Some 'rich' Kenyans can be mean. They even haggle over the price of chicken with desperate market women.
Driving a Toyota V8 – a luxury, fuel-guzzling car worth over Sh8 million – may not signify being well-to-do, but the ride is a status symbol for pretenders to class.
Even if the black fuel guzzler was rented from a car hire firm, the temporary owner may have paid Sh36,000 per day for the weekend ride to Busia. This makes Sh108,000 for the three days the status craver owned the car for a non-business weekend trip to the western border town.
Someone who can spend Sh108,000 on car hire and Sh24,000 on fuel, may have disposable income. The chauffeur-driven man, wearing piped jeans, may have hired a driver as well for the journey.
He was sitting back left, like men who imagine they have arrived do. He was also fiddling with an iPhone, occasionally speaking in a tone that suggested he was on an important business call.
The showman was arguing over the price of a cock, big enough to feed six average dinners. The seller wanted Sh1,000 for the chicken.
The woman had an important business that depended on the sale of the hen. The seller sounded desperate. But the urgency of her need meant nothing to the classy buyer.
The V8 man insisted on paying Sh800. He would not pay more for the weighty kuku kienyeji (free-range chicken).
The buyer was exploiting the desperation of the seller. She was probably relying on the sale to meet an urgent family need. She may have wanted to pay some levies for a child in a junior secondary school.
Another child may have been sent away from school for defaulting on levies public schools impose on struggling parents. Or she might have been selling the chicken to buy drugs for a sick child.
The Sh132,000 the man was burning could buy 132 chickens the size the woman was selling on a Sunday afternoon.
Education in public primary schools is supposed to be free of direct charges, but the managers of these public institutions are not keen on encouraging universal access to education.
Children in primary schools are still being sent back to their parents to collect fees that may not be known to the free education system.
Education in junior secondary school is supposed to be free, but boards of management of various schools are imposing amorphous levies. Poor households cannot afford, without selling their last egg-laying hen.
Yet a showman riding the latest registered V8 finds it right to bargain with a village woman over the price of a chicken. The man who cannot pay Sh1,000 for a chicken finds it classy to burn Sh132,000 on car hire for a non-business trip to Busia.
Bizarre is not good enough to describe the scene: a supposedly rich man fighting over the price of a rooster with a woman chicken seller.
But the V8 man is in good company in a country where philanthropy is alien. Selfishness is personified.
Must we Kenyans – Africans – be this mean?
Mid-November last year, a philanthropic American and a child rights advocate visited a village in Homa Bay county. The visit assured 18 needy children of paid-for education for the next 10 years.
Len Morris, a resident of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, who was also President Barack Obama's adviser on international child labour, did not know these needy children. Neither did he know their parents before the visit. But in them he found cases that merited his goodwill.
Moral: We should stop bargaining with poor women over the price of chicken. Buying at her price means a livelihood for the woman. If you cannot support the education of a poor woman's child, at least buy chicken from her.
