The Hard Life of Being a Waiter Earning Sh7,500 & How He Stills Wants To Live His Surgeon Dream

By Jane Gakaria,

Meet Elvis Munai, a 25 year old waiter who works for a restaurant in Westlands. A typical day for him starts when he wakes up at 5:40 am in his Lower Kabete residence. From there he prepares himself, gets out of the house by 6:10 and reports to work by 6:45 am.

The first thing he does when he gets to work is do some light cleaning of the restaurant and helps the chef in putting the final touches to the food. By the time 7:00 am reaches, their first clients are at the door and he takes their orders, ready to serve them. His routine will be more or less the same for the whole day until 6pm when he gets off work.

So where does Mr. Munai hail from? He was born and bred in Eldoret in a village called Lessos. He was raised by his paternal grandmother since his dad died when he was four and his mother was still a teenager in high school.

Life wasn’t easy for Mr. Munai as his aunts and uncles (he’s father younger 3 sisters and 10 brothers) who were also in school at the same time with him, envied him since he was a bright child in school and they would continually fail and repeat while he would excel. Often they would bully and alienate him, but good old grandma would stand up for him.

When he cleared high school in 2009, he began to fend for himself. His grandma had no capacity to help him go to college and his mother helped out where she could. He moved out of his grandma’s residence and began working kibarua (informal job) at a hardware in Eldoret for some months.

The ‘kibarua’ money wasn’t enough and that’s when he decided to come to Nairobi to further his exploits. In 2011, that’s when he got hired as a waiter in his current place of work. By then he’d saved up enough money, together with some financial assistance from his mother to go to college.

He always wanted to be an orthopedic physician (doctor who specializes in bones) but his ‘B’ plain grade wasn’t enough to get him to med school. He then settled on studying medical laboratory (studying and testing pathogens in laboratories), since it was the closest thing to being a doctor he could get.

Eventually, when he cleared his diploma in January 2013, he got a med lab internship with a healthcare center in Kangemi. He says he didn’t like the experience and had no interest whatsoever in continuing with med lab, since his passion was orthopedics.

When I quiz him about why he settled for just being a waiter on a lesser salary, than just doing med lab which would earn him more he replies that there isn’t much difference. “With med lab work, I’d get Ksh. 13,000 with an inflexible work schedule, but with being a waiter I get Ksh. 7500 per month, plus with my other sides hustles it comes to an extra Ksh. 20,000 per month.”

And what exactly are these side hustles I ask? Well, he says that his has a pool table which he put at a bar his mother’s friend owns. He tells me that on a good weekday it earns Ksh. 500, but on weekends it’s more profitable as it earns Ksh. 1500. He’s also hired a boda boda driver to drive his own motorbike which earns him roughly Ksh. 400 per day. Combine all that together, that earns him an extra Ksh. 20,000 on the side excluding his ksh. 7500 waiter salary.

So does his family approve of his being a waiter rather than a lab technician? “Hapana, hawapendi nikifanya hii kazi, haswa mamangu. Before alikuwa anaona natupa maisha yangu. Lakini nikamwelezea so long as niko na akili timamu, na nafanya kile kitaskuma maisha yangu mbele, hawafai kujali. Lakini sasa washazoea.” (No, they didn’t approve especially my mother. I told them so long as I’m of sound mind and

I’m doing what will get me ahead in life, they shouldn’t worry. But now they’re used to it).

So what does he like about his job? 3 things he says. One, when its payday. Two, he’s a people person so and loves interacting with customers. Three, at the end of each year they get a bonus.

And what challenges does he face? Obviously he states that there are the rude clients. People who are in foul moods and take it out on them.

Two, his salary is quite little hence forcing him to supplement in order to survive. Three, getting diseases associated with their work such as typhoid and lastly, idleness since there’s nothing interesting about his job to keep him glued.

What would he change about his job? He says he definitely improve their service since he admits that sometimes they are slow. He’d probably hire more waiters and buy more microwaves (they only have one) to ensure fast and efficient running of the restaurant.

His goals and plans for the future? Other than going back to med school, he definitely wants to open up his own hotel and bar. He had actually saved enough money to open one earlier in the year but couldn’t afford the high rent, so he’ll save up some more for that.

How close is he to completing saving up for med school? He says he’s almost three quarter way there but has had two major setbacks. One, his mother is currently in South Sudan and has left his two younger teenage sisters for the past six months in his care.

Her business was doing well, but after the clashes broke out, business has been bad. She used to send the little that she could but he told her to save it up for herself and try to restore her business while he’ll take care of his sisters back home.

Two, late last year, his girlfriend of two months stole all his belongings and only left him with the padlock. Hence he was forced to use up some of the saved money to buy everything afresh.

His parting shot? “Should my grades not ensure that I become an orthopedic doctor, I’ll settle for being an orthopedic nurse since my passion is orthopedics. So what I can tell others is to never give up on your dreams, fight for them and do what you need to do to get there.”

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