Josephine Nduta Kariuki and her husband sold off a business, packed their bags and family of three children and hopped onto a plane to go live the American dream. They decided to give it five years then come back home after their last born started college. As she narrates her journey through life, I am amazed at her resilience, strength and faith. Hers is a story of courage, hard work, loss and perseverance. She is a living testimony that nothing worthwhile really comes easy.
Josephine is the managing director and owner of Hotel Troy. Situated in Karen just after the Brookhouse International School, the hotel offers accommodation and conference facilities. It caters mostly for business people, economy class tourists and locals. It is ideal for those who wish to escape the hustle and bustle of the city centre as the surrounding environment is quite serene.
I ask her why a hotel and not any other business. “I had worked in the hospitality industry for a long time. I thought it best to stick to something I knew. Having worked at Mount Kenya Safari Club, the Intercontinental Hotel and Lillian Towers, my experience came in handy,” she says. Josephine later on left and joined an NGO. While at USAID she started a clothing business at the Langata shopping centre which she ran for 10 years. It is this business she sold off and moved to the United States to start a new life.
“In the US you can do anything. I did a number of jobs. I have worked in a nursing home and I was the first Kenyan to open a group home in North Carolina the state that we were living in. A group home accommodates or hosts people with mental or physical disabilities,” she explains. “At the same time I took up a franchise by the name Jani King which specialized in cleaning services. I worked hard and saved a lot. It was very tiring and it wasn’t really for me.”
Just as they had planned, after her last born entered college, she came back home to Kenya with her husband. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with cancer soon after and passed on a year later. She sighs, “It has not been easy being alone. I was devastated. I had no support from my in-laws and all my children were in America. I even thought of going back, I have a green card, but I knew I would slip into depression because there people are so busy chasing the dollar. At least here I have family and friends.”
A month later she won a tender for cleaning and catering services for the KAFOCA Mukuru Studyville in Madaraka; a university accommodation centre by then being run by the Strathmore University.” I started with 39 students and within two years I was cleaning and cooking breakfast and supper for 400 students. By then I had employed a number of staff.”After the two year contract expired, it was not renewed because the owners the Kenya Armed Forces Comrades Association and the Mukuru Trust decided to run it themselves.
Together with her brother they leased a building in Nairobi West and started a girls’ hostel. Things went very well and the services they offered included cleaning and catering. After the lease to the building expired, the owner seeing how profitable the business was decided not to renew but instead took up the business.
Josephine was disappointed, but her brother tried to encourage her to look for another building where they could start over again. But she was tired of it all and wanted something of her own. So she moved back to her matrimonial home in Karen, sold off a piece of land she owned and started construction of 16 bedsitters within the two and a half acre compound. These were to cater for students from the Catholic University which was nearby. Soon after she realized that she had made a mistake. With the noise from the students and late hours they kept, she had no peace and could not sleep.
That is when the idea to convert to a hotel came to her. Many of the people she consulted tried to discourage her, but Josephine had a vision and was not going to be deterred by anyone. She took out a bank loan and started the process of change of user and getting approvals from city planners. Once that was done, she started to convert the bedsitters to hotel rooms. Josephine ran out of money and had to negotiate a top up from the bank which was very costly. With support from friends who saw her vision she was able to raise an extra four million to finish the project.
The fact that she was alone; there was no one to take care of her, gave her the motivation to succeed. She had put all her money and energy into the business. It was make or break. There was no other choice. Her passion for her vision consumes her and she lives, eats, and sleeps Hotel Troy. Currently the hotel has one honeymoon suite, 19 deluxe rooms, 4 executive en-suites and 2 conference rooms. The garden is used for weddings and other corporate events.
Her joy and comfort has been a grandson who lived with her when she was starting. The hotel is named after him. He has since gone to live with his parents in the states. Her son also relocated back to Kenya and has been helping her to run the business. She markets through a website [http://hotel-troy.com/] and gets referrals from satisfied clients and the NGO where she worked before. She believes her business is successful because of the good service, cleanliness and food.
Josephine laughs when I ask about remarriage. “You know what? I am very businesslike and I think men fear to approach me. Although if I find the right person I would consider it, loneliness is not a good thing. You need companionship. Sometimes I work late and when I go home, the house is empty. I am alone.”
Her main priority is to see how she can transfer her loan to a cheaper bank and to realize her vision of building a five star hotel. Josephine has this advice for budding entrepreneurs “Don’t be discouraged, work with what you have. Look around; find out what God has given you in terms of resources and talent. Don’t go looking for big things out there. Be thankful; have a sense of gratitude”.
