Successful disabled single mum seeks to help others become self-reliant
Damaris Muthoni was out on the school grounds playing with her Standard Three peers in 1982 when she developed numbness in her left leg. She could not move it, prompting her to sit down.
“The discomfort wouldn’t go away. I was losing its life…I could not feel it. My teachers assigned me two Standard Six girls to carry me home to my parents,” she remembers.
She spent two days at home and it became apparent that her condition was deteriorating.
She was taken to what is now Murang’a Level Five Hospital, and was told she had polio. The hospital would become her home for the next six months because she “had died from the waist downwards”.
She was then referred to Kenyatta National Hospital. After six and a half years at the hospital, she came back home a disabled 15-year-old but with her academic ambitions still intact.
She had to spend another year at home learning to walk with a stick as her right leg had completely lost its life. She went back to Standard Three, finishing Standard Eight when she was 20. She joined Gatanga Girls Secondary School and graduated at 24.
She became consensually pregnant by the time she left high school and gave birth in 1996 to her firstborn son.
Ms Muthoni has built a permanent house on land that she bought, ventured into poultry and horticulture farming and is a supplier to several government entities.
Trained in dressmaking
“When my son was three years old, I joined a rehabilitation centre for the disabled in Muriranja, Kiharu Sub-County, where for one and a half years I was trained in dressmaking and tailoring,” she narrates.
Ms Muthoni says in her life so far, she has come face to face with stigma, affecting even her love life.
“I noted that men were not willing to commit themselves to me as a human being capable of being loved and loving back…They were not willing to commit their future in my heart,” she says.
“I took stock of that realisation and discovered that I was alone… Sadly, I learnt that I was my only source of happiness and if I desired stability, I had to work hard for it.”
She was 30 years old when she started searching for a job. The rehabilitation centre had given her a brand-new sewing machine and capital of Sh10,000.
She was also awarded Sh3,000 for being the best in hygiene and Sh2,000 for being disciplined for the duration of her course.
Leased out sewing machine
She went back to Maragua town and leased out her sewing machine to a well-established tailoring shop for Sh50 per day. The owner of the shop also hired her as an assistant, paying her Sh100 per day.
“That was good money, which allowed me to move from my family’s home in Kianjiru-ini village to a rental house and pay my own bills…I was good to go and there was no doubt in my life that I was made for greatness,” she says.
She opened a savings account with a bank and made friends with only financially successful women in her neighbourhood.
“That is how I was introduced to the world of buying and selling shares as well as foreign currency. I would buy off shares and sell them for a profit,” she says.
“I would buy dollars at low prices and sell them once the exchange rate rose… It was like a game… By 2005, I had watched in disbelief as my bank balance read 800,000.”
Damaris Muthoni at her farm with her aide, Joseph Njoroge.
Tailoring shop
She established her tailoring shop in Maragua and by 2007 she had hit the millionaire club.
“I knew my God was with me and my advisers told me fat bank accounts were for fools…That I had to (try investing the money),” she says.
“I had a relative who dealt in motor vehicle brokerage. It is in that association that I bought my public service vehicle in 2009 for Sh580,000 and sold it a year later after it had fetched me a million shillings in returns and there was a customer willing to buy it for Sh600,000.”
Bought three taxis
She used the cash to buy three taxis and a pickup truck. She also ventured into selling ripe bananas wholesale to supermarkets and institutions.
“Along this journey, I had conceived for the second time and decided that the two boys were enough for me. I concentrated on giving them the best a mother can afford and … they are doing well in life,” she says.
She has built a permanent house on land that she bought, ventured into poultry and horticulture farming and is a supplier to several government entities.
“Today, I am an independent disabled single mother who refused to die,” she says.
She plans to launch a charitable foundation to coach people like her to become financially self-reliant instead of waiting to be helped by “conditional acts of mercy”. BY DAILY NATION
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