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The Packrats we are



OLX may be a difficult concept to digest for us Nairobians and this I can put good money on. The whole theory about some point in time you decide to sell off your furniture and buy new ones just doesn’t play well with us. This is especially when the question is, when do you think your furniture stops being good? In my years of study, or just observation, the line of reasoning used is we shall use it until it is embarrassing to use it anymore then ship it upcountry where the folks there will use it a lot more. I have seen this happen; the furniture I saw when I was born is decorating my grandma’s house. The furniture that I grew up with is decorating an out of town place my parents have so the whole theory of sell the stuff and get new stuff really doesn’t make sense.

I have a few theories to probably try and explain this, my first and probably more relatable to is we do not grasp the theory of depreciation.  If you go to any company today, they depreciate some of their assets by a certain amount or percentage every year until it hits zero. We seriously do not understand that, when I bought my first TV I got it for Kshs. 13,000, to me it is still worth that much years later and as soon as I bought the next TV I didn’t try and sell the first for the “Depreciated Value” but just moved it to the next room.  This would be the same to most true Nairobians. 

Has anyone gone through the stuff that is posted in OLX, I actually do every now and then and from my assessment it is business people actually selling goods.
I once watched a style show and for some reason the people on that show have some huge houses with very little furniture. We have a guy with a studio apartment that looks enormous but just a sofa with a tiny coffee table and a TV on the wall. They call it the Less is more effect, or something close to that. Now that doesn’t make sense, I have walked into houses where there isn’t enough moving space for guests when they want to walk around but there is a lot of furniture around, telling a person like that that they can sell their extra stuff on OLX is tantamount to insulting him. More to him is definitely good for his image; wide open spaces just scream poverty.

In order to probably understand why Nairobians do this and can’t grasp OLX for what it was designed for is the fact that Nairobi is the UTK. UTK stands for united tribes of Kenya; I am linking it to the better known U.S.A because both sprung up on lands owned by others, the locals were thrown out then the foreigners came in and took over everything. Some of the locals integrated with the foreigners while others stuck to their reserves. I may have drifted from the point with that long description but the basic thing is that we are inherently from up country. All of us go back to some sort of up country neighbourhood where a distant/close relative stays and thus the influence rubs on. People from upcountry never throw anything away, when you visit your upcountry hood (also known as the bundus) you will not see you grandma telling you to carry off a large heap of garbage to a far off rubbish dump. They don’t use many packed foods and jerry cans or bottles are recycled into many other things.  This principle of not throwing anything away has evolved into us who find it hard to let go of that three legged stool hoping one day it can be fixed. I can only call us one thing and one thing only, Pack Rats.

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