stop at a junk yard or two to look for more ‘useless’ auto spares since Oliver maximises on their utility when he is making his remarkable lamps.
Sculptor Oliver Weichelt's coffee bar made from recycled garage materials at hit Kitisuru home on July 24, 2024.
Photo credit: Margaretta wa Gacheru | Nation Media Group
“I have special containers for all of my gears,” he says, acknowledging they work with Kahindi work hand in glove to create unique Lamps. Together they sort out the spares, various ones depending on where he intends to use them. But it’s Kahindi who takes Oliver’s ideas and implements them in material forms.
What the BDLife finds most amazing about this man is his resilient spirit that refuses to be defeated by the unfortunate challenges that he has encountered with dark forces that would defeat most men or even women, be it the blindness and other medical issues so difficult we don’t touch, but which the bankruptcy, or the various other medical issues have taken his time.
But then, he has an equally remarkable woman who is just as resilient, intuitive, and resourceful as her spouse. They tell us about their early years of the millennium, but they didn’t take long after they met for them to figure they were meant for each other. And even after he learned that he was soon to go blind, she didn’t flee from the rough days that would certainly lay ahead.
What has been helpful is that they both have is a positive attitude so they are both unbelievably warm, friendly and personable.
At the same time, both steer clear of one another during working hours respectful of one another’s space. It is as if both know the value an artist places on the value of silence since it’s in those quiet hours that the artist can draw more easily on he or she imagination which then lets in those fresh new ideas that each can work on, wherever they are.
But there is one project that Oliver completed recently with the help of an architect, contactor, Kahindi and Milena. And that is the construction of their home. It’s a mini-mansion that he designed, including a large seating area outside nearly as large as their spacious three-bed room interior.
“We spend most of our time here seated outside, comfortably sheltered where we are still outside but under a solid roof, well-protected from the rain or storm,” Milena tells us as she hands us freshly-baked banana bread, made by Oliver.
“He invents his recipes but he also loves consulting cook books for ideas,” she says, delighted she married a man who loves cooking just as he loves inventing unique and beautiful lamps.
