In Search of the Grail

18 months ago, on arrival in Kenya, I bought a new, bog standard hoover. LG make, for those interested.  A year later its hoover bags ran out.  The last one inadvertently got thrown away. And so I embarked on my quest for new ones.

You wouldn't think it would be difficult. Not an item of great rarity.  Why not start with the major two floor 24 hour supermarket chain where you bought the hoover? It stocks at least three models of LG hoovers, including ours. You'd think they'd have the bags. But no. Not in any of the three stores I tried. Not if you do the Kenyan thing and make a special plea. Not anywhere. Not either in the smaller supermakets. Nor in small bespoke hardware stores.

So the hoover was mothballed for six months. I kept trying sporadically.  D went back to the UK with the make of the hoover tattooed on his hand, but returned emptyhanded. John Lewis don't stock LG bags either. 

Today I thought I'd get my Life In Order. But start with something small. Hoover Bags it is. So I retraced my steps.  Back to Nakumatt, supermarket emporium, stockist of all the expat could possihly need, 6 person tents, chicken wire and barbed wire, Italian made saucepans, paddling pools, marmite, But nothing so infra dig, so below stairs darling, as hoover bags. 

'LG has been taken over by Hotpoint,' said the FT-reading electrical department manager. 'They'll have them in the Hotpoint store.' Off I traipse.  Another mall.

Hotpoint store is full of LG hoovers. Never a hoover bag in sight. 

'Ah yes, hoover bags.  In the LG service centre.  Out the door, past the boiler room. Down into the entrails of the earth. Through the service entrance. Out into the tenants' carpark.  There they are.'

So I found them. The sole stockist of Hotpoint & LG hoover bags in Kenya.  Truly in the entrails of the earth.  Billowing steam from the boiler room.  You wait at customer service.  A kind man disappears into the vast stock room, returning with 4 sizes of bags. We judge it by eye. Back he returns for another 9, now I've worked out, spot them, buy them.

Stroppy customer that I am, I have a word with the manager of the Hotpoint service centre. 

'Don't you think it might be an idea to stock the bags more widely?  Everyone needs them. What about if you live up-country, how do they track you down?  Its taken me 6 months, and I only live 5 miles away?' 

A blank look back. 

'They are electrical spare parts.  We can't have them just anywhere.  For spare parts you come to the service centre.'

One of those bits of ineffable Kenyan logic with which it does little good to argue.  My words about 'Elsewhere, in the rest of the world, where you buy them off the shelf' dried on the tip of my tongue. 'But not here,' her stony glare suggested.  'No need to spell it out.'

So I pay. 1770 Ksh (£17) for ten hoover bags. Get my details entered in the logbook by the security guard before I may leave, for indeed, buying a hoover bag in Kenya is a high end endeavour. 

And tromp off, vowing never to buy another Hotpoint/LG purchase. But flushed, secure in the knowledge that today, I have scored a minor success in the Living in Kenya stakes. Till the next one.