‘I am not a spy,’ Nairobi pencil hawker on his business and rumours of being an NIS agent 

Edgar Ignatius Otieno is a common face in the never ending Nairobi Central Business District (CBD) traffic snarl ups.
Along Kenyatta Avenue near GPO, Otieno hops from one car to another, donning finely tailored suits, with a carrier bag in his hand, hawking pencils.
This is something he has done for the last two decades.
"I went to school where I studied Social Work at the University of Eldoret, and at some point I was employed as a Sales Representative for Barclays Bank (now Absa Bank). But because the earnings were too little, I decided to hawk pencils. I have been here since the 2007 post-election violence," Otieno said in an exclusive interview with Citizen Digital.