Would You Wash Their Feet?

Growing up, I watched my uncle — a quiet, traditional man — wash my parents feet every time he visited. It was his way of connecting, serving, and honoring them.

Years later, my sister — who visited after a long time — washed mine. She joked I needed a pedicure. But I knew what it really was: a gesture of care, presence, and respect, carried down through generations.

It reminded me how we’ve moved away from this kind of expression. Modernity keeps taking that energy out of us. We rush to replace it with speed and surface level interactions.

It shows up in marketing too. We think of customers in numbers: conversion rates, CPMs, impressions. We speak loudly, but care little.

Would you wash the feet of the customers you are trying to serve?
Not literally, of course, but that would mean…

• Do you listen before promoting?

• Do you consider context before designing campaigns?

• Do you think about the constraints before pushing solutions?

This kind of care and intention isn’t foreign to us. In many African communities, it’s part of culture and rituals. It’s how relationships are built. But somewhere along the way, we opted to copy the transactional. Because it feels ‘modern’.

Marketing that works in Africa has to make sense for how we live, how we relate, how we trust. It has to be rooted in understanding beyond transactional urgency.

And so I’ll leave you with a question...

If you’re building for consumers in Africa, would you wash their feet?

Not literally... :-) But in how you listen, design, and choose to serve.

Until next time,
Rahwa