Dennis Kioko

In Kenya, when the government first announced measures against Coronavirus - many people on social media pointed out that they would especially affect the poor. More specifically, it has been said that if the poor didn’t get help soon, they would turn to crime.

This should be good, right? It shows that we care about the poor? Yet, it raises some dark questions. Was the concern here really about the poor? Why is it that we only remember the poor when bad things are happening?

I know a number of people who are going through rough patches due to the measures to combat Coronavirus. There is reduced spending by many businesses and equally by many individuals, and this is directly having an effect on numerous individuals and businesses whose income has effectively dried off. It does not help that the government barely has a welfare fund - when times were good, we spent away all the money.

Normally, these people would not be classified as poor. But they are really bearing the brunt of Cor…

In Nairobi, beers are usually served cold, or sometimes warm depending on the mood of who’s serving you.

Outside Nairobi, warm beers may come as a standard and you may have to specify that you indeed would prefer a cold beer, as I once found in Naivasha.

I was at an infamous bar next to the Nairobi - Nakuru highway and this was my first time ordering a KB Lager. By the time I realised I had been served a warm beer, it had already been opened and the only option was a second bottle of cold beer then I could mix half-and half.

It did not escape my attention that the waitress serving me slightly hesitated when I asked for a cold beer. I got the impression that it was taboo to order a cold KB Lager.

For many people in Africa, more so Sub-Saharan Africa, local manufacturing is a concept we are very much in love with. We wish that our countries manufactured 90 percent of what we used locally, and by doing so, our feeling is that our countries would become developed countries.


Of course, manufacturing 90% of all locally consumed products means we would only import 10%. Early in school, we are taught that 1+3=4, and likewise 4-3=1.

Equally, if by manufacturing 90% locally means that we import very little, then the assumption is that importing very little means we manufacture a lot locally. And so, many people call for the banning of imports to promote local manufacturing.

Most governments understand that banning imports is hard, and so what they do is raise taxes on them. But interesting enough, raising taxes on imports does not lead to increased local manufacturing. Instead, it leads to a decrease in local manufacturing.

In 1981, manufacturing contributed to a quarter of sub-Sa…

It once used to be that the more you paid for an electric appliance, the better the quality you got.

Then, the world moved to China and it simultaneously became cheaper to make quality appliances, but incredibly cheap to make cheap appliances(here cheap means poor quality than low cost) Turkey also became a global manufacturing hub for appliances, which meant that we now had thousands of brands to choose from since anyone with some money could manufacture easily.

More choice, I am shocked to announce, has not been necessarily better.

So if paying more for an iron box or cooker does not mean you are paying for better quality, what does it mean? Well, it means you are paying for more features, including a long list of confusing features you may not need. Even more confusing is that sometimes the extra features are available in the cheaper product, but they are hidden or disabled!

This post is the last in these series of my first EuroTrip. You can click here to read my previous post on my real experience in Madrid. https://blog.denniskioko.com/2020/01/eurotrip-madrid-in-2-days-it-has-its.html

I was headed to the airport, en route to my final destination - Mallorca pronounced as Majorca (with a Y in place of the J). The island of Mallorca had ended up in my itinerary by accident. When exploring cheap flights between Madrid and Munich - my starting point, it appeared that all flights went through Mallorca. It, therefore, made sense to have a stopover at the island.

Again, the Madrid airport is packed during summer and it would be a good idea not to have any check-in luggage for a European stop unless you love queueing in long and winding queues. The Air Norwegian flight between Madrid and Mallorca was hassle free and comes highly recommended.

This article is part of a series of my visit to different European cities. Read about my visit to Barcelona here. 

Like Milan, Madrid is another capital city with not much to offer, unless you are a football fan. However, unlike Milan, Madrid does have some soul and even prides itself as the gay capital of Europe, which is a title that Berlin also claims.

My transport option from the airport in Madrid was the subway, which I found dependable. Alighting at the Plaza De Espana, I slightly got lost before making my way to the Nemrut restaurant for a late lunch and early drink, followed by laundry at the highly recommended Open Wash Lavandería Autoservicio. It is more automated than my other laundry at Milan and I had learned not to shrink my clothes, yet, the setting I chose was not as satisfactory in cleaning my clothes.