This was a government ran organization that sold everything the farmers needed. Their shop in OlKalou was at a corner of a building opposite the current site of BullHead hotel. Their employees were not the regular shopkeepers we were used to in OlKalou. The KFA staff dressed neatly and wore a white lab-coat over their clean fashionable clothes, they looked like doctors. They were also well informed, giving advice to farmers on various products they sold in the KFA shop.
It was very convenient to shop at KFA. The shop sold livestock products like Diary Meal, Chicken Feed, Molasses, Mclick Salt, Nilzan and much more. They had seeds of all sorts. Hybrid Maize came in a yellow bag with green writings on the sack. Wheat seed was also sold in big sacks.
The sisal gunny bags and sisal twine needed for wheat harvesting were all sold at KFA. Vegetable seeds were sold in very tiny packets with the picture of the vegetable looking pretty on top. Varieties of cabbage, Copenhagen (kofeni), Gloria, Sugar, Drumhead etc, Collard Greens (sukuma wiki), Spinach, Kale, Carrots, Cauliflower, Cilantro (daniya), Beetroots (bitiruti), Turnips and much more.
There were fertilizers of all kinds, my father usually bought D.A.P. brands. They had milking supplies like Milking cans (mitungi ya iriya) Milking buckets (ndoo cia iriya) Cheese Cloth (gitambaya kia iriya) Milking Jelly (maguta ma gukama). They had Hoes (macembe) Forks (thururu), Machete (fanga) Spades (ichakuri) Wheelbarrows (hurubaru) Hammers (nyundo) Axes (mathanwa) and other tools I only knew by their Kikuyu names like Kibui na Ndaari, Taribo, Matoki and much more. You think of anything a farmer needed it was at KFA. It was a farmers “supermarket”.
That is why it was so sad to see a vital organization like KFA collapse under the weight of mismanagement by some few greedy people in Nairobi who had no idea how much KFA meant to the farmers who depended on it.
After the collapse of KFA, Bhachu’s shop became the go to place for farmers in OlKalou and beyond. Bhachu increased and modified his stock to fill the gap left by KFA, saving the farmers unnecessary trips to far off towns like Nyahururu and Nakuru.
Talk of being let down by your own government and left in the hands of private entrepreneurs. Where does our government always go so wrong, in the most basic of matters? It is almost embarrassing as it is infuriating.
