Why newspaper vendors make amazing salesmen

What stars! What role models! They’re our friends. We look forward to seeing them. And we can hardly wait to give them our business.

They’re cheerful, they’re helpful, and they’re there, come rain or shine, selling us our newspapers and our magazines.

As we drive into town along Uhuru Highway we look forward to greeting them, and there’s no one to whom we’d rather give our money.

They understand traffic flow better than any policeman, knowing exactly where to position themselves and when to run up or down the lines.

When we’re still dithering over which of their tempting products to buy as the traffic begins to flow once more, they’re faster than Usain Bolt in racing along to catch up with us again.

And when you tell them “no, not today thanks”, they never seem disappointed.

I don’t know if like me you have your favourites, who are particularly pleased to see you after a break (“you are lost!”), and who in those few seconds before you rev off again chat with you about the weather, the traffic, the daughter who needs a job.

And I don’t know if like me you feel so badly if you haven’t bought anything from your friend for quite a while that you shell out for pricey magazines you know full well you’ll have absolutely no time to read.

I even stretch to the Harvard Business Review if the gap has been too great, and I part gladly with the over Sh2,000 it costs.

How did these young men, full of great energy and greater humour, develop this extraordinary culture? How does it persist intact over the years?

It’s as if they have some unseen virtual leader, high above those clogged up lanes, coaching them and cheering them on, keeping their morale at an unwaveringly high level.

They support each other — with change, and with the issue you want that only their friend has tucked under his arm.

Yet they compete with one another too, for each is an entrepreneur, looking to maximise his market share.

Each runs his own mobile business; each earns honestly; and what drives them all — and makes them succeed — is concern for their customers.

I could eulogise these heroes of the highway forever, but I don’t really need to, as we all know them, and we all sing their praises.