Meet Joshua Mwabali, a journalism graduate from the Nairobi Aviation College who after being bruised by the monster of unemployment had no choice but to settle for touting.
After his graduation in 2014, Mwabali was met by the rude reality that there are no jobs and he had no otherwise but to take anything that came his way.
“Life was tough, it really gave me a smashing, I had no choice but to take any job that came my way,” Mwabali said in an interview with the Standard Digital Entertainment.
After two years of hustling with no meaningful income, Mwabali ran into a friend in Nairobi’s CBD who informed him of touting vacancies at the KBS but he had to meet his first hurdle: he was to raise Sh15000 training fees.
Just like any other job, challenges were many and he thought of quitting but he had to keep soldiering on.
“My first day at work was challenging especially handling people of different personalities. There is a perception that a majority of makangas are semi-illiterate, that they are only there to steal from people,” Mwabali said, adding that he nearly quit his newly found job after a passenger hurled numerous insults at him for forgetting to return his balance.
“I once forgot to give a customer his change, he called me all sorts of names, when the day ended I thought of quitting but the challenges I faced kept me going,” Mwabali recalls.
Today he is operating the Pipeline, Buru Buru, KNH route and makes Sh900 per day which translates to Sh27000 net pay per month and slightly over Sh30000 basic salary. He is also a freelance journalist for KBC Weekend.
#MyJob