One of the things I actively try to do is praise people who are good at what they do; especially to their faces. In an age where spaces such as Twitter and Facebook have been captured by corporate accounts, that online praise may just fail to ‘kindly’ get to its destination.
Which leads me to the events of Sunday morning. My cousin-sister and I went to Kawangware Market to buy belts and walk about in search of deals.
Two ladies were offended when we revealed that we were just looking and one went to the lengths of shooing us away. This was frankly ridiculous but also telling – if you’ll not give me your money now, you’re worthless.
It was so refreshing to come upon Stano. We had spotted his ‘Dresses 100’ sign while at another seller’s stand so we made a beeline for his after we had seen what little there was on offer (Sunday isn’t great for visiting a market. Pro Tip™).
He welcomed us warmly and was a good sport when I asked him to take pictures of me as I tried different outfits. When it started to rain, he made space for us in the pile of clothes and urged us to stay as long as we needed to. We didn’t need encouragement.
My sister greatly appreciated the gesture and told him about our strange experiences with the two other sellers. He told us that his policy is to make his customers welcome; because they could come back…with friends. We saw it in action as a girl walked over and called her friend to come get a deal-both got two dresses apiece.
Yours truly got a dress for herself and one for Mama Cumin. More importantly, a vital reminder that fantastic service people exist in the city. Here’s to many more such rays of sunshine.
Note: This post is part of #CuminWrites366, my year-long attempt to write a post a day. Find the rest over at readability.com/cuminwrites/
Questions, comments, suggestions or thoughts on privacy? Send them to cuminwrites@gmail.com 🙂
Nyambura Mutanyi 