After a year back in Nairobi's markets — Uchumi, Naivas, the vegetable sellers at Westlands — coming back to an American Walmart was genuinely disorienting. Not because I had forgotten. Because I could see it again.
The American grocery store is designed around choice. Thirty-seven cold medicines. Fourteen varieties of peanut butter. An entire aisle for breakfast cereal. New arrivals often make two errors: they either buy nothing because the choice is paralysing, or they buy too much because abundance triggers a kind of hoarding response developed in scarcity environments.
Practical advice: start with a list of ten items you need. Go to one store. Do not try to understand everything on day one. The store will be there next week. The abundance is not going anywhere.
Second: find the ethnic grocery stores early. In most American cities with any size, there is an international market within reasonable distance. The food is better, cheaper, and will feel more like home. The Indian grocery stores in particular tend to carry East African staples.
Third: Walmart and Costco are different stores for different things. Learn the difference before you drive to Costco for one bag of rice.
Gabriel Mahia writes from the intersection of U.S. federal infrastructure and East African operational reality. This essay is part of a series written after twelve months in Kenya, April 2025 – April 2026.
◆ YEAR IN KENYA SERIES
This essay is part of the Year in Kenya series — twelve months in Nairobi, April 2025 to April 2026.
The analytical home for the series is gabrielmahia.com, where Gabriel writes on power, institutions, and what holds under pressure. The full reading order — 34 essays across 5 properties — is at the Year in Kenya series page.
◆ Year in Kenya — Field Series 2025–2026
Twelve months in Nairobi waiting on a CR-1 visa, watching Kenya's Gen Z protests, Tanzania's stolen election, and an American political realignment simultaneously — from the position of someone inside neither country and reading both.