When you drive into a car wash station, you expect young men to come to you like bees offering to clean your car and make it as good as new.
If the baby cries while she is in the process of cleaning a vehicle, Milcah Khabai will carry the little one and proceed without much ado. Photos: Peter Ochieng’ /Standard
Although they have not been trained about best marketing skills, they know how to sell their expertise well and convince clients, who love their cars like their lives, to let them touch-up the precious objects.
Among these aggressive men along the Eldoret-Iten road and opposite the Kipchoge Keino Stadium in Eldoret town is a young woman carrying a baby on her back jostling for the same opportunities to clean the cars.
Milcah Khabai, 22, who has earned the name ‘Mama Car Wash’, is comfortable brushing and sprucing the cars. She doesn’t mind being the only woman among men; it is a job that puts food on her table.
We found Khabai cleaning a white car and within a short time, we noticed that her three-month-old baby Michelle Wanga was sleeping nearby because she kept gazing towards the baby’s direction.
The baby was well tucked in, a shawl and lesso sandwiched her as an old stained jacket acted as a mattress while a carton box vertically erected on one side shielded the little one from the scorching sun although she was under the shade of a tree.
Like an auto machine, Khabai washed off mounds of dirt from the car, dusted it and by the time the driver came to pick it, the car was sparkling clean. The owner smiled widely and paid her the fee promising to bring it back another day for another round of cleaning.
No options
For Khabai, this is her workstation and cleaning a car to a customer’s satisfaction makes her feel good.
“I decided to work here in May last year after running out of options since I lack basic education and rely on odd jobs.”
She had hawked sweets and cigarettes for a while but with time she found this tedious and poorly rewarding.
“Hawking sweets and cigarettes was no longer viable as I only got Sh2 profit per packet which I realised after three days,” she adds.
Earlier she had sold sugarcane but realised she spent so much time in the sun for too little pay. She would buy the sugarcane from Kahoya Market in her Mumias home and sell at Eldoret’s Huruma estate where she lived. She did this for one year, between 2006 and 2007.
Then she tried her hand in being a house help but this too crumbled in 2008. She cites harassment and lack of pay by her employer as the reasons for quitting. Then last year, her husband walked out on her.
She felt lost and stared at the jaws of depression. That is when Khabai decided to do something about her life.
With proceeds from her car wash business, she is able to take care of herself and her baby, pay house rent of Sh500 at the Kenya Railways quarters as well as share the little extra with her six siblings back home.
But the job is not easy.
“It is a hard and cumbersome job calling for immense willpower, notwithstanding the aggressive male competitors but I choose to soldier on because God rewards faithful work,” Khabai says, confidently.
On a good day, she serves more than five clients but on ‘dry’ ones, she can clean only one car. Each car is cleaned at Sh50 or 60. Khabai goes home with at least Sh120 per day.
Iron lady
And she fetches water from water barrel sunk in an artificial water pan 50m away. Luckily, she doesn’t pay for the water.
Because of her determination to work hard and have many clients, Khabai is sometimes casually referred to as ‘Iron Lady’. Her warm style of welcoming her customers makes her stand out among her colleagues.
Khabai has become the centre of attraction for motorists passing along the road as they slow down to see how she does her work and some, impressed by her workmanship, stop to have their cars washed even though they were not thinking to.
“We all have loyal customers and we don’t snatch someone’s clients unless that person asks you to do when he has three cars lined up for his attention.”
Khabai has five regular customers. But she hopes to get more this year.
One of her clients, Abraham Korir, a driver, says he encourages his colleagues at work to have her wash their cars. This also offers her an opportunity to earn a living and take care of her baby, he says.
At one point, Khabai does her chore with Wanga firmly tied on her back, momentarily twisting her to the front to comfortably clean the car’s interior. But her daughter doesn’t give her problems as she works.
“I feed her on porridge before we leave the house in the morning and she cries for attention only when hungry. Once fed, she is okay and I do my work without any worry,” she says.
Her understanding clients accord her time to feed Wanga during the rare moments she gets hungry when she is in the middle of cleaning a car.
“I delivered Wanga immediately after I had finished washing a bus and sprung back to work a week later,” she says with a tinge of pride.
By Michael Wesonga, The Standard
