She Vends Newspapers At The Traffic Lights

Apr 13, 2003

JOSEPHINE Tumuhairwe’s day begins at 5:30am, when she wakes up, prepares herself for about 15 minutes and then sets out to sell newspapers at Wandegeya.

By Juliet Kakeeto
JOSEPHINE Tumuhairwe’s day begins at 5:30am, when she wakes up, prepares herself for about 15 minutes and then sets out to sell newspapers at Wandegeya.
By 6:10 am she is already pacing up and down the Wandegeya-Mulago stretch, selling newspapers to customers, mainly motorists. She thanks God for traffic lights KCC installed at Wandegeya, for they have helped her get customers who would otherwise not have stopped to buy copies of newpapers from her.
At 24 years, Tumuhairwe is not ashamed of running after vehicles selling papers. Her female competitors sit by the roadsides and on verandahs, which she says is not cost effective. It will take a woman sitting by the roadside a whole day to sell 30 copies of newspapers, yet it takes her only three to four hours to sell over 50 copies.
Tumuhairwe has sold newspapers for the last six years and has no regrets. “Many people, especially women who see me running after cars laugh at me, but I am not embarrassed of my job. I am determined to struggle even harder to be able to sustain myself and also take my young brother to school,” Tumuhairwe says with determination.
Tumuhairwe, the first born of her late mother, has two young brothers, aged 16 and eight. Although their father is still alive, a Good Samaritan has offered to take the16-year-old to school and now Tumuhairwe has to find money to cater for the eight-year old’s school fees. Presently she lives behind the Makerere University Veterinary Faculty, in her late mother’s house.
Tumuhairwe dropped out of school after P.3, when her mother failed to raise her school fees. Her mother then got a job as a housemaid where she got between sh8,000 and sh15,000 a month.
So, at the age of 11 years, Tumuhairwe worked as a maid in Makerere, Namungoona and Lugazi. She quit the job, when one boss refused to pay her 10 months wages.
When she turned 18, with the help of her mother, she joined newspapers vending business. Her mother introduced her to one Muyawule (now deceased) who was an agent of newspapers supplying Wandegeya and Makerere. At that time, she used to get a profit of sh20 per paper she sold and she used to sell not more than 25 copies of different newspapers.
Today she sells between 25 to 30 copies of The New Vision, 20 to 30 copies of Bukedde and 10 to 15 copies of The Monitor daily and between 40 to 50 copies of The New Vision, 20 to 35 copies of Bukedde and 15 to 30 copies of The Monitor on Fridays and Saturdays. She gets a profit of sh100 on every copy of The New Vision and The Monitor she sells and sh90 for a copy of Bukedde.
Then what does she do after her papers have sold out, I ask. She says she is not yet done, she has to collects some 15 to 25 copies from the vendor and takes them to different customers at Makerere University. Some of the customers are restaurant and salon proprietors and different residencies.

At around 11:00am, it is time for her to retire home. If it is a Friday or Saturday when different papers make evening issues, then Tumuhairwe takes a long nap from around 12:30pm to 4:30pm and then prepares for long evening ‘show-down’ which often starts from 6:00 pm to as far as 2:00 am the next morning.
Any problems she encounters in her trade? Yes, and it is about women again! “Women who hung out with men in bars and other public places on Friday and Saturday evenings, many times frustrate her sales by refusing their male partners to buy the newspapers.
“Abasajja baba bagenda okugula amawulire abakazi nga babagaana, nti tetulye ku chips ng’oli mu kugula mawulire, abasajja nabo nga beekuba,” she says in Luganda, (women sometimes stop the men from buying the papers in favour of using the money to buy chips and other edibles for the evening.
She has bought herself a plot at sh210,000 in Bushenyi, her home district and plans to widen her business in Kampala in the near future. How about plans of getting a partner to ease her wellbeing and get a family? Tumuhairwe says she has not yet considered marriage and family life. Ends

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