Anyone who knows me knows I love shopping, especially bargain hunting 😀. Once a month the shelter banks the money made from the sale of eggs, milk and produce and stocks up on essentials for the coming month….and I mean essentials! So when I learnt staff were going to go shopping I asked if I could accompany her (I had a few things on my list too so was keen to assist).
We left in the morning later than anticipated around 10am, and once all the finances were settled we set out to purchase the provisions. We firstly visited a store selling animal feed and seeds. It was extremely busy, I think everyone in Naivasha must be a farmer to some degree! We went into a hardware shop and bought a replacement lock for a kitchen cupboard, and a nut and bolt for a highchair tray that had gone missing. Next we visited the supermarket, now my local like Tesco at Bakers Arms I know what is where on the isles 😀. This time I was able to study the prices more objectively and discovered even the most basic items are out of the price range of the majority of working Kenyans. Next we visited a small outlet to buy toilet paper and a chemist for the cows dressings … by the way it was raining by now… hard. Next on the list was to pay the generator engineer. The list was nearly complete 😊.
We walked through a soggy market where traders were selling all kinds of fruits and vegetables, second hand clothes and shoes, pots and pans and chappati’s (the rain was easing off by now). We continued through the back streets where goats stood under anything they could to keep dry, as we carefully planned our route through inefficient drainage, slipping and skidding our way to the grain outlet to buy the beans and ugali flour that forms the staple of our diet.
Our last port of call was a lady who sells the ingredients to make washing up liquid.. don’t ask me what they were its a closely guarded secret!
I wanted some WD40 for the sewing machine and was not happy with price wanted by the generator guy mainly because it was an enormous can! As we were buying 2 new jembe’s (spade/fork for digging) I spotted the small cans in a display case. The shop keeper wanted almost the same price as the previous shop keeper for 1/4 of the amount! I barterd and got him down to more than half, which I was happy to pay. Perhaps now I can get the sewing machine working at 100%.
We were done… well almost… just 20 bails of hay for the cow and we could be on our way home. Our driver who has patiently waited all that time in the pick up drove to the varioys retailers picking our orders we were unable to carry while we had chips from the supermarket cafe…. after 2 weeks solid of maize based dishes they were delicious 😀. We arrived back just before dark at 6.30pm. It was a marathon shop even by my standards but staff came back and cleaned out all the storage cupboards in the kitchen and saw to all the basic duties she would normally do each evening…she is amazing. I however was asleep in bed by 8pm!!
ElixirKenya 