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Betty Muthoni has survived an abusive marriage, being a jobless single mother, running manual errands for survival before her rise to become a managing director of a local company.

Jasmine Atieno @sparkleMine

Betty Muthoni had her life well planned out; get educated to the highest level, have a job, get married and have children.

Just like in fairy tales. But life is not a fairly tail—a few months after she joined college, she got pregnant. 

“My mother was disappointed, but was still warm and loving. I gave birth in 2001 to my now 19-year-old daughter.

After delivering, my mother and brother supported my return to college. It was a hard one, but we made it through,” shares the last born of six. 

In 2003 she got her first job through the help of Visions Institute of Professionals’ career programme, which went a long way in providing for her little daughter. Soon after, she was to meet her “Mr Right” in 2006. 

“Towards the end of 2007, we agreed to try marriage and see what would become of our lives.

That was the beginning of a painful journey. God did bless us with two children in 2008 and 2009. But there was a lot of drama and betrayals.

I cannot even comprehend how I stayed in that relationship. I was cheated on, hardly taken care of, physically abused and completely mentally tormented. He was hardly home.

His whereabouts was shared to me scantly as and when he wanted,” says the mother of three about her marriage.

Betty says her second and third children came when there was not much hope to hold on to. In fact, she went into depression when she learned of her third pregnancy. 

Walking out

“When I was about to deliver my third child, we had an ugly disagreement and a bad fight that I walked out. My brothers rescued me and took me to my mother’s house in the village.

With two children and another on the way, my life was shattered. There was a lot of darkness glaring at my future.

But the fighting spirit in me didn’t give up; I got out of the shell of darkness and made my way back to the city a few months after delivery.

I was jobless for a long time and with an unsupportive partner, it was hard to imagine how the future would look like for me and my little ones.

I walked out of the relationship, but with hopes of regaining our future for the sake of our kids and love. They say love is blind; well I did witness the blindness here.

I now say, it could be blind, but it needs to have brains at least,” she intimates. 

Were it not for a well-wisher who provided her with a two roomed house, Betty and her children would have been homeless. She became Mama Fua to make ends meet. 

“The job was not sustainable. I borrowed money from everyone who I knew until they got tired. One day I was at home after trying everything when an alumni from my former primary school called me.

He knew my plight. During his errands hawking clothes, he had met a woman who was making customised calligraphy cards.

They needed someone who could write. He recalled how my mother, a teacher, was strict in handwriting during his old primary school days and he imagined that I would never have missed a mark in that too.

And he was right.  A call and a meeting and an opportunity was born for me. I made Sh1,000 and this was to be my source of income for some time. I moved to hawking these cards and even making them,” shares Betty.

Turning point

In 2014, she got a part time sales job at Boderless Company, a tracking company.

It required her to travel to the western region every week while travelling back to be with her children during weekends.

It was not easy, but on the third month she was making quite enough. On the fifth month, she was promoted to sales and customer care manager.

Six months later she was appointed business development manager, given a company car and a lot of other privileges. 

In October 2016, she was appointed general manager, Track and Trace Limited, a vehicle tracking, fleet management, fuel monitoring company.

The challenge was that she was to start a division from scratch. The only thing she was given was a license.

“I took up the challenge prayerfully. I was the only employee to start this off, but I had been given two co-workers who were supposed to support me as and when I needed them.

In 2017, we set a plan, did ground breaking and hired a number of employees. I closed the year with about 15 colleagues,” narrates Betty.

 Fast forward in January this year, she was appointed Managing Director of the company. Under her are more than 50 coworkers.

“My job entails overall revenue generation management, staff motivation, management of annual goals, laying our strategy for growth and expansion of the business, overall policies and procedures implementations and stakeholders’ management.

This requires a lot attention to details, discipline, consistency, accountability and good knowledge of my employees to allow them work freely to their full capacity for us to achieve our full productivity,” she says.