It’s 9am and Judah Kirimi, a resident of Nairobi’s Zimmerman estate, is woken up by the cadence of “Mare Mare”.
The rhythm continues for a while and slowly starts to fade away.
If you live in the city, you are no stranger to “Mare Mare” tunes. Mare Mare, a corruption of the Swahili phrase mali mali, loosely translates to merchandise.
It is a unique form of barter trade where people exchange household goods, such as used shoes and clothes, for new plastic items. The plastics include dustbins, buckets, laundry baskets and utensils.
The traders always ask for used goods. They do not accept money.
That’s not all. In almost all estates, traders use the same tone and volume to announce their presence and one might think the phrase is chanted by the same person or that the traders are trained in a school.
We caught up with Samuel Muiruri in Zimmerman chanting the “Mare Mare” song repeatedly hoping to find customers.
On his shoulders, he has a pile of buckets and laundry baskets and in his hands a heap of basins.
Muiruri estimates the weight of his merchandise to be in the region of 50 kilos.
A resident of Ruiru, Muiruri has worked in barter trade for 10 years, a business he says has helped him pay school fees for his three children.
Samuel Muiruri collects used clothes from people’s homes throughout the city in exchange for various items.
Proudly, he explains that one of them has completed Form Four and is preparing to join university.
“This business has helped me pay school fees for my three children. My firstborn just completed high school and I am hoping she can join university next year,” Muiruri adds.
“I normally walk about 30km a day in these estates just to get customers who can exchange their belongings with my plastics. I do not accept cash.”
According to the Central Bank of Kenya on the history of currency, barter was one of the primary forms of trade in old days. Africans traded by exchanging goods and services under the barter trade system. Communities in Kenya that lived next to each other exchanged animals, for example, for agricultural products.
Muiruri’s workday starts in Kamukunji, Nairobi, where he obtains his plastic items.
Locally made handicrafts
He then transports them to the estates around Zimmerman, where he asks his clients to exchange their used items such as shoes, clothes and handbags for his plastics. It is bargaining that many times ends with the trader getting the longer end of the stick.
Muiruri takes the used items he has acquired to the Kariokor open-air market in Nairobi with hopes of selling them for a profit.
At Kariokor, we found hundreds of traders selling different items, including traditional Kenyan foods and the market’s main product, locally made handicrafts.
Judy Njoroge first heard about the barter trade in 2015 from her friend, whom she was visiting when she noticed beautiful buckets that she desired to have in her house.
Her friend referred her to the Mare Mare people. She has never looked back as they also help her declutter her house now and then.
“I did my last exchange in May this year. I find them reliable. I don’t have time to go to the market myself, and buying the items from the traders makes it easier for me,” Judy says.
“Sometimes I don’t have enough money to buy these plastics and exchanging old items with the plastics makes it easier and it’s cheaper.”
For Muiruri, there is profit and loss, as in any other business, and each day is different.
“I wake up at 5am because I live in Ruiru and leave for the Kariokor market to sell the items. It’s like hawking. Then I cross to Kamukunji for my merchandise before going to make the rounds in the estates,” he says of his routine.
But how does he ensure that he makes something from the energy-sapping business?
“I buy a bucket for about Sh180 and I exchange it with a customer’s belongings – clothes, shoes and bags and sometimes electronics such as cables and wire extensions,” Muiruri says.
Quality of the clothes
He adds that he can sell goods obtained from every household for up to Sh500, which means he makes a profit of up to Sh320.
His pricing depends on the quality of the clothes.
For instance, he sells a pair of denim trousers for between Sh50 and 100 or more if it is in good condition.
Others like blouses go for between Sh10 and 50 and shoes for a maximum of Sh50.
Muiruri sells electrical cables for between Sh20 and Sh50 and extension cables at Sh50.
He says get to the Kariokor market at 5.30am because that is when most business people are in the market to get their stock. He believes that most of the people who buy the used household items sell them upcountry.
But inasmuch as it is a business that feeds his family, Muiruri is still cagey about it, as many people stereotype this type of business.
“I have never told my children what I do. I would rather hustle hard and when they are old enough they will get to understand on their own,” he says.
“I want them to have a normal childhood. I don’t want other children teasing them because of what I do. That’s why I choose to do the business far away from where I live,” he says.
Patrick Wameyo, a financial literacy coach and the founder and executive director of Financial Academy & Technologies Ltd, says that this form of barter trade represents information asymmetry where someone has information that someone else does not have.
“As long as the demand exists, as long as there are people who do not know where to find certain things, then the trade will always exist,” he says.
“I have seen it increase rapidly rather than decreasing, which means there is a large number of people who do not have information on goods.” BY DAILY NATION