If want to strike it big, Try in Kinoo

It is said if you fail in business in Kinoo, you will never succeed anywhere.
Kinoo Town is one of the popular trading centres along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway, 15 kilometres west of Nairobi.
This town is never asleep, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is a kaleidoscope of human traffic moving in all directions, carrying goods and offering services.
They say there is a ready market for everything here, from garbage to gold; from a needle to a crane; from water to wine. Everything is transformed into money in Kinoo.
Whether this is true or not, only the business people can tell.

But from the sight of garbage trucks crisscrossing the surrounding village, competing with clean water lorries and sewage tankers christened “honey sucker”, the notion might be true.

Donkeys carts have their space too in this competition. These are privately owned enterprises serving local residents, after the defunct Kikuyu Town Council and now Kiambu County failed to provide.

Kinoo market operates for 18 hours a day. It closes at 10pm. At this time, a mother would find vegetables and fruits, even ready cooked food such as githeri and chapati, to eat at home with her family.

A man would still find a late-night butchery open, where he can buy chukua, choma or chemsha meat for his family.

However, the town’s expansion is impeded by land shortage. It was planned in 1958, during the Kikuyu land demarcation, when nobody envisaged the present growth rate.

The town is bisected by the Nairobi-Nakuru highway, where crossing to the other side is nightmare from speeding motor vehicles.

Hardly a month passes without hearing that a person had been knocked down by a speeding motor vehicle, particularly at night.

EYESORE

The garbage heap in the middle of the town centre is an eyesore. It produces a putrid smell, which is a health hazard to residents. The garbage attracts rats and flies.

The real Kinoo happy hour starts at 6pm on Fridays. A hawkers’ bazaar is formed, where they sell delicacies of all kinds — mandazis, bitter coffee, chapatis, khat (miraa), second-hand clothes and horticulture products, among others, on the town’s paths and shop verandas.

Young women make a brisk business selling beef sausages, sliced fruits in bowls, pancakes and meat balls to revellers.

High-rise residential buildings are sprouting in all corners of the town, changing its skyline rapidly.

If a visitor comes back after one year, he or she would get lost.