Stephine Guta had quite a bittersweet childhood. When he was born, everything was going well. However, at three years old, his parents separated. He had just joined pre-primary, but after the separation, he had to drop out for one term. “It was crazy. I had a taste of both worlds, good times and bad,” he recalls. Stephine and his brother continued living with their mother, who struggled to make ends meet. She worked as a mama fua (housekeeper).
Despite her meagre earnings, their mother worked tirelessly to put a roof over their heads and food on the table. Tragedy struck when he was four years old; his mother passed away. With no one else to take care of him and his brother, the two boys moved to live with their relatively wealthy father. Things started to look up, he was able to continue with his studies and even looked forward to having a good career in the future.
“I wanted to be a journalist, an IT expert, and many things,” he says. But fate had a different path for him; after high school, he joined the University of Rochester but had to drop out due to drug-related issues. Stephine found his way back to Kenya and had to figure out his life again. “I had a gap period where I became a musician and ran a music school called Music Planet Centre. During this period, I had time to recover and rethink what I wanted to do,” he says.
During his music career, he raised some funds, which he used to go back to school.
In 2016, Stephine joined Daystar University to study Bachelor of Commerce. It was there that he got the idea to start something he was passionate about, which led to the inception of Mama Fua. The idea was born from the fact that his mother worked as a mama fua. He conceived the idea to provide dignity and access to freelancing housekeepers, often referred to as “mama fua,” who wait on the streets for random people to give them work. His vision was not only to provide work but also to upskill them.
“I asked myself what I would do when I’m done with campus. Am I going to sit behind a desk and do what everyone does? So, I thought of finding myself a passion project,” Stephine reflects. “After classes, I would gather my friends to help me formulate how I could bring this idea to life. I wanted to create something that would be profitable and impactful,” he explains. Stephine and his friends conducted research and surveys with housekeepers around Nairobi to understand how to develop the app. In 2018, his cousin sent him a flyer about the KCB 2jiajiri programme, which offered courses, including Film Production. He immediately applied for the programme. He wanted to learn about film and photography to apply the skills to the app he was developing.
“When I went for the KCB 2jiajiri programme interview in Lavington, I was upfront with them and told them I needed photography and videography classes because I was working on a project called the Mama Fua app and wanted to understand the creative language of the people I’ll be working with in the future,” he says. Stephine undertook a short course on film production for three months and successfully graduated.
In 2019, he launched the Mama Fua app, which connects households with trained and vetted housekeepers. And true to his words, Stephine is the one responsible for producing all the Mama Fua videos. “I shoot and edit all the videos on the Mama Fua social media platforms, be it TikTok or Instagram, so the course served its purpose,” he says. So far, the Mama Fua app has grown exponentially, having trained 6,500 housekeepers. It has also diversified into product making where the housekeepers are taught how to make detergent which they can sell. There is also the Mama Fua Academy in Shauri Moyo, which has trained 190 housekeepers.
Stephine has employed 15 staff, 11 female, 4 male. To support him, KCB hosts market days at their Kencom headquarters where the Mama Fua team sells their products. Some KCB staff also use the Mama Fua services.
Stephine says he recommends the KCB 2jiajiri programme because the skills gained can really help people grow their enterprises.