East Africa: Shopping

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Sunday 26 April, 2015 by Uncle Spike

On the whole, shopping malls leave me cold. In general I have little desire to trudge my way around endless corridors of glass, dazzling white marble effect floors and endless rows of glass-fronted shops all selling the same stuff as the mall we probably visited the day before. Fair enough, for the purchase of a certain item, these places serve a purpose, but for me, shopping is a sport best served outdoors. 

Here in Türkiye, outdoor markets are part and parcel of everyday life, be it out here in the rural areas, or also in some residential parts of our large cities. So when I travel, the roadside markets and entrepreneurial purveyors of foodstuffs are always of a certain fascination to me. East Africa, of course, is a case in question.

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The selling of foodstuffs always seem that bit more enterprising, and banana selling seems king of them all; from two tonnes in the back on a minivan…

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…to a whole roadside…

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…or hanging outside the local butchers, which also sold honey too 🙂

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But harping back to the blandness of modern shopping malls, how refreshing would it be to see the top names in gentlemens outfitters merchandising their pure cotton two-piece’s like this?

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There’s one thing for sure when travelling in a place like Kenya, one is never faced with the dilemma of “shop closed”, or having to think what day it is… every hour of every day, there is food sold along the roadsides. 

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Of course, the sad truth is that for many parts of the continent, this is not always the case. The harsh reality is that terrible wars, and devastating crop failures have brought about unbelievable suffering. The even sadder fact is that some parts of the world still don’t get it, and readily moan about the unavailability of a certain model of Nike trainers, or the price of a 6-pack of Oreo’s, or a 32-oz steak, whilst members of our own species are left to starve.

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