MY WEEKEND: Who will teach our men how to shop?

There is nothing that makes a Mama Mboga happier than a man who walks into a market with a shopping bag

Sometime last year, I was housebound for a couple of months, forcing my significant other to run the errands that I normally run, including going to the market.

One day, I was presented with over-ripe avocados that were beginning to go bad and a bag of shrivelled potatoes. Another time, a pineapple (it came peeled for some reason) that tasted of ethanol, so it had to be thrown away, and another time, a total of 10 tomatoes which he proudly announced he had bought for a whopping Sh200.

I was scandalised, to say the least, because even when tomatoes are off season and, therefore, scarce, I am yet to come across one going for a whole Sh20. It is the effort that counts though, isn’t it? I therefore swallowed my dismay, bit my lip and graciously accepted the outrageously expensive tomatoes. They were so expensive; I was tempted to frame them. Had it been possible, I would have unceremoniously returned them to the Mama Mboga that had shamelessly fleeced him.

Drawing from my experience and my observation of the few men that I bump into at the market, there is nothing that makes a Mama Mboga happier than a man who walks into a market with a shopping bag. At my local market, the women literally jostle for him because he is a jackpot waiting to happen.

SAVVY SHOPPERS

To begin with, men simply point what they want from a distance, they don’t bother to find out whether it’s fresh, ripe or rotten, making it easy for a dishonest trader to sell them produce that is unfit for human consumption. Many times while out shopping, I have had to quell the urge to give a clueless man an on-the-spot lecture on the dos and don’ts of shopping in a market.

They also never negotiate (who does that?), and don’t bother to compare prices (Imagine that!), making it easy for them to be duped into parting with much more money than they should have.

As for us women, the process of buying stuff is akin to science. We prod, we squeeze, we shake, we scrutinise, we dust and if not satisfied, we ask to taste first before we commit our money. I am yet to come across a man who has been offered, say, a piece of fruit to taste to compel him to buy, an offer women get all the time.

It turns out that men are also not savvy supermarket shoppers, if a thread I came across on Facebook the other day is anything to go buy.

Women were recounting hilarious incidents that happened when they asked their husbands to pass by a supermarket on their way home. One recounted how hers brought back industrial-size hair oil, the kind you’d find in a busy salon, when what she had wanted was the smallest size. She says that the next day, she sold it to her hairdresser because had she kept it, it would have lasted years.

Another bought adult diapers instead of sanitary towels and another a brand of toothpaste she had never heard of. When she asked why he had bought that one instead of the brand she had asked him to buy, he had replied, “Si toothpaste ni toothpaste?” Turns out that the said toothpaste was a new brand which was cheaper than all the others on the shelve, and figuring that it was a good deal, bought a dozen. They all ended up hating it, including the buyer, but since they couldn’t throw it away, they had to put up with it until it ran out.

Which was many, many months later.

What’s your story?

The writer is Editor, myNetwork magazine, in the Daily Nation [email protected]