Pizza-to-go

Kenyans are masters of making things out of cheap (and often thrown out) materials. And this can can lead to some pretty cool businesses.

Esther (pictured above) has a special place in our hearts – an amazing Kenyan woman who helped me with my kids, allowed me to work and have a bit of a life.

Her story is typical of many African women - her husband disappears from the scene and she is left to bring up her four young children single handedly, picking up work where she can find it.

She is a master in the hustle (more about that another time).

But Esther is slightly atypical in that she’s seriously driven, and desperate to run her own business. She set up her own small restaurant a few years ago, it worked well, she felt in control, running her own show. But her landlord didn’t like the success so he doubled her rent. Overnight. And put her out of business.

So before we left Kenya we all sat down and wracked our brains as to how she could start up again on her own.

She loves to cook. But how to take the third party landlord issue out of the equation….what about a rickshaw roving restaurant like this one in London? But Esther can’t drive and what if the vehicle got nicked or she was in an accident (the roads are lethal in Kenya)..there were just too many variables and too much expense.

And then we stumbled upon this ingenious yet simple contraption - a typically juakali (a Swahili-ism for creating something out of nothing under the “hot sun”) invention.