Asha began with Leah, but they met at a café rather than inside Mti Market. She wanted Leah to speak as a customer, not as someone standing in front of the retailer who controlled her refund.
Asha placed the statement form on the table.
“Do not sign anything until you read it. And if you decide not to give a statement, that is fine.”
Leah raised an eyebrow. “You have become a lawyer?”
“No. I have been taught not to turn people into evidence without asking them.”
Asha avoided the question, *Did you feel deceived?* Instead she asked when Leah first bought Safina Afya, what she saw, and what she remembered hearing.
Leah said the green presentation, whole-grain language on shelf materials and the premium price made her expect a more meaningful product difference than she later understood from the ingredient list. She did not call the bread unsafe. She did not call it illegal.
Asha also separated memory from records. Leah had a recent receipt, but not the receipt from her very first purchase. Asha refused to pretend they were the same transaction.
“I want you to write what you saw,” Asha said, “not what you think I want to hear.”
Leah wrote the account in her own words and consented to use of her first name and surname initial inside the complaint process, but not her photograph.
The second interview was with Martin, who had contacted Asha after seeing her public clarification. He had bought Safina Afya at a kiosk near a clinic complex. He brought a bag of receipts and searched his phone for a photograph he had once sent to his sister.
“I wasn’t studying labels,” he said. “I saw the card and bought the bread.”
The photograph showed a grocery basket. Behind it, slightly out of focus, was the familiar green shelf card.
Asha leaned closer.
“May I have the original photo with its metadata?”
“As long as you don’t expose the rest of my phone.”
She recorded the consent and kept the original rather than a cropped version.
“Did you buy it because it was next to the clinic?” Asha asked.
“I don’t know if that was the reason. I had just come from the pharmacy. I saw *Smart Start*, grain imagery and a premium price. I assumed it was a better bread.”
“Better in what sense?”
Martin laughed. “That is the problem. I didn’t have a precise definition. I thought less refined, more whole grain, something like that.”
Asha wrote his uncertainty too.
She was careful with the location. The kiosk was adjacent to a clinic entrance. That did not mean the clinic endorsed the bread, and she refused to imply otherwise. The context mattered only because Martin himself said it formed part of what he saw when he made the purchase.
The third interview was with Njeri, who agreed to speak but did not want her name anywhere near a public dispute.
“I don’t want my employer searching my name and finding an argument about bread,” she said.
“Then do not give public-use consent.”
Njeri had M-Pesa entries showing purchases at the relevant shop, but each payment covered a basket of groceries. A breakfast photograph showed Safina Afya on the table, but the batch code was not visible.
“This supports your account,” Asha said, “but it does not prove the exact batch.”
Njeri looked surprised. “I thought you wanted as many people as possible.”
“I want records that can stand without me filling the gaps.”
Njeri allowed an anonymous account if Imara later considered it useful. Asha marked it as a lead, not primary evidence.
Back at Mti Market, Musa looked at the new folder.
“How many people?”
“Two usable statements. One restricted lead.”
“Why not use all three?”
“Because ‘three people say’ is a headline. ‘Two people gave sourced, consented accounts’ is evidence.”
Mama Halima, arranging tea packets, asked, “And me?”
“You are evidence of how retailer trust affected interpretation.”
“But not independent.”
Asha smiled. “You have been reading my notes.”
“I just want to make sure you are not excluding me because I am your mother.”
“I am not excluding you. I am using your account for the right question.”
Asha submitted Leah’s and Martin’s statements through Tessa, with separate consent notes. She did not send their phone numbers to Ladha Safi. She did not submit Njeri’s restricted lead as if it were stronger than it was.
Later Martin sent a second photograph, taken closer to the shelf. The green card was clear, and in the background a corridor sign pointed toward clinic rooms.
Again, Asha wrote: context only, no clinic endorsement alleged.
What mattered was that a similar consumer interpretation had appeared in a purchase context completely separate from Mti Market and Asha’s personal recommendation.
Martin shows the photograph, and Asha recognizes the same green shelf card at a kiosk beside the clinic entrance.
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