HELLEN WAMBUI sets the ladder on the floor, drapes her overall and cleans her brushes and rollers as we settle down for a chat. For eight years now, she has been eking out a living as a painter

Grace Wachira  @yaa_grace

Even though she has been at it for eight years now, Hellen Wambui still gets stares from people as she goes about her business. In her element, she is dressed in a paint-stained overall and a head wrap. 

You will occasionally spot her wearing a face mask when sanding walls as she preps them for a fresh coat.

Her work? Painting walls of houses, offices, shops and about anything really that needs a bit of paint to sparkle.

“In 2011 aged  21, I hang up my gloves on mitumba business after I failed to sell out a stock of bales of clothes I as fast as I wanted.

Selling clothes in Mwiki, Kasarani estate in Nairobi was not easy and money was hard to come by. I had to get an alternative way to make money and for me, it was painting,” she tells People Daily.

Ambitious, but clueless, Wambui was ready to learn an alternative way to make ends meet. 

“I am the last born in my family and I saw how my parents struggled back at home. I had to find a way to fend for us all; painting gave me that opportunity,” she says.

Apprenticeship 

Her cousin’s wife, who also ran a boutique closed shop and joined her husband, a professional painter. Wambui joined them and quickly learnt through the ropes.

“My first day at work was strange. My colleagues, who were all men at the time jibed and made fun of a young girl like me who was painting alongside them,” she says laughing.

But that did not deter her from forging forward. By 2012, she already knew her way around the rollers, brushes and distinguished pretty well her water-based paints from the oil-based ones.

“I did not receive any formal training. I learnt everything through apprenticeship and here I am,” she says.

That same year, she got married. “It was necessary for me to keep to my new craft because we had to both make ends meet.  We have been a team ever since,” says the mother of one.

This week, Wambui has been working at Matuu in Machakos county. She has since bought a car and comfortably drives to work whenever she feels like it.

“When I have out of town jobs, I leave Kasarani while it’s still dark to ensure I arrive on time in my office.

I do not take my job lightly. It is because of this job that my husband, who is an entrepreneur, and I have secured ourselves a piece of land where we hope to put up our home,” she says.

House rent and school fees are tasks that they are able to meet, now that she too brings home the bacon.

Luckily for her, she has since received more formal training sessions from paint companies who once in a while offer trainings for painters in Kenya.

She says, “I can comfortably say I am a professional. I am contacted by corporates along with my colleagues and as a team, we paint the walls to perfection.” 

Wambui no longer  needs to measure the ratios with measuring jugs; she just uses her eyes as she has since finessed her skill. She even enjoys working with decorative paint coats; matte, gloss and so on. 

“At first, the doubts that people expressed in me stuck on me, but now, I have grown a ‘thick coat of paint on my skin’.

I am often asked; how could my husband allow me to carry around ladders and paint homes?  I just laugh it off,” she quips.

When she started out in her current career, she hoped to establish her own company by the time she turned 30.

“Now I am 30 and I am yet to start my own outfit but, that dream is not dead. I hope to one day set up my own company that will provide employment to others.

Women are not yet fully accepted in some sectors, but I am hopeful that the days of being scorned or made fun of as we go about our business will be a thing of the past,” concludes Wambui.