The truck raced through the winding dusty road in the middle of nowhere every other weekend ferrying goods from who knows where to there and back. The people in the hills used to tell what day it was from its subsonic roar and toxic dust cloud that could be seen from miles around. Nothing else exciting passed that way on any other day. The spot was marked by a dip and a top, but that was all there was to see in between the savannah to the right, the grassland to the left and the cliff drop from the top into the vast valley below. The road, though untarmacked was the shortest, most convenient route to there and back. The driver had no interest in the space, but it was an ideal place to make a short call in the bushes before descending from the top of the hill into the rambling plains.
But if you stood still for a day or two you might notice a thing or two. Some distance away was a watering hole for the local pastoral clan. The cattle harvested the wild grass and kept it trim and gleaming in the hot sun into the horizon in their circular sweeping weekly route from one season to the next. As fate would have it, the local women too competed for the water on a daily basis, just a little upstream hidden among a small group of trees. The shaded washing arena was not too far away from a dilapidated primary school, where students came with bare foot shrieks combing the grass from the hills all around to the tin roofed learning pens that did not quite fit the term class room. The children raced through the plains to the gong of an old tractor axle, hung on a tree, that no one knows whence it came. One strike of the gong could be heard for miles around. The shrill student races took place in the warm morning rays that wake up the sun and then back to the hills in the midafternoon serenade. Some teachers rode bicycles; a wonder of technology to the pure young minds devoid of tablets.
In this unlikely space came the mogul. He set up camp a few meters away. Just visible from the dusty road. A dusty shack and settled down to watch and wave at the crowd that passed by at various points in the day pointing at him, his shack and then at their heads. They actually thought he was mad. But everyone minded their own business and told everyone else to keep their distance. Nothing, for sure, could come out of this – whatever it was. The safe place to be was in the hills.
But by and by, as children will be, they stopped by. His first installation was some pencils and sweets. The sweets were free, but the pencils, for school, were for a very small fee. His first enthusiastic customers spread the word to the hills, in the breeze and at the watering hole. The man added affordable scented soap to his box. Soon the word was out and the womens' water route incorporated an optional d-tour for a bar of beauty and dobi soap at the price of one. It did not seem to matter that the mogul who sold the bar lived in a shack on a dusty the road.
So day by day the children passed by for pencils and sweets and the women were guaranteed a clean sheen and shine from the up and down the river. The herders on their weekly rounds realized that that the shack was not moving and so hung around in the hills to watch the daily traffic. But the hills were cold at night and when they heard that the mogul had matches in his box, they sent down their own to make sure they had a light for the night. And so it went on. The truck continued to race on its round, but it no longer caught the attention of the people in the hills.
And so it went on the children running to and from school buying pencils and books, the women drawing water buying soap and a drop of paraffin to light the candles at night. In fact, at night, the once dark hills side was quite bright. The herders came for matches and gum and the teachers bought some pens, chalk and read recycled newspapers as they pumped their bicycles on the way home. The place had become quite a crowd. One day the lorry stopped by to find out what was going down. The lorry pledged to come by with salt and sheets next time round and so began the commercial town of nowhere.
The town began, not because the mogul had set up a shack, but by doing so he had changed the daily round of those he found and, of course, he was going nowhere. Nobody thought much
of the shack. In time the shack became two and three. A place where one could
shop for oil and grain, and if the herders were good, you could get a cup of
milk. The lorry round now announced new stock and its stops became market days when
herders sold their cattle while everyone else made quite some noise throughout
the day. interestingly, nobody remembers the name of the man who started the
place, but I think he must have been called pioneer or something near.
How life had
changed in that place. But it is not because the mogul had anything to sell, rather
he touched, changed and transformed the people’s daily round on the road to
nowhere. If you really want to start a business, you must be prepared to take
the road to nowhere until it becomes somewhere.
Allan Bukusi
