One of the rarest of all Samburu objects — one believed to have given the community its name — is now on permanent exhibition in an East African school.

Called a samburr, it is a woman’s bag used for storing personal possessions while similar bags are used by warriors for carrying honey from the hive.

The bag, deemed priceless by Samburu expert, jewellery-maker and author Rhodia Mann, is among 60 pieces now on show at the International School of Kenya (ISK), in Nairobi, forming the Rhodia Mann Museum of Samburu Culture.

It opened this week.

Mann, now aged 75, who was born in Kenya after her Polish father and Romanian mother fled to Africa as refugees in 1942, was as an adult adopted as a Samburu and given the name Noongishu, which translates literally as “cattle” but within the community signifies a respected woman who has her own wealth and does not need a man.

“Well, I certainly do not need a man but I don’t have much wealth,” laughed Mann, who divorced some 45 years ago and never remarried.

Having collected Samburu objects over the past 50 years, Mann has presented the better part of them to the school where they are on permanent display in the new museum.

The smallest is probably a pair of handmade tweezers used by the men — famous narcissists affectionately known as Butterflies — to pluck their eyebrows; the largest a marriage necklace from 1900; the oldest another necklace containing beads from around 1830; and the rarest certainly that samburr.

“I have lived with the Samburu and I haven’t seen another in 50 years,” Mann told The EastAfrican.

You can view her astonishing collection of the exceptional, the practical and the beautiful by prior arrangement with ISK’s Linda Henderson, on +254 (0)733 639363.