Friday 6th February, 2026
Off to Eastleigh to collect from Mokono. Who is closed and padlocked when we arrive as it is Friday and it is Talking To Allah Time. This is irritating to me, of course, in my capacity of a Godless Woman, but the upside is that the streets are very clear and the usual crowds just not there. Allah draws a huge crowd in Eastleigh. David and I go off hunting (abortively, as it turns out) for black seed soap. We do, however, find the dresses that Jacintah had so proudly shown to me at last Saturday’s market. Her price being almost twice what it is here. Hmmm. I buy three and will be taking them to show Jacintah on Saturday. We end up in the street below Mokono’s little workshop and decide to have a coffee while he and Allah finish up their chat. This coffee is to normal coffee what the Mona Lisa is to painting by numbers. David has his with camel milk and I have mine with honey. Were it not for the fact that I am sitting here, the lone female (and white) in a group of men (I do quickly cover my shoulders but have nothing for my head), I would have vocalised my delight more obviously. Nodding and smiling and telling the beardy bloke opposite “eh, tamu sana” (“very delicious”) quite simply does not do it justice.
Mokono’s fundi has, it appears, gone awol and so half the order is not available. Not quite the disaster it might have been given the paucity of space in the Emporiumette of Limited Loveliness.
We go off to Ngara to see the wonderful little Hindu Wizard of Wellness, a delightful man who concocts his own potions and lotions. Most of them seem designed with powerful expectorant effect. Marvellous, but terrifying if you really have nothing to expectorate. A little like a Kenyan version of The Scaffold’s ‘Medicinal Compound’. I am smeared with a joint ointment, lick some tarry black goo off a bit of cardboard and sniff something from a small bottle that probably opens a channel to an alternate universe. It would have been rude not to, I feel. And I get my absolutely top notch Neem oil and ten wee pots of his home made ‘beauty cream’, which, he promises, will make all the ladies in London beautiful.
I check that Vicky is still ok for my Sunday arrival – and she is. My landlady texts to say that prices have been “adjusted” with, of course, the emphasis on the “ad”.
This trip is not exactly turning out ideally. But stuff is getting done. Which is the main thing.
