Informal businesses battle for piece of SGR passengers

Boda boda stationed at Mombas road- SGR junction waiting for passengers to-from Standard Gauge Railway terminus-Syokimau, they earn a living from there.  18/01/2018(Jenipher Wachie,Standard)

“Only the most adaptable to change shall survive” is perhaps one of the most important lessons biologist Charles Darwin passed down to humanity. Yet, if you would have told Agnes Mukene about that a year ago, she might have disagreed.

Back then, Ms Mukene was working alongside tens of other women, preparing meals for some of the thousands of construction workers who were building the Nairobi-Mombasa Standard Gauge Railway.

Now, more than a year later, most of her former colleagues are unemployed and struggling to get by, after they critically failed to adjust to the changes brought by the completion of the railway line.

Mukene, on the other hand, was an agile and innovative thinker. She knew that after the winding up of the project, chances were high that she would revert to unemployment.

So she - a light-skinned and vibrant middle-aged woman who is clearly more ingenious than she lets on - saved the profits from her food sales and early in January, reinvested them by opening a kiosk and eatery at Syokimau, along the access road joining the Nairobi SGR terminus to the Mombasa-Nairobi highway.

Like all the other termini, the Nairobi SGR terminus is located away from the city centre and far from establishments such as supermarkets and restaurants.

Even though the area immediately surrounding the terminus has industries and leisure establishments, until a few months ago, it did not have set-ups where employees or travellers could grab quick meals or last-minute necessities.

The setting up of the Nairobi terminus has proven to be a gift that keeps on giving, radically opening up the zone to economic activity by providing an eager consumer market comprising of Madaraka Express employees and travellers, thereby wooing business people such as Mukene.

Many of the businesses around the SGR are small but flourishing. When Sunday Standard visited Mukene’s kibanda, it was about an hour to the departure of the 2.30pm train to Mombasa.

Hot walk

A visibly worn-out young woman runs up to the shop, carrying a backpack and large travelling bag in one hand, still panting from the long and hot walk from the bus stage. She asks Mukene for a plastic soda bottle, which is not stocked.

Disappointed, the customer pauses, then asks Mukene for the directions to Naivas supermarket, which is at Gateway Mall, far up the highway. Finally, she decides to try the only other open shop in the vicinity, hoping it has the soda.

Business people are striving to earn a living by easing travel for the SGR passengers, by bringing essential goods they might need closer.

“Business is not bad, I can’t really complain,” Mukene says from outside her shop, occasionally observing the operations in her kibanda to ensure her four employees, all fairly young women, are serving customers properly.

The kibanda is quite small and simple, an arbitrarily erected wooden structure that sits just a few people. As Mukene tells us about her journey, a slim, dark man in glasses pulls up in a white car, and Mukene looks on anxiously.

When he exits the car, Mukene smiles calmly, then, almost at the same time, as if coordinated, Mukene and the man break out into a loud and hearty laugh. After an enduring laughing and hand-shaking ritual, the man points to the fully-occupied kibanda, noting, “You will have to add more seats”.

One of Mukene’s girls quickly and respectfully pulls out a seat from a small stack of plastic chairs and sets it up for the man, who Mukene discloses is one of her favourite clients. Still, some challenges have prevented her businesses from realising their full potential.

“It is too hot and most passengers going to board the train rarely walk. Most of them use boda boda or taxis, so they just go straight to the terminus without stopping here. Even when the weather is cool, most passengers do not like to walk, so they just keep passing by without stopping to shop,” she says.

As a result, Mukene’s customers are mostly factory and SGR employees, as opposed to travellers who were her initial target market. Nevertheless, she remains optimistic that her businesses will pick up even more in the coming months.

A few metres from Mukene’s shop and eatery, Cyrus Onyando, a young man barely into his twenties, sells fruits on a wooden stand.

“I haven’t even finished a week here,” he says excitedly. He finished Form Four in Kisii only recently and moved to Nairobi. “This business is owned by a relative who decided to employ me,” he tells us.

“After most people have a meal, they usually want to eat fruits and since I am the only one who sells them nearby, they will always come here,” Onyando says, though he figures out he could get competition soon.