I am qualified and have the skills to prove it, why can’t I get a job?

Looked at casually, one may be tempted to dismiss Susan Mutero’s story as just a tip of the larger iceberg of joblessness among the youth in Kenya.

In an economy where thousands of young people are grappling with the sting of unemployment after completing their studies in college and university, her case may look commonplace.

It isn’t though. Hers is a story of numerous struggles, of desperation, and hopelessness. A story of hope turned on its head. And resilience typified.

From surviving tribal clashes in Ng’arua Sub-County of Laikipia in 1997, to her parents’ separation, a tempest-tossed education through high school and the university, and the barb of joblessness, Susan, 28, believes she has seen it all.

For a university-trained horticulturalist, who is also an accountant, but who, for lack of choice, has had to resort to weaving baskets and hawking them in the towns of Narumoru, Nanyuki and Nyeri in Central Kenya for survival, Susan says that getting a “proper” job befitting her qualifications has been a discouraging experience.

It has been a toxic mix of struggling to finance her higher education, interning at various organisations but failing to secure a job contract, and having to cope with pittances paid to her as a casual labourer while providing professional services to the firms.

While many graduates admit that the bite of waiting for a year to get a job after graduation is unbearable, Susan has constantly been on a losing wicket in her job search, since she graduated from university two years ago.

In her first stab at her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams, KCSE, in 2007, Susan managed a B- (minus) of 58 points, falling short of the required 64 entry point for female candidates that year. In 2008, she was reeling in the hard reality of a failed quest to advance to university.

Hopeless, she decided to join her mother and other women in her hometown of Nanyuki who were doing basketry for a living. It is from her mother that she learnt this skill.

Owing to her woeful circumstances, and glaring at a possible collapse of her education, and dream, she had become accustomed to sharing her distresses with whoever might care to listen, clients and strangers alike.

“Even as I narrated my troubles to people, I did not have much hope that this would help my situation. It was more like venting than a campaign for help,” she says.

Inside though, Susan had a conviction that basketry was not her rightful place in life. She had her eyes trained on bigger things, to get higher education, get a job and liberate her family from the yoke of poverty that had become part of them like a seventh sibling.

As luck would have it, and after hearing her touching story, one of her customers, Lucy Murugi, a veterinary officer, offered to pay her examination registration fee. Susan was to go back to school and repeat Form Four.

The second-born child in a family of six children, says: “This was a lifeline. A chance to turn the tide of my life and my family’s. Failing in my second attempt was also out of the question. It would be inexcusable.”

After re-joining high school at Moi Equator Girls in Laikipia County, while overlooking the myriad of challenges including lack of food that continued to plague her family, she knew she had to perform well. She admits: “It was overwhelming for me, having to fully focus on my studies while worrying about my siblings.”

When the results were announced in 2011, she had scored a B+ of 72 points, earning her a direct entry to the university. Her industry had paid off, and she was invited to study a degree in Horticulture with Information Technology at Maseno University.

“My life had turned a corner. Or so I imagined.”

VILLAGE LAUGHING STOCK

With university only a couple of months away, Susan had to look for a job to be able to cater for her needs while in college. She got a job as a kindergarten teacher near her home in Nanyuki. “At this point, I didn’t mind the quality of the job, except that a paltry Sh3,000 a month was way too little to sustain me and still leave something to save for my college expenses,” Susan says, and adds that her parents looked upon her to support them.

When the teaching job could no longer do, Susan was compelled to go back to weaving and hawking baskets. “This time, with my eyes trained on college education, I worked with renewed energy and purpose.”

Through self-denial, she managed to save some money for her impending new circumstances: life in the university. But a tougher reality would soon dawn on her upon admission. “With my parents unable to pay for my school fees or support me financially, I had to split my HELB loan between paying my school fees, rent, and taking care of all my other expenses. Soon, my savings were diminished.”

During the long school holidays, Susan would spend her time weaving and hawking baskets, which had become her lifeline.

“To make ends meet, I had to do it, while enduring ridicule from my friends in the village, who made fun of my university education.”

Embarrassment was no longer something she feared. “These teases and ridicule gave me more impetus to fight and do what I knew was the right thing. It was humiliating, but I soldiered on,” she says.  

In spite of all the shortcomings, Susan enrolled for a CPA course with Kenya Accountants and Secretaries National Examinations Board, KASNEB. She recounts: “I was determined to finish my studies with not just a degree, but with a professional course to complement it. That way, I stood a better chance to get a job.” Now with examination fee to pay for her accounting course, the burden was suddenly twice as heavy. She knew she had to fire from all available cylinders, by hook or by crook, to make it. And she did.

In the December of 2014, her wearisome and almost frustrating journey through the university climaxed with her graduation with a Second Class Honours degree.

“It was both a joy and relief for me. I had attained what I had almost lost hope about. Painfully but successfully.”

JOB HUNTING

A year later in 2015, Susan completed her CPA Section Six, and received the certification to practice as a public accountant.

“Armed thus, I was determined to exit the stage of battling for mere survival, and join a more honourable pursuit of seeking my place in the society as an educated woman,” she says.

Justifiably, for someone in possession of her qualifications in accounting and horticulture, she was sure to have a turnaround in her life of struggle.

Then began the job hunt.

“This period has marked the worst nightmare of my life,” she confesses. “One after another application has been fruitless. I have applied tens of times, in banks, in horticultural farms - every imaginable entity that would require my skills, but so far, nothing has been forthcoming.”

 The closest Susan has come to getting a job was at an agricultural production firm in Makuyu, Murang’a County, where she interned for nine months.

“My roles here were quite elaborate,” she say. “I was charged with training of farmers, receiving and packaging shipments and farm visits.”

After interning for the customary three months, Susan was fortunate to get an extension of her contract at the farm. Her pay however was to be the same as that of the casual labourers working for the firm, Sh270 a day.

To her though, this was a plank for better things to come. But her cake was left out in the rain when after six more months, the firm indicated that they could neither hire her on a permanent basis, nor retain her any longer.

“I was disappointed because I had hoped that the firm would offer me a job contract. Nevertheless, I am thankful for the time I spent there and through which I was able to gather a wealth of lessons and new skills.”

At the start of 2016, she secured another brief contact with the Independent and Boundaries Commission as an auditor and an assistant during the mass voter registration drive.

“The IEBC contract was temporary. The commission however promised to contact us if an opportunity ever came up in future, so when they invited applicants for the position for this year’s round of voter registration exercise, I submitted my application.”

Susan says she was never contacted, concluding that her application had not been successful.  

Meanwhile, her former colleagues in high school and college secured jobs with the banking sector and major agricultural firms in the country, while her vessel continued to head nadir. As a result, this pushed Susan to the cliff edge of questioning her wisdom of expending so much money and time in formal education, but with so little to show for her academic qualifications.

“At times I feel that starting a business would perhaps have been a much wiser idea. Who knows, the enterprise would by this time have broken even and been able to cater for all my financial needs,” Susan reflects.

In 2016, faced with responsibilities and the dark cloud of uncertainty that drifted above her youthful life, she had to pull herself together. Susan rolled up her sleeves and went back to an all too familiar rut: weaving and hawking baskets.

“It was a complete circuit for me, a return to the job that had seen me through my university studies,” she recalls.

By this time however, her initial gusto in this job had largely wasted away. For someone left without choice, with dreams punctured and hopelessness closing in on her, it was an absolute case of slaving in a dull job to eke out a living.

“This time, I didn’t hope to achieve much in the trade of baskets. If anything, this job now acted as an everyday prick to my conscience, a reminder of the miseries that epitomised my life and more painfully, a constant mockery to my academic qualifications. It was agonising and boring,” she acknowledges.

PROFESSIONAL HAWKER

“As you read this, I work as a casual labourer in a crop production farm near home, whenever jobs arise. As a trained horticulturalist with skills in botany, I’m involved with projects such as production of biological control of pests. Other times I work in the accounts departments of these firms. With my qualifications though, at least I’m cushioned from manual jobs,” she says.

“I earn between Sh200 to Sh300 a day, just like other labourers. The company says they can’t hire me since there are no job openings”.

Many are the times when she has reached the end of her resilience, and her hope taken a nosedive.

Soul-searching, she adds, has become a permanent companion. “I constantly wonder: was I born to hawk forever? Was my education in vain? At what point did my life lose its bearing?”

Besides her degree and CPA courses, Susan has undertaken several other short-term courses, which include leadership training by the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the Ministry Of Youth Affairs, food safety, organic control of pests and safe handling and use of pesticides.

From a glance at the young woman’s CV, it is evident that through her vocational involvements at various levels in different organisations, she has been able to assemble the requisite aptitude to perform at a professional level, yet has been a victim of deception by job prospects that look promising at first, but dwindle into oblivion, leaving her dejected.

As universities and colleges in the country churn out graduates to the job market every year, but with a tailspinning economy that is unable to absorb all the skilled labour, frustration among graduates is rising.

Calls have been made for the youth to be more creative in their various disciplines, and to acquire as many skills as possible so as to survive in an economy that is hostile to those without any education.

From statistics however, most young graduates, unlike Susan, are still disinclined to intern or volunteer their services without pay. Many more are opposed to doing menial jobs to sustain themselves.

Obviously, Susan’s story has valuable gems to pick from, for those like her who are on the verge of despairing in their search for jobs and happiness in life. Doing something for sustenance as opposed to waiting to secure a well-paying job is one of the lessons to pick from this story.

Despite all the road blocks she keeps encountering, Susan says that she has not lost her grit yet, neither allowed her ambition to fade away nor her dream to collapse under the weight of frustrations of unemployment. Instead, she remains full of hope that curtains will soon fall on this tragedy of joblessness that has been playing on the stage of her life.