Vendors speak volumes about your county

Ted malanda

I spent a couple of days at the Shimba Hills National Reserve recently on an errand related to putting food on my table.

By the third day, I had become an animal farm after ticks converted several parts of my body, especially the area between my toes, into a wildlife habitat. By Sunday, I had had it with the bush.

So we left the Park and drove into Kwale town at midday. I was salivating badly for the Sunday papers. Strangely, there wasn’t a vendor in site, not even at the bus terminus. After making lots of enquiries in my hopeless Kiswahili, I found one.

He was sitting in the shade of an old tree, enjoying a game of bao. The newspapers were finished, he said. No, I had absolutely no hope of getting a paper at that hour. He was impatient to get back to his game.

Sales pitch

At my home town, Mumias, I learnt that parking your car by the roadside and waving your arms like a lunatic isn’t very helpful. The vendors simply won’t notice you. The guys sort of congregate at a spot far from the road and chat away. So if you want a newspaper, you have to go get it — it’s as simple as that.

But in Masii, near Machakos, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that newspaper vendors are young women. They don’t sit under trees and chat but run after every approaching vehicle and make a sales pitch. Where were the young men, I wondered?

Piece of meat

At my village market, newspapers hardly arrive before 11am, which is a bit odd because they are sourced from the neighbouring county, a mere nine kilometres away. It would be understandable if it were distant Lodwar, where newspapers arrive at 5pm. Lodwar, therefore, isn’t a place you read your paper over a morning cup of tea. You read the daily news at night in a bar.

And then there are places where newspapers simply never arrive unless they are wrapped around a piece of meat. In such places, the first thing people ask visitors is, "Do you have a paper?" They don’t care how old it is. They read it sparingly from cover to cover, savouring every letter, taking days to accomplish the feat before reluctantly passing it to friends.

Every inch

There are also places where newspapers arrive on time, alright, but are never sold. It’s nothing to do with an aversion to reading. The people simply can’t afford it. That’s why each paper comes stapled together because otherwise, the vendor would ‘rent’ them out at say Sh5 to broke but eager readers.

Now contrast that with Nairobi where you can get the next day’s newspaper before midnight. In this city, vendors have mapped out every inch of space where a client could come from. You don’t look for a paper — they thrust it in your face. If they don’t have the one you want, they dash off like a bullet and deliver it in seconds. Is it any wonder, then, that this is Kenya’s richest county?