The council askari maintains the law as per the written/unwritten existing rules and regulations. Hawkers contribute to much of the dirt in the city streets; they crowd the pedestrian routes forcing people to squeeze with speeding vehicles. As if that was not enough, hawkers don’t pay rates, so they don’t in anyway contribute to the up keep of the streets. The askari views the street seller as a menace. In deed they are the important perpetrators of the noise, hustle and bustle, characteristic of Nairobi’s east-end streets, avenues and lanes. The askari’ job description includes maintaining law and order. This would mean that they need to get hawkers out of the streets. However we, the average consumers, need the hawkers’ goods and services.
The ‘free enterprise’ individuals have hawk-eyes for opportunities. They parch themselves in places of greatest human confluence. Their customers are ordinary Kenyans on their way home. The customer has no time to bargain much. More often than not the customer is unlucky having fallen for an inferior product. The businesses flourish and blossom each new day because of the high traffic of visitors. More and more hawkers flock to the ‘market area’. With no serious check in place, sooner or later the thoroughfare becomes impassable. Subsequently it comes as a relief when the council askaris arrive with their (dirty) truck to whisk away the ‘garbage’.
Unfortunately the solution of sweeping the streets clean of hawkers and, recently, the relocation of hawkers to a designated market area does not come as a lasting solution. It only ends up in the customer (who is supposed to be king) losing the convenient service, and the hawker losing a livelihood. Creating a common marketplace does not work either because the essence of ‘get-it-on-the-way’ is essentially downplayed. Building a permanent home for a nomad does him no good no matter how great the house. The life of the man on the move is complete when he gets to go from place to place to look for greener pastures.
The only way to aid a street entrepreneur is to help him carry on his business under a set of rules and regulations. After all we cannot deny two facts: the rule of law must be upheld and that many families survive on this trade. The first step towards healing is acceptance. To stop this hawking nag we must understand the trade, and then get a way around the phenomenon in order that it is done in a better manner. Making street markets legal will not only benefit the sellers and the buyer, but will also go a long way to enhance revenue collection hence benefit the council.
An architectural design could provide the necessary schematic solution for the persistent spate. A city like Nairobi is desperately begging for practical measures, of a kind. Having the uniqueness of a third world country characterized with lots of informalities, our city needs to accept some of these informal activities by designing our planning around them as opposed to through them. One humble answer to the hawking question would be the utilization of important pedestrian routes, lanes, alleys, tunnels, footbridges, etc to serve as hawking zones. Well defined areas should be laid out to allow street businessmen and women to carry on with their enterprises. Footbridges over, and tunnels under busy highways could not only get pedestrians safely to the other side of the roads, but also provide small-time market venues.
I concur. However, consider that bigger malls or even open air maasai market. The sense of security, order and cleanliness attracts people to these public places; Even when it is not “along the way home!” What if a place like Muthurwa was not left to decay to such a point that it is considered a zone where you’re likely to be mugged (a phone or money for instance), yet you went to buy a pair of shorts. The reason therefore, in my opinion why such places fail is that they are deficient of elements that encourage vibrant public living. Elements of this market place are further not designed with a pre-project planning approach. All in all, the designer has a responsibility to respond to the environment.