of Southerners and franchises

yesterday i made a mistake of phenomenal propotions. well i may be going too hard on myself. i walked into a steers shop and quickly ordered one dinner box and milkshake (i have been warned before that milkshake, especially strawberry is feminine. the world hates us!) well i was pleasantly suprised that they serve people these days. so i went and sat down to wait for my order. just when they brought the 'dish' i remembered my oath once of never to touch chicken from steers ever again! for one the thing had too much make up (you could think it was bread crumbs coated in chicken) secondly, the little chicken on it was looking like it had been dead for at least two years. i have known this before and i couldnt help cursing. you see i had gone into steers coz i was starving after a full day struggling with parastatal bureacrasy and incompetence. in the end they won as they always do but that is a story for another day. back to steers i kept on struggling with the bread crumbs and milkshake. at least their shake never disappoints. am told that the steers franchises import every thing including drinking straws from south africa! the only think kenyan is probably the customers. no wonder the food is so bad, but that also amazed me since i used to crave for this very food when i was younger. in fact i would bring my date to the joint for a quick bite to show how capable and loving i was. steers used to taste great! oh what age does to people!

and that happened after i had come face to face with the fastest growing and indeed the mainstay of the kenyan and world economies - small and microenterprises. (however by definition of standchart an SME should be having at least 4 million working capital ) what shocked me about these SMEs was the number of brokers hovering around their corridors! i wanted to hard cover bind a book. in the end i met hundreds of pple who could 'do' it but who could not even tell me how long it would take. the price ranged from 40 /= to 1000 /= per book. i walked until my feet hurt and finaly got some young suave gentlman i could trust. he offred to do it in 2 hours at 200 /= since he does it himself i left him with the stuff. it was when i went back to collect them that i discovered that he was also a broker! in the end i never met one person who actualy does the job.

it reminds me when i used to trade in fish sometime when i was a second year. i could buy the fish for 15/= to supply hotels in mombasa. what i remember is that i could not buy the fish from the owner. there was always an agent who sold to me the fish. in fact i cannot tell how much the fish used to cost from the fisherman but between me and the fisherman there were --believe it or not -- 4 other people! With all these brokers , who is working?

but i think brokers arent bad even though the stock brokers are fleecing us left right and center if the stories in the blogs are anything to go by. i think distributors , wholesellers , retailers and indeed everybody in the supply chain are indeed brokers isnt it?

I wonder how the eveready OFS concluded. by Thursday less than 50 % were taken and there was faint optimism that it would pick up on friday like before. but remmber that happned because of institutional interest. if that is not there then it would not work. however, i dont expect these guys to annouce an undersupscrition even if its there, they are crafty enough to simply buy it all and write it off after all they are just selling their shares and not really looking for new money.

but mumias has started rising in anticipation, and nation shows great potential given the split euphoria and its current price

odegle tip of the day -- there is no point chasing bad money with good money. if its a bad investment just get out.