Advertisement

Nairobi’s bookshops survive the test of time

Thursday August 01 2013

For decades, whenever Joseph Murumbi was in London, Kenya’s second vice president went searching for rare treasures of the print world. Along with Indian Ocean antiques, contemporary sculptures and oil paintings, they make up his collection at the Kenya National Archives.

One of his favourite bookshops was Arthur Probsthain’s in London’s Bloomsbury district, set up over 100 years ago by German emigre Arthur Probsthain and inherited by Walter and Eve Sheringham, and now run by Walter’s son Michael Sheringham.

Long before commercial globalisation had become a fact of modern life, bookshops selling works from publishing houses from around the world were among the world’s first international institutions.

But bookshops like Arthur Probsthain’s have had it rough in the past few decades. One Nairobi bookseller noted, “In the West, publishers made a big mistake by giving bigger discounts to supermarkets and corporate shops. The independent bookshops couldn’t compete in volume of sales and price.”

With television, Internet discounts and Kindles competing with publishing houses, sales of books targeting adults have dropped.

If, in the West, changing fortunes in the book trade have exacted a painful price, with family-owned bookshops swallowed by mammoth corporate chains or swept away in the e-storm, how have independent Nairobi book sellers managed to stay afloat?

Advertisement

Despite colonialism’s strong European imprint and the dominance of the English language in Kenya, for decades Gujarati trading families have dominated Nairobi’s book trade. With the dream of promoting literacy, some trading families had committed themselves to books.

River Road is a noisy, bustling, street today in downtown Nairobi, but even as far back at the 1930s, it was already a thriving district dominated by Indian-owned shops and cinemas. In 1938, Gujarati businessman Jethalal Shah opened his shop, Hemraj Hirji and Bros, and began selling betel nuts and fruit juice to cater to movie-goers. He later diversified into Indian magazines and newspapers in Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu.

By 1948, Mr Shah was selling English syllabus books, stationery and greeting cards in Ngara, to students close by at the town’s government Indian schools, today’s City Primary and Jamhuri High Schools. His descendants Dipak and Sudhir Shah continue the tradition, currently in business at Book Point on Moi Avenue.

In 1952, Indian-born Vanmali Dahyalal Savani opened his first shop in Mulji Jetha Mansion, in downtown Nairobi. That shop eventually led to Mukund and Pramoth Savani’s three locations along Latema/Lagos Roads today. As suppliers of school textbooks throughout Kenya, they also stock college reference material, notebooks, paper, greeting cards and gifts. At the Savani’s shop in Westgate Shopping Mall, son Raghav Savani continues the family enterprise, combining books and software with paper supplies.

Although colonial policies had sought to keep Kenya’s few literate farmers immersed in Christian bibles and hymn books, by the 1950s official thinking had changed radically.

Just before Independence, government education officers, instructed to quicken the pace of formal learning, advised Indian trading families to go into the English book trade. In this way Bachu Shah and Manek Rughani began supplying school books wholesale to rural Murang’a and Nyeri schools.

Chhaganlal D. Shah, nicknamed CD, the Indian-born manager of Text Book Centre’s first outlet in Nairobi remembers with affection the first shop set up in 1964 by the Shah and Rughani families. From humble beginnings in rented premises on a city dirt road, the book business led to multiple outlets around Nairobi and the country, and Text Book Centre’s current total worth is Ksh1 billion ($11.5 million).

An array of titles and collectibles are available at Chan Bahal’s Book Stop at Yaya Centre. When I visited, University of Nairobi architecture professor Kahare Miano was talking to artist Billy Kaigwa, while Tom Tubei of East African Educational Publishers was lamenting the “techno-phobic” book establishment.

With his eclectic selection of books profiling local and internationally-acclaimed authors, Chan has built a clientele that is the envy of book traders. Against wall-to-wall shelves, Chan’s shop caters for all readers with tables where history, anthropology and coffee-table photography collections are laid out.

Chan has “always been into books.” In l989, after a decade at Momentos Ltd, his first shop on Mpaka Road in Westlands, he launched Book Stop at Yaya Centre, then a much-loved, hole-in-the-wall outfit similar to Zanzibar’s Masomo behind Darajani Market.

Chan’s revolving book trade, a sort of loan and sell-back facility, was probably the reason for the shop’s success. One can buy new and used books.

Currently, there is more demand for books on Kenya’s history and culture. “After a generation of silence, people want their kids to know about Mau Mau — about their grandfather’s part in it, about valuing Kenyan history. All over Nairobi collectors are creating private libraries for the next generation,” Chan said.

Another popular bookshop is Westland Sundries, begun in 1971 by Sayed Mohammed. The store contained a wide array of children’s books, arts and crafts, and adult fiction in English, and expanded to two new outlets, the New Stanley Book Shop in 1977 and later Book Corner on Mama Ngina Street. Today the Village Bookshop at the Village Market, under director Yasmin Manji, is the family’s last remaining outlet.

It seems Nairobi booksellers approach their commercial future in the city’s volatile, boom-and-bust market with optimism. And why not? Having survived over the decades, the Textbook Centre’s CD is meeting the challenge with e-books and educational software, though school book sales are still providing the company’s economic heartbeat.

Yasmin concurs with the upbeat forecast, saying, “We don’t just go with the flow. Being more hands-on means intelligent decisions taken quickly based on knowing our customer base. That is the secret of our success.”