There is a woman at the end of our street who we call grumpy. Actually, her real name is Margaret, but as the name suggests, she is a bit grumpy. She and her friend sit at the end of our street selling produce: carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes. It’s hard to judge age here in Kenya. Life is tough and people age quickly, so I cannot even guess Grumpy’s age. She has a classic round wrinkled face and one tooth. Right, one tooth. She wears a colorful kanga (a wrap that is tied around your waist like a skirt or wrapped around your shoulders like a scarf) and a worn t-shirt. She usually has a scarf tied around her head. Her reputation as a grump comes from her tough sales pitch. As you drive by, if you do not buy anything from her, you try to avoid her grumpy look. A friend of mine claims she even threw a potato at her car for not buying her produce. We try to buy all our vegetables from Grumpy, not because we are worried that she will throw something at the car, but because like most Kenyans she is probably supporting about 15 other people. It feels good to support her as opposed to the big supermarkets. Actually, because I buy from her, she even gives me a smile every once and a while, and shrugs her shoulder when I tell her we are still working on the bag of carrots we bought the other day.
“Grumpy is a rip off,” says a friend. Yes, ok, so I pay $1.00 for a big bag of carrots, as opposed to .35 cents, but seriously, does it matter, am I really rocking the economy? We have not seen Grumpy in a while. Her friend said she is sick at home. The neighborhood is not the same without her and we wish her good health.
