TALKING POINT
Retail Therapy ? Ladies Greatly Outnumber Men In Nairobi Malls
By Boniface Ngahu
I was having a light-headed conversation with an elderly gentleman during a lunch break in a recent workshop . He noticed that I skipped fruits in the buffet lunch and asked me why I chose not to not enjoy the “ matunda ya uhuru ” ( Swahili for fruits of independence ). He then explained to me that , before Kenya got independence during the colonial period , Kenyan citizens were not allowed to eat exotic fruits such as pineapples . Before that conversation I had always thought that fruits of independence referred something close to the Christian ’ s fruits of the Holy Spirit ; love , joy , peace , patience , kindness , generosity , faithfulness , gentleness , self-control that should distinguish believers from non-believers . Little did I know that the phrase referred to real fruits .
Since it was during a political season I changed the topic and we got to discuss the drastic manifesto of one of the Kenyans 2022 presidential candidate Wajackoya . If elected to be the 5th president of Kenya the candidate proposed to legalize cannabis popularly referred to as weed in the country . One of his arguments was that the colonialists who illegalized weed have already legalized it in their countries . We therefore argued that upon attaining independence Kenyans were free to enjoy all other fruits apart from weed . After that we reverted to the normal programing at the workshop .
Ladies Flock Nairobi Malls as Men Flood the Streets
One week later I was invited to a meeting at Java Coffee House in Garden City one of the malls located along the Thika Superhighway in Nairobi . While waiting for the meeting to start I remembered the conversation I had with the elderly man over lunch and decided to adopt the Emirates Airline ’ s slogan , “ Keep discovering ”. I asked my young male colleague to carry out a count of all the men and women in the mall and then give me a report when we get back to the office .
When we got back to the office he gave me
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Men are wired to deal with moving targets which calls for sharp shooting and quick decision-making skills . If you miss your target you quickly move to the next one even if it could be less attractive . This wiring is observable todate in the males shopping behaviors characterized by very targeted buying . a report that confirmed something I had observed for a long time to the effect that for every man he counted there were five women . He explained further that he went the extra mile by carrying out a similar count in the open spaces along the roads on our way back to the office 5 miles away from Garden City and found that for every woman he counted there were seven men . I had observed very long queues of ladies at security checks in shopping malls compared to very short or non-existing ones for men . Now that we had made that discovery , we asked the big question , so what ?
Blame it on the ‘ Hunting and Gathering ’ Wiring
Our thoughts were taken back to the Charles Darwin , ‘ origin of species ’ phenomenon whereby more than 10,000 years ago human beings practiced a subsistence lifestyle of hunting and gathering . Women used to gather wild vegetable , fruits and honey while the men hunted animals and fished for nutrients . At the end of the day the men would meet their partners in the caves for a balanced diet meal from the two activities .
The two activities required different skill sets , for gathering patience and attention to details of stationery targets were required , hunting is more about hit or miss while dealing with moving targets . This means that the ladies wiring has all to do with scouting for vegetables and fruits which often had to be identified while they are not ready for harvesting . This called for patience while it gave the chance for one to take friends to the sites of discovery to admire the find while assessing progress . This we hypothesized as one of the reasons
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