This Is How Nairobi Is Fed.
Tom looks like a man whom you’d trust to feed you. He has a warm welcoming smile, and a very calm manner about him, like someone who knows what he needs to know and he is okay with that. And what Tom knows, is onions.
He has his set up at Marikiti Market, the source of most of the food that Nairobi and its close environs eat. It’s a sprawling market full of fresh produce at more affordable prices than your supermarket grocery aisle and even your Mama Mboga. And to those of that certain age where you get excited by stuff you once found boring, like groceries and bargain deals, this may sound tempting, that’s if you’re close enough to pass by the downtown market and shop for your home.
If not, well, this is probably where your Mama Mboga gets her goods from.
It was pretty apt that he sells onions, because that’s the base for most of our meals, and thus will become the base for our story.
This is how Nairobi is fed.
There’s a long process that our food goes through before it lands in our pantries, for example, a lot of the onions you’ve consumed have come from as far as Comoros, Tanzania and Sudan. An international onion, if you want to add a bit of fancy to your cooking.
The rest is grown locally, in areas like Nyeri and Loitoktok where the weather is favourable.
But, as is the usual in farming, there are a lot of risk factors in between planting and harvesting. For example, earlier this year when Kenya was hit by heavy rains and flooding- which the government knew about and failed to notify and prepare citizens adequately- a lot of farm produce went bad, including onions, which rot when exposed to too much water.
This was also the case in Tanzania.
What happens after a disaster like this, where the demand is still there but the supply has dwindled, is that the price goes up, because the farmers, and brokers in between, are trying to reap whatever little they can.
This came at a period when fuel prices were also going up in Kenya, quite ironic because globally, this wasn’t the case.
So we have a scenario where the majority can’t afford to cook with onions anymore, and for those who could spare a few shillings for them, they had to be content with bad quality ones.
Tom’s journey into starting his own business and sticking to it is similar to that of a lot of people in Nairobi. He was working for a government body in charge of developing horticultural crops, but the hours were long, the supervision was more of micromanagement and the pay not enough, so in 1982, he decided to go solo.
It’s been 42 years of him selling onions.
When I asked him if he would opt for a different product to sell, he thought about it for a bit, then said pawpaw, because he’s planted it in his home town of Mwingi, but at the end of the day, onions make more sense to him.
There’s a lot the government can do for Tom, and other sellers at Marikiti Market.
If they could have proper market structures with stalls and roofs over their heads, to shelter them and their produce from the sun and rain, that would be better than having to take shelter every time it even so much as drizzles. The lack of proper structures leads to congestion in the market, with everyone trying to carve out a space for themselves.
Taxes and fines are also straining them heavily, and seem to be increasing ever so often. Tom takes home about eighteen to twenty thousand a month in profits, which is supposed to cater to his rent, and his family’s needs like food, clothing and education.
He just wants better systems, which he knows are possible, so he can keep being the link between the farmers and your plate.
Written by: Makena Ngito
Photos by: Edwin Ndeke
Tom looks like a man whom you’d trust to feed you. He has a warm welcoming smile, and a very calm manner about him, like someone who knows what he needs to know and he is okay with that. And what Tom knows, is onions.
He has his set up at Marikiti Market, the source of most of the food that Nairobi and its close environs eat. It’s a sprawling market full of fresh produce at more affordable prices than your supermarket grocery aisle and even your Mama Mboga. And to those of that certain age where you get excited by stuff you once found boring, like groceries and bargain deals, this may sound tempting, that’s if you’re close enough to pass by the downtown market and shop for your home.
If not, well, this is probably where your Mama Mboga gets her goods from.
It was pretty apt that he sells onions, because that’s the base for most of our meals, and thus will become the base for our story.
This is how Nairobi is fed.
There’s a long process that our food goes through before it lands in our pantries, for example, a lot of the onions you’ve consumed have come from as far as Comoros, Tanzania and Sudan. An international onion, if you want to add a bit of fancy to your cooking.
The rest is grown locally, in areas like Nyeri and Loitoktok where the weather is favourable.
But, as is the usual in farming, there are a lot of risk factors in between planting and harvesting. For example, earlier this year when Kenya was hit by heavy rains and flooding- which the government knew about and failed to notify and prepare citizens adequately- a lot of farm produce went bad, including onions, which rot when exposed to too much water.
This was also the case in Tanzania.
What happens after a disaster like this, where the demand is still there but the supply has dwindled, is that the price goes up, because the farmers, and brokers in between, are trying to reap whatever little they can.
This came at a period when fuel prices were also going up in Kenya, quite ironic because globally, this wasn’t the case.
So we have a scenario where the majority can’t afford to cook with onions anymore, and for those who could spare a few shillings for them, they had to be content with bad quality ones.
Tom’s journey into starting his own business and sticking to it is similar to that of a lot of people in Nairobi. He was working for a government body in charge of developing horticultural crops, but the hours were long, the supervision was more of micromanagement and the pay not enough, so in 1982, he decided to go solo.
It’s been 42 years of him selling onions.
When I asked him if he would opt for a different product to sell, he thought about it for a bit, then said pawpaw, because he’s planted it in his home town of Mwingi, but at the end of the day, onions make more sense to him.
There’s a lot the government can do for Tom, and other sellers at Marikiti Market.
If they could have proper market structures with stalls and roofs over their heads, to shelter them and their produce from the sun and rain, that would be better than having to take shelter every time it even so much as drizzles. The lack of proper structures leads to congestion in the market, with everyone trying to carve out a space for themselves.
Taxes and fines are also straining them heavily, and seem to be increasing ever so often. Tom takes home about eighteen to twenty thousand a month in profits, which is supposed to cater to his rent, and his family’s needs like food, clothing and education.
He just wants better systems, which he knows are possible, so he can keep being the link between the farmers and your plate.
Written by: Makena Ngito
Photos by: Edwin Ndeke