After a 15-year desk job as a secretary at BAT, the last thing Anne Mburu would have imagined herself being after retirement was a farmer.

"Sometimes it is difficult to know what to invest in with one's retirement benefits, so I found myself hopping from one business to another trying to make money and survive without a regular income," says Anne.

At first Anne put her money into distributing Coca Cola products at Dagorreti market, but the business was not lucrative, and during the rainy season, the last thing Kenyans want is to sip a cold soda. Cold weeks would therefore roll into months without a penny in the pocket! There are also so many other optional beverages in the market today that Anne found it difficult to complete and develop a clientle for her drinks.

Next, she opened a small food kiosk in Dagoretti Corner again, where she cooked African dishes like Githeri, Kunde, Ugali, Chapati and various stews. This she found to be quite profitable. "Selling food is a very lucrative job because people always need something to eat or drink as they go about the day's work," says Anne "but the business requires a lot of stamina and hard work. It takes a lot of determination and strength to keep it going. It can be very demanding for someone who has retired from a desk job of 15 years! I found that I could not cope with the amount of supervision and hands on management that such a kiosk requires."

In order to meet the demand for the cooked food and beverages, Anne and her co-workers needed to get to the kiosk by 4-O-clock every morning to light the fires and wash, peel, chop, clean, and cook the various ingredients that went into preparing the meals. Opening shop any later than that meant that they would miss the large number of early birds rushing to work in the morning, and this also meant that the day's lunch would be late as well. A wily competitor could therefore scoop the morning and lunch sales very easily just by turning up a little earlier, and there were many such kiosks in the area.

Anne therefore found herself waking up at 3am every morning just to keep track of the business! At 55 years of age, after working herself to the bone in the cut-throat corporate world, Anne found this schedule too difficult to maintain. Says she, "the last thing I imagined myself doing after retirement was waking up the rest of my life at 3am!"

Indeed, many workers approach retirement imaging that it will be a time when one can finally put

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about True gardening stories: Growing for profit in retirement?
We want to hear your view. Write now!