I am just so amazed about one of my friends here, that I wanted to write about the amazing things she is doing!
I mentioned Angeline before as the young woman whose family sold all their cows in order to educate her.
She is about the same age as me, and trained as a dressmaker. Angeline works for the Sisters at Don Bosco Mission in the production area, and has recently opened her own shop.
Late last year, her family's home area was struck very hard by floods, so her parents had to leave their home and go to temporary housing for awhile. After their return, instead of just sending them money, Angeline taught her parents (subsistence farmers) how to sell their extra produce to earn some income.
In order to open "fashion store" as they are called here (provides tailoring, stitching, clothes, accessories and toiletries) she took out a large micro-loan of 80,000 shillings -- about $1,000 US, and has rented a store-front just off the main road passing Makuyu. She has hired her younger sister to run the store during the day while she is at work, and has really worked hard to have beautiful things. It has been great to notice the huge increase in the amount of customers in just the couple months she has had it open!
I am just amazed that at the same age as me she is already an entrepreneur who basically supports her entire family (she was also helping to pay school fees for her younger siblings) and has such a positive outlook on life and so much wisdom to know how to use money! Imagine being able to not just support your parents financially, but to teach them how to learn to support themselves! As the oldest in her family, she also is an inspiration to the younger siblings -- the sister who works in the shop now aspires to open her own shop someday and has started saving money to do so.
In addition to the hard work she does, Angeline has a wonderfully friendly and hospitable personality, and deeply rooted faith (she even attends morning Mass every day!). In my first weeks in Kenya she was kind enough to show me how to take the matatus (crazy method of public transportation) and around the Makuyu area. As they say here, she is my "very nice friend."
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She is amazing! IT was great to meet her, see her shop and she was so friendly and hospitable to us. She is doing great work and it is powerful to see how hard she works and all she can do.
ReplyDeleteAngeline was telling me more about her days in school. She is the oldest in her family, and her parents really sacrificed a lot to allow her to go to technical school. When school fees were due, the father would sell whatever he could to pay, maybe their radio, a goat etc. She stayed with a "Mama" in Makuyu during school, and some nights would go to bed hungry as there was no money for food. Because she now has a steady income, she pays (voluntarily) for her younger brother to attend secondary school, something she was not able to do, and still look where she is! In order to open her shop, she paid a friend to teach her business so she would know the essentials.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as people are the same everywhere, there is gossip that she must have a man paying for her to open a store etc., but she is a strong person and says "they can say what they want to, but I know what I have sacrificed and what I'm doing is good"