 |
Growing up in Nairobi’s Mathare slum, Sarafina Mumbi could easily have ended up like many teenage girls living there dropping out of school, pregnant, or even married off.
But walking to school every day, she developed a fascination with the noisy, brightly painted matatus – the local minibuses that recklessly ferry commuters through the city’s congested roads which kept the 15-year-old focused on her future.
Eight years on, Mumbi is not only living her dream designing graffiti-style artwork on matatus, she is shattering traditional gender roles as one of a few women to break into Kenya’s male-dominated matatu sector.
“I don’t know what inspired me. Maybe the music blaring out, or the conductors jumping in and out while the matatu is still moving, or colorful sides of the vehicles,” said Mumbi, 23, who goes by the professional name Tsarah Arts.
“I never thought it unusual, but I knew people wouldn’t agree. I didn’t even tell my mother I wanted to be in the matatu business. She would have been against it. I told her I wanted to be a doctor.”
But, like most women shattering the glass ceiling in their respective fields, Mumbi admits it was not easy.
Also Read:
“Every day I am reminded of my gender. There is always some man there
to make some kind of comment about me being a woman,” said Mumbi in a
black baseball cap, sitting outside a rundown community center in
Mathare.“But I will stay in this business. I have to and want to. Despite this harassment, I still want to do this. Each day, I get stronger and stronger.”