“Young People Should Use Their Skills To Make A Living,” Says “Mzungu” Who Sells Mitumba

Odd jobs are yet to be embraced by the youth. A percentage is still looking for a white collar job just to wear the suit and tie and have a desk.

Starting a small business seems to be a haven for currently unemployed youth but the drive to continue gets weaker if you are unable to maximise on the profits.

Most of them give up half way and wait for a job to come to them. But meet Tomi Marko Antero Kanerua, a Finn who sells second hand clothes in Eldoret. A surprising fact is that he is a trained chef who has worked in Finland, Malaysia, Germany and Sweden.

Who wouldn’t wish to buy second hand clothes from a white man? Fascinating isn’t it? Just in the same way we would wish to buy ‘mahindi choma’ from the Chinese man along the Thika super highway.

“I am surprised that people find me and what I do amusing, but I am not complaining because the curiosity favours my business,” he said in an interview with the Nation.

In a day, Marko, who lives with his girlfriend, Lilian Wambui, says he makes between Ksh2,000 and Ksh4,000 in profit compared to the Ksh500 to Ksh1,000 Lilian makes.

But how did a trained chef end up selling mitumba? He could just have gotten a job at any five star hotel but he didn’t.

“I came to Kenya in 2013 as a tourist at the invitation of a cousin and fell in love with your beautiful country. Since my tourist visa would not allow me to get a work permit which is very expensive for foreigners I had to do something to survive,” reveals the 41 year old to The Daily Nation.

He tells the paper that what convinced him to stay on was meeting Lillian who was selling second hand clothes for a living in Mtwapa.

At the time insecurity escalated at the coast early this year, Marko was in Nairobi, where he was volunteering as a cook at a Christian organisation that takes care of orphans.

When he returned to Mombasa a few weeks later and learnt that Lilian had left, he called her and the next day he took a bus to her parents’ home in Eldoret Town.

He discloses that life was not as easy as he had expected; there was house rent and bills to be paid. To make life easier Marko decided to revive Lilian’s business, and even volunteered to help her run it, which surprised Lilian.

“I have been in the business for a while, and know how involving it is. I also doubted he would cope, and wondered how people would receive him,” says Lilian the mother of one

Even so, Marko was determined because compared to the jobs he held while growing up in Finland, selling clothes would be easy. For instance, he worked as a casual labourer for a year when he was 16, and helped out at his father’s farm, milking cows, for a couple of years.

The paper also reports that selling clothes is just a small part Marko’s daily chores; he also fetches water from a nearby well, washes dishes and cleans the house despite Lilian’s protests.

Her neighbours, especially the men, find it amusing because these chores are considered a woman’s domain.

As the 41 year old struggles to make a living he is worried that so many young people are content to do nothing all day.

“There are so many around — they should use their skills to make a living, instead of sitting idle, waiting for miracles to happen,” he says.

With his business doing well he has plans of opening a couple of stalls in Mombasa, where he is sure the business will thrive.

“My short-term plan is to raise money to get a work permit,” he said.

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