Bottled Water

The bottled water phenomenon has hit Nairobi with a vengeance. Everybody walks around with a bottle of bottled water. And I mean everyone, not just tourists, the bourgeois, the wanabee bourgeois, yuppies, veggies, vegans or people who work for water companies. Everyone has a bottle of water, matatu drivers, security guards, cabinet ministers, the employed, the unemployed, everyone. You walk into supermarkets at 10am fridges are being restocked with water, you go back at 2pm same story. It’s got to the stage where people have become loyal to a particular brand. At least twice when I was in a restaurant with friends the waiter was asked which brand of bottled water the restaurant stocked. Dasani, unsurprisingly, is avoided like the plague by most people in the know. Although one chain of supermarkets, even though it carries all the different brands of water, only refrigerates Dasani. Smells like the same dirty tricks Coca Cola was using in Derbyshire.
So why this explosion in bottled water drinkers? Well on my part it was because it was so damn hot. If I didn’t carry water I would melt. Other reasons given are that Kenyans are becoming more health conscious, bottled water is seen as an alternative to soft fizzy drinks; the competition between the different companies has lowered the price of bottled water; fear of typhoid from normal tap water, that is if there is any water in the taps in the first place.