Modern markets? But we have soko mjinga!

By Ted Malanda

I suspect that God intended for me to be a street hawker, reason he smeared a ridiculously thin layer of dust on my backside and called it a sitting allowance.

So picture my discomfort when, barely two minutes into a journey to Kakamega, I learnt that the ‘shuttle’ I had boarded was a matatu in disguise. The seats were as hard as the flat end of an iron box.

I made the discovery at a petrol station. My discomfort grew because the driver spent ten minutes shaking the matatu from side to side so the petrol tank could accommodate an extra litre of diesel.

I don’t know where Kenyans got the idea that a 45-litre fuel tank can swallow two extra litres of fuel if you shake the car from side to side. But then again, why would one need to cram an extra litre into a fuel tank like it is 1957 and the next petrol station is 150km away?

Such are Kenyan peculiarities. Unfortunately, because they have not been scientifically studied, planners always forget to factor them in development plans.

If you travel across the country, you will not fail to notice that the Government is wasting millions of money constructing ‘ modern markets’ through the Constituency Development Fund. Who lied to them that Kenyans want modern markets?

Even in Nairobi where people are allegedly modern, attempts to create modern markets failed because citizens prefer to buy tomatoes on city streets from hawkers and at dusty roadside markets in their estates. So the new market stalls just decay and lie idle.

The reasons for this are not hard to fathom. Just the other day, we got everything from the backward. It is colonialists who brought the ridiculous idea that we should walk a kilometre to a modern market to buy two eggs.

That is why nearly every housing estate they established had a market centre. But once we threw wazungu out and moved in with our kiosks, the shopping centres and their modern markets died. Adams Arcade, Caledonia, Karen and Langata shopping centres have this dead feel because everyone wants to park their Benzes in Nairobi West and buy fish by the roadside.

Now imagine the utter waste of spending millions to erect modern markets in village towns.

The government will erect its modern markets, but we will continue buying our vegetables at soko mjinga where the wares are spread on the ground like it has been for generations.

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