The Hustle Continues

Navigating the narrow sidewalks of downtown Nairobi can be quite a chore in the evenings. It tests your patience, what with all the weaving and sashaying you have to endure around a heaving web of humanity. There is hardly space for two generous strides.

So you walk with a heightened awareness of your surrounding. You just have to. Not unless you want to take on a legion of hawkers Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan style should you innocuously step on their wares.

No amount of apologies ever works with this bunch. So you tread with caution. The spaces between tarmac, and the shop entrances are a treasure trove of stories. You need only observe, and like a ball of string the stories unravel. You will see distraught shopkeepers nursing forlorn looks reminiscing of yesteryear's when order dictated customers could walk into their shops unimpeded.

A look that decries the extortion that is the license fees they pay to the city council for business. Licenses that should guarantee their customers an easy access to transact in their shops or window shops in the very least. Then we have the hawkers who've annexed city pavements, converting them into sprawling markets. They cause a racket that competes resolutely with the blaring horns of matatus and touts issuing catcalls to passersby.

The hawkers do raving business, displaying anything from counterfeit cutlery to mtumba. You may frown at their wanton disregard of the rights of walkers in town, but you’ve got to acknowledge their industry. The hawkers are forever edgy. Fidgety to a fault. They cast stares hither and thither always on the ready to spring at the sight of council askaris who pounce unannounced every now and then.

All hell breaks loose when the askaris strike. Hawkers run for it, leaving their lean display of wares behind. Once in a while, the askaris land a catch in the melee that ensues. Onlookers stare blankly from a safe distance as the askaris gleefully haul the few unfortunate culprits, and a mosaic of abandoned wares into the back of an ever hungry run down van that never tires of swallowing.

In the aftermath, this enclave of the city dips into a lull for a few minutes, quickly springing to life soon after.


Courtesy of Richard Miriti