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Being a hustler is better than being underemployed in the sense that a hustler,say a pickpocket for example is his own boss.No body yells instructions at him and the money he makes has no limit.An underemployed guy on the other hand other than being yelled at he is paid peanuts an the very peanuts are not paid on time.When you think hard enough about it ,you will envy ,for instance ,his flexible working hours and many others.Your problems can never be the same ,When you are busy worrying about your fake made-in–china Nokia phone lacking the ability to dispatch audios and images via blue tooth,him is concerned with why his inferior `original’ contraption of a phone(likely assembled by kamau ,mathenge et al along river road) Nokla made in Chania –to be precise,only loads a maximum of bamba 20 and when bamba 100 is loaded ,80 bob is automatically send to his Mpesa account.Ha!
Getting a job nowadays is not the easiest thing. Even if you do, we all know employees are mean like hell out here. Different people are engaging in different activities just to enable them make an extra coin. Those employed too claim that they are hustling ,you know –moonlighting for an extra coin.At times you have to work so hard like an immigrant.Many people have ended up with split personalities. We have heard of cases of some crooks who masquerade as blind beggars who when they are not winking at cute lady passers- by, they complain when you give them fake currency. Such characters are normally very strategic –they know the very ‘lucrative’ street corners and that’s where they pitch tent as they ply their trade. If you are well dressed and you deny them a hand out,trust me they sulk big time.And when they get wind of the fact that council askaris are around the corner they always bolt at a velocity that is kin to Usain’s speed without the aid of their walking stick.
No single city dweller lacks aside hustle, if they are not trying their hand on farming they are in a business of some sort. Many are in fact diversifying and spreading the risks-just in case.
On Monday the fellow is a part time carpenter, on Tuesday he loiters around the estate with a smoky tin with some burning charcoal ,some strips of plastic ‘spare parts’ propped in his hind pocket repairing plastic wares for a small fee, on Wednesday he is at the local market adorned in tattered clads selling weed but guised as a miraa dealer. In every market place there is always a guy selling weed but purporting to be selling something else legal .The remaining days of the week the hustler is a hawker –a very daunting task, I tell you. And to most hustlers hawking is their forte. Some have a way of forming an intimidatingly scary face that makes you buy an overpriced product that you absolutely don’t need not because of ignorance but just because they look potentially violent and look like they can unleash terror or punch you in short order if you turn them down. I mean why would a grown man who considers himself sufficiently sophisticated buy a pencil and a rubber from a rude hawker on a bus while on his way to eat Christmas in his village?
Let’s delve into the psychology of a hawker and examine the wisdom behind his split personalities. A hawker in Nairobi has the spirit of a hustler and the determination of a bee. One would be forgiven for imagining that all city hawkers went to the same post graduate school and graduated with a master’s degree in multi-tasking. A seasoned hawker does five jobs in one. He must be a sprinter, to enable him put together all his wares and disappear in the thin air in split seconds just in case one of those mavi ya kuku city moments that call for helter-skelter scattering arise.
First of all other than the obvious sales he does, he is doing marketing, advertising, providing his own security and while at it, there is always that illegal product-weed(of course), in his underwear pocket which he only sells to specific clientele .He can’t sell it to a stranger you must be recommended by one of his regulars.
When he is precariously dangling a made-in-china underwear in a potential customer’s face while smiling, he is ready to immediately frown and hurl a tirade at the very customer just in case he proves to be uncooperative and condescending .The very hawker as he does that he is also craning his neck and peering in the distance to see whether a council askari is approaching. And once in awhile these askaris ambush them and without mumbling a word launch an attack-kamikaze style. In such situations a good hawkers is always equipped with multi-fighting skills –I mean how do you describe a man who starts a fight with a group of armed and brutish council askari when he clearly knows that he has no insurance? Before they arrest you, you put up a spirited fight because if you don’t by the time they get you to their cells, they will have clobbered you about your head with countless number of knobkerries and your relatives will have a problem of differentiating your face with that of Tsvangirai.Talk of jerks of all trades and masters of none.
