In Nyeri it rained on Monday and on Tuesday and drizzled a little on Wednesday. The thick cloying dust has now settled but with the rains comes the mud, the puddles (thanks to the woebegone state of the roads in the interior of the town) and the cold. Everywhere you turn it is muddy swathes of tarmac where people have tried to scrape of their muddy shoes only resulting in no discernible differences between the road and the unpaved road shoulder. This is what must be happening in hundreds of towns across Kenya unfortunate enough to boast slivers of tarmac lined with muddy unpaved footpaths!
Call me daft if you want that it has taken me this long to find this out and I will just say Duuuhh! After all I was born and brought up in the city and it is only now that I have taken the plunge to reside in small town Kenya that I am realizing that the dirty sawdust on the floor on visits to my grandfather’s restaurant actually had a practical purpose!
Since the onset of the rains (weatherman says it a passing cloud though) everyone who walks into the bank treks in with some mud on their shoes and then proceeds to deposit half of it in the bank probably enough at the end of the day for a kitchen garden, quality herbs and all, try as they might to scrape it off before they enter the door. This goes for staff as well and so the poor cleaning lady is constantly mopping up muddy shoe prints or sweeping dried muddy detritus off the floor.
Many establishments, restaurants, butcheries, supermarkets, MPesa shops, barber shops etc have chosen to have a heap of saw dust at the entrance to their shops sometimes even scattered on the floor itself. While I have seen this many times over the years, I have never really stopped to think why. That stuff is actually very healthy. Through many rainy seasons and years of muddy shoes, not many people stop to even scrape of some of the excess mud off their shoes as they enter into an establishment. They just saunter in oblivious to the muck and the mud they shall drag into your shop!
Sawdust sprinkled on the floor or at the entrance to a shop is an absorbent that removes dirt and dust from the floor while also absorbing any liquids that may have spilt as well common with mushy mud tracked in on your shoes. To me it also seems to keep the dust levels in the establishment down after mixing in with the sawdust because you can imagine what effect dried mud would have on the dust levels in a shop or restaurant. After the day is done, then you just sweep it up together with all the other detritus throw it out and lay on another layer tomorrow. Perhaps well-constructed pavements and better repaired roads would remove the need for this sawdust scatter something you never see in Nairobi but perhaps happens in the outlying suburbs.
How healthy the practice is I shall not even dare to conjecture because it serves a practical useful purpose in addition to ensuring that not an iota of a precious tree goes to waste.
So for those city slickers like me that never knew why you found dirty sawdust on the floor when you visited your village shop back in the day (or upto today) thinking that everyone was a slob, now you know.
As for those who knew the reasons why, your medal is on the way!!
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