After the very successful 1st edition of the Malindi Business & Art Exhibition held in April this year, many people were looking forward to seeing how the 2nd edition would turn out. As someone who is slowly making the habit of timekeeping a tradition, I was at Sinbad Park at exactly 0810h; 10 minutes after the event was scheduled to start. This was definitely an achievement for someone who’s always been an hour late to almost all events she’s ever attended, so that was reason enough to get me some vanilla ice-cream later on during the day.
Side note: If you are having a hard time changing some bad habits, set a rule to reward yourself any time you make a positive step towards achieving the targets you set for yourself. It works like magic.
Anyways, almost 20 minutes later and the only people I could see were the organizers of the event, thanks to the rains. Having lived on the coast my entire life, I know for a fact that the rain is the businesses’ greatest enemy in the region. A little rain in the morning would mean that businesses will remain closed for a better part of the day and pupils will have a self-proclaimed holiday and spend the day watching cartoons. Yaani in short, unless you really really have to go out, rainy weather is a ‘stay-at-home weather’ on the coast. So the most I could do was cross my fingers and talk to the gods of rains to hold the waters. I mean, it wouldn’t have been fair for me to travel from Mombasa to Malindi specifically for this event only for it to flop, right?
There was a glimpse of hope however when the rains started to go down and people started coming in at around 0930h. Business people started setting up their stands and 30 minutes later, Sinbad Park was packed with all kinds of businesses. There were more than 50 business stands to explore and I’m sure everyone left the place more satisfied than they came in. Kids got their faces painted, business people got to interact with their customers, and many were entertained and got to learn more about the Swahili culture.
Hats off to the organizer of this big event, Athuman Komora aka ‘Komz’ from Malindians who said the event wouldn’t have been the same without Sofeta Diapers Company’s major contribution. He was very grateful to see his idea of wanting to connect different business people and customers in Malindi come to life and it was his hope that he will be able to organize the 3rd edition before the year comes to an end.
see more images of the exhibition here
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