Last week I took a friend of mine furniture shopping on Mombasa Road. My uncle used to own a furniture manufacturing and retail store a few years ago and in 2014 he told me that at that time, there were about 40 furniture outlets on Mombasa Road, between Nyayo Stadium and City Cabanas alone! That Nairobi could develop a specialty retail furniture zone by default, rather than by county government design continues to be a strong testimony to the tenacious, entrepreneurial spirit that drives this third world economy. Anyway, back to our furniture shopping jaunt. We got to the first store on a cold, drizzling morning and were met with the ubiquitous thermo-gun and hand sanitizer. This particular store had hundreds of square feet of well laid out space, divided into multiple sections that tastefully displayed the furniture as it would appear in a living room or bed room to give customers a sense of what it would look like in their houses. Not the mish-mash of furniture pieces placed side by side on every walkable space in the store as we later found in some of the other stores. I got to talking to the sales girl and she said that they had been having brisk business since Covid-19 hit our shores. Turns out that many people, who are now spending more daylight hours at home, have seen the ratchet condition of their furnishings and have sought upgrades during this period.

We went to a total of seven furniture stores with varying degrees of seriousness in their product displays and in their customer service approach. The stores that were well appointed in terms of design and layout consistently had the same story: significant sales during Covid-19 times and, in one case, total stock outs of bedroom and living room furniture by July this year. Who’d have thought that furniture and plant sales (as my roadside plant sellers have told me) would have soared during a pandemic?

I was challenged to relate this story by my 17 year old daughter who often finds me scratching my head looking for a topic to write for this weekly column. In her view, the past several months have awakened her realization to the privilege that exists in society where a few have access to various non-essential items while the majority struggle to purchase essential goods and services. From her mid-adolescent lens, private schools today have all been equalized to the same level in that their key selling proposition is no longer the boundless options of extra-curricular activities that augmented their academic offerings. From my daughter’s perspective, as an exam candidate in her final year, her main need is access to teachers and a robust revision of past papers process and this need is essentially replicated across the exam candidate universe. “So what is the point of all those sport and arts facilities that some of the private schools have today?” she asked me. “Well, Covid-19 is not here to stay and these facilities offer various options for talented students who want to explore their gifts outside of academics,” I responded. But she had made a point, which was repeated to me by another friend who had decided to pull her child out of the remote learning process at a private school. This particular friend made the conscious decision that paying all that school fees money, albeit slightly discounted due to Covid-19, was not worth the diminished experience that her child was getting since the academic aspects were just average in offering compared to the opportunity lost for the extra-curricular activities that had attracted her to the school in the first place.

I’ve said this here before and I’ll say this again. The remote learning experience that many private schools have had to provide should give school owners the opportunity to consider creating two delivery models for academic learning. A well rounded academic and extra-curricular in-person experience at a higher cost as the school facilities will be utilized, as well as a remote learning experience for those that simply want access to good teachers and a sound academic ethos and track record. This in turn should create a good opportunity for providing access to good education for less privileged children in rural areas where the benefactors are willing to donate computers, electricity and wi-fi access. In this way, perhaps we can extend the benefits of our urban, corporate based, income earning privilege in a more sustainable manner.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka