Nairobi food joints and their fight to win more customers

Fredrick Musyoka(L) and Joseph Kiilu at their work station in Kenyatta Market. Kiilu is one of the men tasked with preying on customers outside the market and driving them to the stall for delicacies.

Are you hungry but have no money? Well, you might consider paying Kenyatta Market a ‘random’ visit at lunch time. Here, you will eat to your fill of ‘nyama choma’ served with enthusiasm and without paying a single cent courtesy of business owners fighting for customers.

Tasting is free, they say, and if you are not satisfied with meat from one stall, just move on to the next, and the next. When you get to the seventh stall, wash your hands without soap, pick a tooth pick and walk majestically back to your place of work, head high and with the scent of roast meat all over you as evidence that you have had lunch.