Top Market

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

I have been in hardcore work mode, so I haven't had a ton to write about for the past few days. This morning I had a meeting with Steve, the Director of the Morokoshi School as well as Chair for Top Market, the main market in Nakuru. Steve runs the general operations for Top Market, as well as several fruit stand and a very successful juice stand in the market. He has asked me to assist him with some of the business planning. This morning, we walked through his business operations, and looked for ways to make his processes run more efficiently, and identified ways for him to expand his business.

One thing Steve is fighting for is support from city council to make improvements to the market itself. It is a major financial contributor to Nakuru, and is in may ways falling apart and the conditions contribute to a general sense of uncleanliness. In the 1980s, Nakuru was hailed as the cleanest city in East Africa, and Top Market was the star. It was a clean, modern facility. It is an outdoor market with stalls, and it is "paved". However, now the pavement is full of potholes and none of the drainage works. The gutters on the eaves are rusty or missing. The restrooms are in such a state that Steve wouldn't even tell me where they were, although I imagine they are near the place where stall owners collect their water, because when we went to see that, the smell of urine nearly knocked me over. Steve is also hoping to get some assistance for refrigeration, especially for those selling fish and meat products. As it is, fish are laid on the counter next to headless, naked chicken.

We are also working on starting a tree-planting program on one of the mountains outside Nakuru. This is crucial to the protection of important rivers that feed into Lake Nakuru, and re-forestation has been a hot topic in Kenya lately, so it is a very timely project.

As a part of my work advising his business and the market itself, Steve took me over to see the wholesale produce market, which is amazing! It is bustling and colorful and crowded. It was a little overwhelming, with huge mounds of fresh vegetables, fruits and grains everywhere. It was big, mostly out in open air, but there are large covered garage/hanger type structures on either side. Trucks come in very early in the morning to deliver fruits from all over Kenya as well as other places in Africa, such as oranges from Tanzania and mangoes from Mombassa. The whole way through I was handed pieces of fruit to eat, and Steve told me "Alexandria, you will feast on fruit today!" I did. And I will tomorrow too, because I was given a ton of fruit to take home with me as well.

I will go back soon and take pictures.

Note 1: It’s now Thursday and I just ate one of the mangoes that I got yesterday. It was definitely the best mango I have ever eaten. I was literally sucking the pit trying to get every last bite!

Note 2: For those of you who liked the Akmeni Fukani Choir video (the Tim & Eric one), see if you can find a video for something like “Gachathi Wa Thuo” on youtube. I think that is the name of the producer, but the video I saw was hilarious. There was no volume, so I don’t know what the song was like, but there were men and women dressed up in cowgirl and cowboy outfits doing funny dances through the whole thing. I have less hope that this one will have made it to youtube, but it’s worth a shot if you are bored or loved the other video as much as I did.