After misfortunes, she earns Shs300,000 per day from restaurant business

Since childhood, Ms Goretti Jesca Amulen had haboured dreams of becoming a nun. But when she discovered while in senior one, in Katakwi High School, that she was pregnant, her dreams came crashing. The year was 1982 and she was aged 15.

That was the end of her studies and Ms Amulen, who is the first born out of five, (two girls and four boys) started herding animals and doing some farming in order to raise money to help educate her young siblings at their ancestral home in Dokomer, Western ward, Katakwi Town Council in Katakwi District.

“Those days, if you became pregnant while at still at your parents’ home, nobody would be bothered to take you back to school, even after you had delivered. Instead, you would be expected to get married,” she says.

Ms Amulen eventually married Mr Wilson Icumar, a tailor in Katakwi town, when she was 17 years old but the couple soon moved to Soroti from Katakwi.

“When my husband got a job to make clothes for the staff of Soroti Flying school, we shifted to Soroti town in 1985,” says Ms Amulen.

The couple lived a simple but decent life until tragedy struck in 2006, when Mr Icumar fell sick and was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. On 26 December, 2007, Ms Amulen became a widow. She was at that point, a mother of six and now charged with the responsibility of raising them as a single mother and thus started a difficult phase of her life.

Ms Amulen who is now 51 says in order to survive, she decided to go and cook food in a restaurant in Katakwi town where she was paid Shs500 a day.

“I cooked food in restaurants for a period of four years,” she says. Unknown to her then, that period was a time of learning about how restaurants worked, especially the ways to cook delicious food to attract customers.

When she realised that the money she was earning from the restaurants was not benefiting her, she stopped working and went back to her home where she stayed without a job for a period of five months.

Tough life

“I failed to educate the children, and I decided to distribute them to the relatives who helped me to look after them,” Ms Amulen reminisces.

When poverty hit harder, she decided to find any work to do that could earn her some money. She started brewing and selling ajono (a local alcoholic brew), but even that was not giving her much.

It was on 26 July, 2008, that things turned around, in a way she did not expect.

“The district engineer then called Okware, who used to eat from the restaurants I used to work at, came looking for me to cook food for the celebration of the World Population Day,” says Ms Amulen.

Mr Okware found her home but she was feeling unwell. When he made his proposition, she told him she didn’t have any coin to buy food or saucepans for cooking it. But Mr Okware did not give up. He told her to go and pick money to buy the items from his office the following day. She wondered how she would manage to get there since her home was about four kilometres away from Mr Okware’s office, and she was feeling really weak.

“Since I was sick, I spent three hours on the road walking up to engineer’s office, because I had to make stopovers to rest until I arrived,” Ms Amulen says.

When she got there, she was handed Shs500,000. She then went to shop where she bought two jerricans of (20 litres each) of cooking oil, two bundles of firewood, a match box, one knife, 50kgs of rice, Irish and 10kgs of meat. She also hired food warmers from Sipi Falls Restaurant at a cost of Shs60,000.

After buying the items, she arrived at Katakwi town at around 7pm. It was too dark to make her way home so she instead she went to an uncompleted building with all her items. She cleared a small space for lighting a fire and then started peeling Irish potatoes, after which she sorted the rice.

“The Muslims who were going for prayers in the morning the next day told me that they were scared, thinking I was a mad person,” Ms Amulen says. She was able to make the food and it was well received.

Her contract with the district stated she would be paid Shs1m. She was paid the full amount and out of that money, she was left with Shs400,000 as profit.

Ms Amulen says days after, a staff member from Teso Peace Organization (TPO) who had been one of the people who had tasted her food that day, approached and gave her another contract to cook food for 30 people who would attend a three-day workshop.

“I spent all the shs400,000 on that deal, but I managed to get a profit of Shs1.4m, and I bought two big saucepans and four chairs,” she says.

Shortly after that, however, someone rang the owner of the house she was using saying that she had spoiled it by lighting fire in the place. She had not asked permission from the owner so she feared she might be in trouble, but when he arrived and saw that what he was told was contrary to what was happening, he did not throw her out.

“Instead, he told me to continue working from his house because I had cleared the bush near,” she says.

Although that was one hurdle crossed, a few more came her way. Ms Amulen had started a restaurant in the building which she called Amen Restaurant and Take Away. Soon, the authorities at Katakwi Town Council locked the house up because she had no pit latrines. In a panic, she rang up the owner of the house over the issue.

“He asked me whether I had Shs500,000 to construct a toilet. He told me that if I failed to raise that amount of money, then I would have to leave the place. Lucky enough, I had it,” Ms Amulen says.

The latrines were eventually set up.

As she continued to make money, Ms Amulen started fixing places in the house, bit by bit. She also connected it to a pay TV network.

The pay TV, she says, earned her more money as people would come to watch football matches. She would make over Shs150,000 in a day. As the business had grown, she spoke with the owner of the house on how much to pay as rent per month. “We negotiated and I would pay rent of Shs1m after every four months,” Ms Amulen says.

To expand the business further, Ms Amulen, bought five beds and mattresses, in order to provide lodging for guests.

“Some of the customers who were constructing roads suggested the idea to me. So, I bought it. I would charge Shs5,000 for each room, but because the people who were sleeping in them were also customers who ate my food every day I decided to charge each of them Shs2,000 per night,” she says.

Over time, she managed to expand and have 11 rooms. With that, she also increased the money she was paying to her landlord to shs600,000 per month after realising that she was making good profit out of the house.

At around that time, however, the owner realised that Ms Amulen’s business was doing really well and so asked her to leave. He wanted to start a similar business of his own on the same premises, which he eventually did in 2010.

Although this was a setback, she did not give up.

“As a person who likes praying, my God did not forsake me. I told God to help me get courage and also make all men look at me as though I am their sister, and God did exactly that to me,” she says.

Profitable venture

In 2011, Ms Amulen bought a plot at Shs3.2m, about 100 metres away from her former work place opposite Katakwi main market and after building it she then shifted her business there. Up to date, the business still stands.

She says her customers are usually from non-government organisations (NGOs), district and sub county offices. She employs five workers whom she pays Shs5,000 a day. She also trains girls on catering for three months. “I have so far trained 30 girls,” she says.

After deducting all the costs of paying her workers, buying firewood, food and other items, she says she gets a profit of Shs300,000 a day on average from the restaurant.

Ms Amulen also does outside catering. “It is your pocket that dictates how I should prepare your food, and I can now make food for over 5,000 people,” says Ms Amulen.

Her best days are those when NGOs receive funding and when there are district budget conferences because that is the time her services are needed most. She is hired to cook food for people at seminars or workshops during NGO planning meetings, and for councillors while in the budget meetings.

She also has another restaurant in Amuria town and a grocery shop at Katakwi town.

Ms Amulen has already registered her businesses, something that has helped her because she is able to acquire a loan at any time and any amount she may need.

“What is important whatever you do, is to always save. That’s how I managed to beat poverty,” she says, adding that she saves Shs81,000 every month.

Aside from ancestral land given to her by her father, Ms Amulen also has her own land (seven gardens) that she uses to plant citrus, rice and groundnuts. Ms Amulen plans to expand her farming to keeping poultry and animals.

 “I have a plan of constructing a fish pond in my village,” she says. As a way of ensuring financial discipline for her business, she has participated twice in the district training for business people on financial management organised by Charles Ocici of Enterprise Uganda.

Ms Amulen has another plot in Katakwi town and she plans to build a storied building there.

Throughout all the hardships and joys, the businesswoman is thankful to God for giving her children who are obedient and who have been able to understand her situation through the years.

“As a parent it is always not good for you to beat your children because they will run away from you,” she advises.

Today, all her children are grateful to their mother for supporting them with their education; three of them have completed university education.

Ms Amulen’s last word is an encouragement to all the women who have lost their husbands.

“That is not the end of life. You have got to pick the pieces and move on,” she says as a living testament to that advice.