Loader driver dreams big and focuses on road ahead

Operating heavy machinery is fulfilling for a Kenyan

It may not be possible to find anyone more obsessed with being a good loader driver than Jemmiman Mombua Muthini.

At the same time, the 23-year-old Kenyan woman is possibly the most fashionable loader driver around, especially at the construction site for the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway project.

Wearing a red T-shirt with a colorful design, a pair of uniquely shaped canvas shoes and pink-tinged hair, she is driving a loader at least twice her height when China Daily meets her at the project's Section No 5.

No rough-looking wrangler of heavy machinery, instead she almost seems like a model ready for a pictorial.

"Neighbors here, they stand here and they are surprised. A lady driving this machine! They ask many questions. How did you manage to start this course? It's very funny," says Muthini.

"Even men stand here and wonder a lot. How? I told them I chose it. It's my career. I like it. I love my job."

Muthini is happy, often working 12 hours a day, taking about two days a month off. She drives a heavy tractor also called a front-end loader, which has a wide bucket on the front mounted on two arms to scoop up or grab materials and carry them from one place to another.

She usually knocks off at 7 pm, followed by dinner and a shower. She then cleans her uniform and goes to bed. "I don't get time for entertainment," she says.

When asked if she feels tired, the worker from Kenya's Machakos county near Nairobi gives a one-word answer: "No."

"For me, I enjoy it. I am very proud of my job here. My family members are very proud of me as well, especially my father," she says. "I have enough time to rest. I am used to it. "

The woman's father is a police officer, her mother a businesswoman, and she has two brothers and four sisters.

She says she can make more than 40,000 Kenyan shillings ($412) a month, depending on how many extra hours she works after her normal eight-hour shift on work days. It's a good wage. Kenya's monthly minimum wage for various types of tractor drivers that part of Kenya ranges from 9,680 to 15,435 Kenyan shillings.

Muthini's enthusiasm for loaders started during her time in the Kenya National Youth Service. She learned to operate the heavy machines during the two-year service that Kenyan youth perform after high school. NYS undertakes development programs and alleviates youth unemployment by providing skills while promoting national cohesion.

"You know, when I was in NYS, you were to choose three courses. From the three they will give you one. If you want this one, and if you are sure it's the course you need, fill it in three times. So I did it three times, and they gave me this course," she says.

The loader NYS used for instruction in her 10-month course was from China.

There were about 150 students, including 30 young women, in Muthini's class. But fewer than 10 decided to drive a loader after graduating, she says. After graduating from NYS, Muthini operated a loader for a cement factory and then for a tile factory.

There is another woman operating heavy equipment - an excavator operator - in Muthini's No 1 camp of Section No 5, which is near Kiu town, about 90 kilometers southeast of Nairobi.

There are about 10,889 Kenyans, including engineers, machine operators and common workers, employed in building the $3.8 billion railway, Kenya's biggest infrastructure project in the past half-century. The number is expected to reach up to 30,000 before the project is completed in 2017.

One member of Muthini's family has expressed an interest in following in her footsteps. "My young brother is now in his 12th year of study before entering college, and he says he would like to study loader driving," she says.

Students have to attend school for 14 years before continuing their education in Kenya.

Muthini hopes for more in the future, but she doesn't want to give up her steady job driving a loader, either.

"You know you have to aim higher. I also dream to aim higher. I am planning to be a very successful woman in the future. I want to do business. While someone manages the business somewhere else, I will work here. I like it very much. I enjoy driving his machine," she says.

Part of her enthusiasm stems from playing a role in transforming her country.

"I will be happy to see the train pass here the way it passes in China. The train that passes here will be very different from that train that passes now. That one is very slow. I would like to see how this one will operate. I would like to see the differences," says Muthini, eyeing the direction where the old railroad built by the British colonial administration 110 years ago is located.

"The railway will bring a great change to Kenya. It will bring a lot of advantages in transportation. There is congestion in the highway. The railway will change that."

(China Daily Africa Weekly 06/19/2015 page16)