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Exclusive: Manty Sulma Marah, the woman whose passion now helps protect the environment



Manty Sulma Marah is a young woman with a seemingly far fetched dream but unlike most dreamers, she was determined to bring it to life by any means necessary.


Manty Marah is a designer of used stuffs that other people have discarded such as slippers, sandals, broken chairs etc. but she didn't start out all knowing or with the idea of it becoming a trade. She started out of necessity.


Manty who hails from a poor background explained to this medium that her craft of designing, reared its head when she would see old, worn out trousers and think up ways to transform them into beautiful skirts or shorter designed trousers, that people seemed to appreciate.



That became an outlet due to the unexpected illness of her father which made her drop out of school and couldn't fulfill her plans of completion of higher education and thereby couldn't continue her work as a part-time teacher. Despite all this happening at the time, she never stopped creating new designs.


It was during this phase that she was spotted by an admirer of her talent, who decided to sponsor her to study home economics at Young Women Christian Association, to ensure she acquires more skills to aid her work. It was during her training that she discovered she could put her transformation skills onto other wears like slippers, shoes and eventually chairs in 2014.


As she got better at it, she had the urge to test herself more nd she enrolled to learn tailoring, thinking rightly that this could better her wrapping skills and this led to the beginning of her upholstery work in 2021.


In full designer mode, she decided to share her recently acquired knowledge with younger versions of her and it was this that led to the establishment of Sulma's design, where young people interested in arts and designing could learn.


Currently Manty is focusing on recycling tires, chairs and other similar items and transforming them into beautiful furniture as her passion project and in hopes of improving environment protection through limiting of wastages.





According to Manty, her greatest challenge is the lack of support in her work, except for friends and relatives who believe in her but she lamented that acquiring materials used for her work sometimes prove itself as a herculean task given the cost of it.


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