Nairobi West has retained its reputation as the alcohol headquarters of Nairobi. A rehab nearby is long overdue. Drunkards are famously impulsive, the reason hawkers hover around and about the many bars that are active every day. While it is understandable, for hawkers to sell food, and maybe flowers, there is stuff hawkers peddle which would sit well inside a hardware store in downtown Nairobi than in bar on a Friday night. But it seems in Nairobi West, you can sell everything in a bar, except may be a coffin. Good enough, this is what Nairobi’s famous 24-hour economy is all about.
Here are 10 odd things sold in pubs at night, and not necessarily in Nairobi West...
1. Secateurs These are hand pruners. Which begs the question whether there are people who while drinking in pubs, on a Friday night remember they have not pruned their compounds in a while. And thus the hawkers have come in handy... One is curious though, how many people drinking in Nairobi pubs have live fences around their homes worth pruning? Besides, can we all agree that a pair of secateurs is a dangerous weapon in a drunkard’s hands at night.
2. Door size zebra painting
Some of these paintings look like they were done by untalented two-year olds in art classes meant to keep them awake after drinking copious cups of fermented uji. In any case, is it constitutional to hung ugly ugly paintings on the walls of rented houses? And who exactly feels so strongly artsy that they are moved to buying such monstrous offerings?
3. Giant bathroom mirrors
It is too much work carrying any large glass when sober. One can only imagine the mental and physical exertion that goes into carrying a mirror the size of a lorry windscreen from bar to bar. And how do hawkers expect the buyer to carry the large mirror home when drunk? And who buys mirrors in bars anyway?
4. Life size calendars
In this age of everything from menses counter being on your cellphone, just who buys wall calendars in August? Hawkers have such faith in drunkards and their wanting sense of judgment considering some do nothing else but sell calendars!
5. Dawa ya mende
Pests are a menace. Bedbugs are eating and drinking from the bodies of university students in our campuses. Komba mwiko rule our homes. So much so that they have stressed people into alcoholism. May be the reason Nairobi hawkers want you save your life. They promise their roach killers will permanently destroy the pesky roaches for good. Plus, their pesticides are odourless. Win-win.
6. Full spanner kit
When you are drinking, enjoying good female company-and the beer really tests sweet now after 50 bottles — and then someone shoves a full-kit of spanners on your face... now that’s what is called throwing a spanner into the works!
7. Toddler girl gear
Since the bars are pretty much in open spaces, it is understandable, you may be forced to buy a sweater or fake Kenyatta leather jacket. But, in Nairobi, hawkers are moving clothes’ stall, just that one never knows why some specialize in selling toddler girl’s clothes. Not boys. Just girls. From small tiny undies to cold weather jackets and aprons. Is it that you are meant to look at the hooker and instantly think- at midnight — ‘My baby girl Violet Mukonyo...she needs new clothes (Hick!)’
8. Meza Hawkers ferrying huge tables, including huge table drums the kind fashionable in Kenya in 1980, makes someone wonder how, again, they intend the drunkard to explain to the long-suffering wife why they brought another table home. Or they’re meant for bachelors still furnishing their bedsitters?
9. Nyundo Now, tell me if you are not a mtu wa mjengo how you would start bargaining for a nyundo with the hawker displaying how heavy it is just slightly above your eye brow?
10. Weighing scale 101The hawker skips the butcher and comes straight to you with a weighing scale on his shoulders and drops the ratili smack in the middle of a sea of drinks and asks: “Toa sauti uuziwe.” Huh?