Skip to main content

Cunning Nairobi Hawkers

Have you ever wondered how easy it is to de-fraud the public? Do you think that you need to be a politician to defraud the public? It is quite easy to defraud the public, and secondly, politicians work very hard and in fact most of their income is handed to them on a silver platter, been the gate keepers of Government contracts. Whether politicans defraud the public shall be left to another day. As for how easy it is to defraud the public, Jeffrey Acher, in one of his novels, illustrates a couple of guys who send in a classified Ad to the dailies reading "Deadline near. Send your money quickly." According to Archer, the guys received money. Whether it was just a piece of imagination or an actual occurence we leave it to the author.

Yesterday, I happened to take a Kenya Bus Services Management bus, yes , one of the buses responsible for intoducing a large hole on half of my pin striped suit with their crude seats. I boarded the bus travelling from Teleposta towers, previous headquarters of Telkom to their new headquarters of the even stranger Telkom-Orange based at Telkom Plaza. As I wasted time waiting for the bus to get full , some hawkers boarded the bus to peddle thier wares. It was a waste of time because the strange frenchman who I had a scheduled interview with at Orange would later decide that his schedule had better meetings than a scheduled one with some small time journalist.

The hawkers, are not your ordinary hawker. This hawkers have choreographed voices to start with. The mostly male hawkers, have a deep crooning baritone voice that makes you believe that you are part of a perfromance which you would perform better by buying from them. It takes talent too, to be a hawker.

This hawkers were selling airtime. You would think anyone who needs airtime already purchased it on the ground. Wrong!.The hawkers announced that they were selling special airtime vouchers that increased the chances of one winning the ongoing "Masonko na Safaricom" promotion. This sepcial cards had a different design from the normal ones and would receive higher consideration when selecting the promotion winners.

My fellow passengers, on a Kibera bound bus purchased the airtimes in droves. Kibera, fellow readers (yeah, am a reader of this blog!) is a slum once touted to be the biggest in Africa and attracted tourists from far and wide including Barrack Obama and Chris Rock. That was until a census held an year ago showed that the actual popualtion was a tenth of the estimated million. Maybe that's why it took an year to get the results released, they had to verify Kibera's population!. And so the Kibera destined passengers purchased the airtime in high dominions of Ksh. 100, maybe hoping that their probability of winning was almost 1 (in mathematics, a probability of 1 is equivalent to 100%).

Well, those keen enough should notice that Safaricom is busy undertaking a promotion to wound up its 10 year party (More on this on the next issue of CIO East Africa magazine). As part of the fanfare, Safaricom has decided to re-brand and re-design its cards and this day happened to be day 1 of the new cards. The hawkers must have sang all the way to their M-PESA accounts.

Meanwhile, I hope the reason the Orange CEO decided that I should waste 2 hours but not see him was because he was engrossed in a meeting with one of this hawkers on how to sell to the market!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why More Kenyans are Switching To Craft Beers

Dire Straits from Bateleur is one of the most popular craft beers in Kenya. High quality ingredients mean more refined flavours I have been running an experiment for months now. Have you ever considered that you could be having a much better beer than what you had last weekend? Most people don’t think so, but the many who have undergone my experiment have found this to be the case. The experiment involved trying out craft beers, and many of my friends found that they liked beers from Bateleur better. These include Dire Straits - a medium beer,  or Bila Shaka which has higher alcohol content for those looking for a punch. Even ladies, many who confess to hate the taste of beer, have found these beers to be pleasant and even drinkable. Kenya is truly in a new beer age. 

Rather than positivity, Kenya needs to face its problems

Traffic between Thika and Nairobi as a result of Highway Bumps and reliance on the road  as the sole link between the two towns. Arguing the traffic is better than in Lagos or encouraging people to use the road earlier doesn't solve the problem A fierce debate springs up every now and then on development in Kenya, or in other developing countries. There are two schools of thought - those who argue that a lot needs to be done and what is there is barely much, and those who feel a lot of progress has been made. Those who focus on the progress will point out that at least Kenya (or another country) is better than its neighbouring or other countries in its status when it comes to some aspect such as roads, or education. While this is true, it however presents a lot of danger as we will discuss shortly.

How to Make Your Own Sparkling Water

Buying your own kit means you need to carbonate it in a fridge or freezer since Carbon Dioxide best dissolves at temperatures around zero.  I have been making my own sparkling water for about a month now.  It started with a love for carbonated water, but being appalled by the price - about KSh. 80 per 700 ml recyclable glass bottle. Sparkling water is sold as a premium drink.  This got me researching into what it really takes to make your own sparkling water. 

Why Humanity Hasn't Learned From the Covid Pandemic

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic began ravaging the world, succeeding the 1918 flu pandemic.  Many found it unbelievable that despite all the scientific progress that the world has made since 1918, from composite jets to modern healthcare to going to the moon, the world was still susceptible to a pandemic.  Ironically, some of these advancements largely played a role in the spread of the pandemic. Thousands of global flights every hour and air conditioning fanned its spread like a dry wind would in a forest fire.  There was even further disbelief in mid-2020 when it became apparent that many countries were even struggling to keep a pandemic in check. Developed countries, supposed to have the best healthcare, suffered the worst outbreaks amidst disagreements on measures such as quarantines and wearing of masks.  In yet another twist, technology advancement finally came to our rescue with the speedy development of vaccines, including the safe pioneering of never-tried-b...

Visiting Watamu

Getting to Watamu: Flight to Malindi Airport. Jambojet flies here and so do other airlines from Wilson. You'll then need a Cab to Watamu (KSh. 1,700 to KSh. 2,000 - many apps are inaccurate) or matatu just outside the airport (KSh. 100) SGR to Mombasa, then shuttle to Watamu. There are about 2 regular shuttles and they charge KSh. 1,500 to KSh. 2,000 one way  Bus to Watamu. Tahmeed and other buses operate regular schedules to Total Watamu  Drive: It's faster branching through Mariakani to Kaloleni then to Kilifi. The route through Tsavo is not any faster and has park fees. Takes 9 hours  Things to do  Beach Sunbathing : Watamu has some of the world's best beaches, with white sand. The left side from Watamu Village has a bay with shallow water during low tide,  you can wade and swim in the ocean even if you don't know how to swim! Ocean is warm in July - August but very windy. Watamu beaches have lots of seaweed but this shouldn't deter yo...