top of page

Rose blooms in Kenyatta Market

By Natachi Onwuamaegbu

with help from Dianne Saliamo & Carly Steyer


Carly Steyer


For Rose Orata, Kenyatta Market was a fresh start from a life left hopeless by a man. A man who abandoned her, who isolated her and her children, who left her without. Kenyatta Market was a way for Rose to reclaim her life and her childrens’, to provide.


Rose doesn’t have her own shop in the market. In fact, she’s the first “free agent” braider we’ve featured, meaning she’s not tied to one shop, one boss. The market, and even the surrounding salons, are fair grounds for Rose.


“I go anywhere,” said Rose, straightening her apron and leaning forward in her green plastic chair. “I can go wherever they need me.”


Unlike the business owners who often camp out outside Kenyatta Market’s entrance hoping to attract customers, Rose doesn’t need to. Instead, she sits in her go-to plastic chair inside Jemma’s shop and waits.


“My work is what attracts the customers,” Rose says. “It’s what keeps people coming back.”


Business owners know where to find Rose. Famous for her cornrows, quick work and slight smile, fellow braiders and customers alike flock to Rose’s famous green plastic chair in the corner of shop 378 and call on her for work. The system ran smoothly for 13 years, the last three of which were out of Jemma’s shop. But, much like Jemma’s story, the pandemic cut Rose’s success short.


There were less customers than before. Less traction, less business, plenty more hair braiders. In what felt like just a moment, the source of Rose’s purpose in life dried up – and she still had two more kids living at home.


Putting her children through school, educating them, setting them up for the best life possible, is Rose’s “why”. It’s why she gets out of bed, why she works as hard as she does, why she learns new braiding techniques faster than they can appear elsewhere in the market.


However, Kenyatta Market wasn’t Rose’s first foray into hair braiding nor business disappointments. She’s used to business declining due to forces out of her control. One was a deadly disease and the other? An overbearing husband who was quick to pull both financial support and financial independence from the young mother.



Carly Steyer


The year was 1974 and Rose, the second of nine siblings, was born screaming and wiggling and screaming again in Homa Bay. The town, located on Lake Victoria in Western Kenya, is known for its beauty. Palm trees, lush green fields, impalas, the endless body of water — it’s in Homa Bay that Rose spent the first 20 years of her life. It’s where she played with her siblings, ran in the streets, and learned how to braid.


Rose’s grandmother was an avid braider, and was determined to pass along the skills to her granddaughters. In the fields by her grandmother’s house, Rose and her sisters would lay out in the tall grass, and under her grandmother’s dutiful instructions, tuck one blade under another. And again, and again. When they were good enough, they could graduate to braiding their grandmother’s hair. Rose, of course, was the first to advance.


And advance she did. After Rose got married at the age of 19, she worked in the Ministry of Lands, raised one boy and two girls, and acted as the doting wife, sister and daughter. This is the life Rose had and loved before that first, out-of-her-control Disappointment.


It was a series of bad events, each building on one another to push Rose out of the town she loved. First, she was furloughed from her job. That setback wasn’t too devastating – this is Rose we’re talking about. She adapted, opened her own store (a business made of tin and wood and sweat and tears) and sold bread, candy and soaps to her neighbors. She made enough money to buy some land, cows and goats and gave the deeds to her husband for safekeeping. Then she fell pregnant again with her third child, another girl. What should have been a blessing (afterall, her children are the center of her life) turned to a point of manipulation. A point of pain. Her husband wanted another son, and it was beginning to seem like Rose couldn’t deliver. He would leave for days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months at a time. There were rumors he was scouting for a new wife.


Then, Rose’s father dies. The death devistates Rose – and provides complications. She leaves her husband’s house to take care of her mother and grieve with her siblings. During the month or so she was gone, Rose finds out she’s pregnant – this time, with a boy.


“I wanted to thank God. This is what I prayed for.”


A son is everything her husband wanted, and Rose loves children. This baby, this blessing of a boy, could save her marriage. So when she returns to her husband’s side of town, her first stop is to her land. She wants to sell one of her goats to get money for tithings to her church. But her fields – they’re empty. No goats, none of the boys she hired to care for the goats, nothing. She found someone nearby and asked what happened to them.


“He told me they were sold. My goats were sold and so was my land.”


Rose is heartbroken but somehow doesn’t falter. She gathers herself and goes to see her cows – surely they’re there. Surely she still has something. But they’re gone too. Everything is gone. It turns out, her husband sold the land, her cows, her goats and her business while she was away. Used her trust and profited. For what reason, Rose may never know, but it may have something to do with the new wife he married shortly after.




Natachi Onwuamaegbu


Braiding rescued Rose. It was the skill she had tucked away, one she never considered as a career. In fact, when her daughters were old enough (and grew enough hair), Rose would take them to the salon to get their braids done instead of doing it herself – she was too busy for such a task, too focused in building a career in other places. But when her husband left her with nothing and forced her out of the one place she knew to be home, Homa Bay, it was braiding she turned to.


After starting some braiding businesses in and around Homa Bay, Rose’s brother alerted her to an opportunity in Nairobi. At this point, her husband had completely abandoned her financially. Her mother would send her money to put her kids in a car and drive her home whenever they ran out of food. One of her sisters would send her money for food. When her youngest child, her son, was sick, she went to her husband to ask for money to take him to the hospital. After he refused, his neighbors who heard her pleas raised the money for her. So when the opportunity in Nairobi came up, Rose knew she couldn’t refuse.


Of course Rose was scared. Of course Rose was tired. But if you were to ask her about what it was like to transition to the market, the independence she felt, the control she felt, was a welcome reprieve from her life before. Her life with her husband.


Which brought her here, to shop 378 of Kenyatta Market, where she’s known for her lines, her quick work, and her excellent customer care. It’s here in Kenyatta Market where she’s been able to provide for the daughters her husband turned his back on. It’s here where she thrived and thrived again.


Rose has been failed by systems and people. But I think the reason why she has so much hope now, why she holds so much of herself in the market, is out of loyalty. The market saved her. It helped her provide. It helped her find her passion and make a name for herself. So even when there are no customers, even when there is no hope, there is no help, Rose finds her way back.


“I pray,” said Rose, leaning back in her still famous plastic chair. “And I still have hope.”


Comments


bottom of page