This is as told by Shamsha “Mwana Kutani” Muhashamy in the book Three Swahili Women: Life Histories From Mombasa. Interview conducted in the late 1970s.
She organized a boycott of Indian kanga merchants who were exploiting Swahili and Arab women.
This is how it worked.
Indians were selling tickets to reserve a set of upcoming lesos design.
They’d show a design at different times of the month and collect reservations but sell at same time. Bad designs first and better ones later.
If you reserved a but failed to purchase you would forfeit the shilling.
Because of how the whole thing was set up the women were reserving more than they could afford.