One day we will miss city council askaris

 Maybe one day the much maligned city council askari will become extinct, and then we will miss him with as much nostalgia as I miss the watch repairer and the tailor

There was a time, in days gone by, when the watch repairer was a man of stature. You could never miss him, huddled behind a wooden counter on a city street, peering intently like genius into the bowels of a wristwatch.

Watches were something of a novelty to the African. Either you wound them up, or they were automatic. They just didn’t tell time – they were a fashion piece, a status symbol, an indication that the wearer went to school.

They spawned a whole industry - shops, hawkers, repairers and thieves. Many a man, now sadly retrenched, wooed the wife and raised kids from yanking watches off wrists on city streets and bus windows.

Then automatic watches and mobile phones came and the watch died, and with it, the most intellectual of handymen – the watch repairer.

The last time I met one, my old man had sent me to get his 1987 timepiece repaired. The watch repairer was an Indian mzee dozing in a shop reeking of advanced rigor mortis. The old master grabbed the watch with relish, sighing with near phallic pleasure as he tore it apart – a lover separated too long from his flame. It was obvious he hadn’t touched a watch in ages.

Sadly, I never got the darn thing repaired because it was cheaper to buy a shiny piece of junk at a fraction of the cost of repair. The piece of junk, predictably, didn’t last.

The watch repairer is among a host of city professionals whose careers were consigned to the dustbin as we ‘developed.’ In this class is the typewriter repairer, the tailor and the cobbler. Typewriters went with the wind, apart from a few government offices where they still pound away stubbornly.

The few tailors and cobblers who remain are so expensive, or hopeless, that it is cheaper to fling your torn shoe or clothing in a dustbin and buy mutumba.

But the one profession I miss is the clothing shop assistant. He was always a man had worked for his mostly Indian employer for decades and was an age mate and friend to the boss.

He knew fabrics like the back of his wrinkled hand and could figure out your shirt, coat and trouser size by merely gazing speculatively at your frame for seconds. When you picked a suit, he would say, “Try this shirt and match it with this tie.” Most times, his choices were perfect. Occasionally, he stole from the boss. I mean, what are friends for?!

Annoyingly, the clothing shop has been replaced by supermarkets that stock Chinese junk and a host of ‘stalls’ whose shelves are filled with fire hazards from Dubai. These two are staffed by bored ‘assistants’ who are never there when you need them. And when they finally emerge, you realise they know zero about fabrics, can’t get a size right, and don’t give a hoot.

Anyway, maybe one day the much maligned city council askari will become extinct, and then we will miss him with as much nostalgia as I miss the watch repairer and the tailor who took eons to patch up torn trousers.