Lunchtime walk lifts food kiosk owner’s fortunes

It has been said that good fortune comes to those who are prepared. For Maimuna Harun, that saying holds true.

She runs one of 18 centres in Kibera that prepare food for the thousands of youth and women groups involved in the Kibera slum upgrade project.

Ms Harun, 32, has drawn her income over the years from running a snacks kiosk in Lindi, Kibera and has sometimes been hired to offer outside catering services.

“I have been in this business for more than 10 years, but never made more than Sh35,000 in a month,” she said. “It was also hard to get outside catering contracts.”

But that was then. A month ago, she landed a contract that has promised to change her future for the better.

Harun was walking by a group of youth and women workers at around lunchtime and heard them complaining about how hungry they were.

“Most of them had even stopped working,” she said.

Potential business

Her heart began to race as she stared at the potential business in front of her. However, she had no idea how to take advantage of the situation.

And then good fortune stepped in. Behind her, one of the leaders of the project was walking towards the workers, and they began to tell him how hungry they were.

“Their leader asked who could prepare food for them, and a group of them pointed at me. I was immediately tasked with preparing lunch for the 291 workers at the Lindi centre.”

Harun uses her own money to prepare the food, and for each of the 291 workers, the Government pays Sh50.

This translates into Sh14,550 a day. She cooks for them for six days, Monday to Saturday, earning Sh87,300 a week. In a month, Harun pockets Sh349,200.

She quickly realised preparing food for hundreds of people was difficult to do alone, so she hired people to assist her.

“I’ve hired three cooks and pay them each Sh1,000 a day. I also have three servers who get Sh500, and four people to wash dishes who also get Sh500.”

Harun’s assistants take home a combined Sh6,500, and it costs her an average Sh4,500 a day to prepare food for the workers at her centre.

She works with a pretty consistent menu to enable her buy in bulk and keep costs as low as possible.

On Monday, she serves muthokoi, carrots and cabbage; on Tuesday, ugali and cabbage; Wednesday, pilau, carrots, potatoes, salad and a glass of juice; Thursday, ugali, omena and assorted vegetables; Friday, fried rice and meat; and Saturday, pilau and salad.

To be curb fraud, each worker has to present a Government-issued meal card to be served. They pick their meal card from their centre leader as they go for lunch, and present it to Harun to get a plate of food. She returns the cards to the leader after lunch.

One of the workers, Yusuf Mwalimu, said the Government’s decision to provide lunch has worked wonders on morale.

“It also saves us time as the food is prepared near where we’re working. Therefore, in one hour, we are done with lunch and ready to go back to work,” he said.

“And because the Government is footing the bill, we are also saving money.”

Main hurdle

Lydia Mathia, the advisor on youth affairs in the Planning and Devolution ministry, which is overseeing the slum upgrade, said after they contracted Harun, they scouted for other women to feed workers in other areas.

“We went through our network of women groups to get those who were willing to cook and had enough capital,” Ms Mathia said.

“Each centre has a different menu, but we now want them to synchronise so that we have similar food served at each of the 18 centres.”

Other centres where food is prepared for the 3,600 groups in the project include Makina, Toi, Sarang’ombe, Mashimoni, Laini Saba, Silanga and Soweto East.

Harun said finding capital was not too big of a challenge.

“The main hurdle was the amount of food I had to prepare the first day. I spent more than Sh7,000 preparing chapati, beans and vegetables. The money l spent was too much,” she said.

Mathia added that there are plans to introduce night shifts so that the upgrade initiative, which was started about three months ago, runs 24 hours.

“I’ve started preparing myself for the additional responsibility of preparing dinner,” Harun said.

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