While Tefu Textile Factory's workshops worked overtime producing cotton-padded clothing, several trucks in the factory's storage area were loading bundle after bundle of it into their rear compartments.
Once loaded, these supplies would be shipped in bulk to Mombasa Port and then loaded onto vessels.
Nairobi was nearly five hundred kilometers from Mombasa. Within this stretch, both rail and road were viable transport methods. Clearly, the cotton-padded clothing produced by Tefu Textile Factory would be sent to Mombasa city by road.
The reason was simple: such war-support supplies were highly time-sensitive. Choosing rail transport would consume more time along the way.
If rail were chosen, the goods would first have to be transported to the station, obviously still by truck. Once there, they would have to be unloaded, then loaded again into train cars.
After reaching Mombasa city, they would have to go through a similar process, transferred once more to the port docks. Going back and forth like this added many unnecessary steps.
Moreover, rail was far less flexible than road transport. Train dispatch and allocation followed strict standards, and factors such as scheduled services, train formation, transfers, and short-haul connections at both ends could waste even more time throughout the journey.
Therefore, even this simple shipment from Tefu Textile Factory involved considerable thought, and it even reflected the major transformation in the East African economy and in social production and daily life.
That was, roads had become competitors to railways in transportation and economic development. Especially in short- and medium-distance passenger and freight transport, roads had already gained the upper hand.
This subtle change reflected East Africa's leading position over the rest of the world in development.
In 1938, even the United States, likewise a major automobile producer, or Germany, with its relatively developed transportation, lagged half a