06/12/2024
🤣
"I am ever fascinated by these trading centres in rural Kenya. A centre with a handful of businesses but sustains the entire sublocation:
- two poorly stocked agrovets for the farmers.
- three hotels that only serve tea, mandazi, chapati and beans because everyone eats at home. Over tea, people congregate here to watch News or any important function that is on TV.
- two bars where you are likely to find your former teacher and your uncles who will proceed to extort or evict you depending on how well or badly you are doing in life.🤪
- three shops, one of which is run by a retired police officer and it is here that the day's newspaper is dropped/collected.
- a salon with bare minimum equipment.
- a kinyozi that has a cow's tail as the only cleaning agent; utaenda kuogea kwenyu.
- a tailor who is overwhelmed by unfinished assignments.
- two privately-ran churches who have rented space at the centre because mainstream churches own their own spaces slightly away from the shops.
- a medical clinic ran by a retired nurse.
- a cobbler stationed outside one of the three shops, he also goes to look for change for the retired police officer up there in his shop.
- an electrician whose shop is flooded with uncollected TVs and radios.
- a butchery with a single slab, where meat is sold in precariously small portions because most customers are just picking “ka quarter” for a single meal and livestock is slaughtered on specific days, preceded by a public announcement "nìgùgathìnjwo Waìrì".
- a hardware store with a cement sack and iron sheets displayed outside, a clear sign of its success, and yet, the seller doubles as a boda boda rider to make ends meet.
- a solitary posho mill that rattles noisily throughout the day, grinding maize into flour as gossip flows freely among those waiting for their turn. The operator has lost 70% of his hearing so you have to shout for him to hear.
- a small photocopy shop that also serves as the de facto cyber café and movie shop, has one computer and a printer that constantly jams, much to the operator’s frustration.
People here know one another and a stranger is easily and quickly identified. They will give you that look, telling you that you are new here.
Young people in this area are encouraged to look for love far away because, you never know which doors your father has knocked in the past.
The buildings themselves seem to groan under the weight of their history. Most, if not all, are single-story structures built decades ago, with walls that have surrendered their colour to the elements. Paint peels like scabs from their surfaces, revealing patches of cement and brick beneath.
The wooden doors, long warped by rain and sun, creak ominously, as though protesting every push and pull. Floors, worn smooth by years of foot traffic, expose the occasional crack or hole, while ceilings sag dangerously or have entirely collapsed in corners. Rust eats away at the corrugated iron roofing, leaving perforations that filter light and rain in equal measure.
The air carries a distinct scent of age. Kuna kaharufu huwa kako hapo Mung'etho. Musty, earthy aroma, mingled with the faint, sharp tang of rusting metal and the ever-present dust kicked up by passing livestock. It is the smell of life that has persisted despite time’s slow erosion, a testament to resilience and resourcefulness.
