Chapati rolling pin unlocks wealth for trader

• From a rented house in Majengo slum in Nyeri town, Ms Nyambura, now has a four-and-a-half acre piece land in Kieni where she has built a four-roomed house with proceeds from a business of selling food, mainly chapati.

Mary Nyambura’s financial fortunes changed dramatically in 2010 when she quit her job as a cook at a public hospital to start her own small business.

Until then, Ms Nyambura lived in a rented house in Majengo slum, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Nyeri town.

A constant stream of friends dropped at her house, not to pass time with her but to demand money that she owed them, she recalled.

Ms Nyambura always borrowed because her salary was not enough to meet her needs. Not any more.

With proceeds from her two-year old cooking business, whose main offering is chapati, Ms Nyambura has bought a four-and-a-half acre piece land in Kieni where she has built a four-roomed house that she and her two daughters, Lucy Wanjiku and Ann Wangui, intend to move into soon.

Ms Nyambura, 45, attributed her success to her courage to take risks.

Her venture started with borrowing some money from her relatives to build a small kiosk at the middle of several garages in Majengo.

“I knew that the location of my business would attract customers, mostly mechanics,” she said of her decision to go into the business of selling food, mainly chapati.

Within months, the single mother’s venture started attracting not just mechanics but office workers from as far as a kilometre away.

Although many people liked her chapatis, she said, Ms Nyambura never received any formal training on how to cook them. She learned the skill from her mother as a young girl, she said.

“Although at first I didn’t get much from the sale of my food, at least I earned enough to keep me away from debts,” she said.

Ms Nyambura started off with making 70 chapatis daily, from four kilogrammes of flour, which she sold at Sh15 a piece. Her chapatis would be sold out before sunset, leaving her with Sh1,050 in revenue.

Delicious meals

She saved Sh500 daily with the neighbourhood Biashara Sacco. Ms Nyambura said that her ambition then was to own a house and a small farm where she would grow some crops.

The drive to become a home owner gave her the motivation to save. The business, she said, was hard and tiresome since she woke up at 4.30am to prepare the chapatis and tea and by 6.30am when the first customers would start arriving.