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Bookshops turn to selling mattresses as pandemic hits

Patmat Bookshop that has been converted into a mattress store. [Kipsang Joseph,Standard]
From afar, the four-storeyed building that hosts Vision Academy in Subukia, Nakuru county, is magnificent, a perfect private school with playing equipment doting the lower part of the playing field. Until one gets nearer, the impact of Covid-19 pandemic unfolds.
 
Its entire two-acre playing field has been ploughed, teachers have made classrooms a home. A building on the furthest corner turned into a water bottling plant where teachers are engaged in the new venture. The water will be sold at one of the branches of Nakuru Book Point bookshops which is in the process of changing business.

The playing field will be planted with vegetables to sustain the teachers running without income as the school no longer generates money.

“It is sad. We are hardest hit by the pandemic. I run a school and two bookshops in town and mine is a double tragedy. The school is on its knees and the bookshop is doing badly off. That is why I have to convert it to a water shop once I get all clearance and licences so that teachers will operate and earn something to sustain them,” said Albert Kimani, the proprietor who doubles up as the chairperson of the Kenya Booksellers Association, Nakuru Chapter.

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