As different sectors start trickling back to work after lockdown, taxi businesses are also running but amid strict safety measures. We had a virtual meeting with one lady who operates under the Bolt platform, and who has an underlying condition. We all have to be careful about Covid of course but with an underlying condition, then extra care is needed. We got to talk to her about how Bolt Protect came through for her and this is what she had to say.
Your name please and your experience on the Bolt platform so far?
My name is Mary Karani and I’m a Bolt driver since January this year. My experience so far has been good in terms of how the platform works and their response to drivers and how they take care of us. For me it has been a good working platform.
How did you get into a field as unlikely for women as taxi driving?
I did some research because I wanted to get into some kind of income generating project for me to be able to take care of some projects that I had been working on. I needed to choose something that is not employment because I got past the employment phase a long time ago after working for over ten years.
I wanted to work on my own volition and giving myself my own targets , where what I earn is what I have decided to earn that day. I needed to do something that does not interfere with my health which sometimes deteriorates based on heavy work. So I decided to choose a hobby and I picked driving. I love driving because it takes away my stress.
From there I decided to look into the driving apps because first of I could employ yourself. That was a tick. I could work within my own hours. That was another tick. I can do the work that I do and still pursue this as a side hustle. That encouraged me. I did a lot of research for about one year. I used to take Uber and Bolt and Little and talk to the drivers about the job and the challenges they face.
Of course the industry has very few women so whenever I got a female driver I would really ask questions about challenges and security issues. I got a myriad of answers from all those drivers and I felt that I could give it a try. I got into it knowing fully well all the challenges especially being a woman driver and I liked the fact that it’s something you can get in and get out of. I decided to test the waters and if it did not work out for me then I would step out. But so far I have not stepped out so I’m ok with it.
So, taxi driving is something you do on the side. What do you do as your main work?
I do patient advocacy. Being the voice of patients who have a rare condition but do not have a voice and are not recognized. I do this because I have a rare, chronic and life-threatening condition but it has not been given the proper awareness that it needs to be given. I suffered over 30 years not knowing exactly what I had or how to manage it.
The reason why I eventually knew what I had is because I went an extra mile to find out why I was not getting better. There are so many gaps when it comes to rare conditions and what doctors know about them. I really don’t blame them because what they know is what is in the medical curriculum. A rare condition could be just a line so doctors may not fully know how to clinically identify it, how to diagnose it, and how to manage it.
I decided to go an extra mile because this condition has threatened to claim my life many times. I said to myself that since I’m not dead, I still have the will to fight. Not necessarily for myself but for other people who may have been misdiagnosed for years. People who probably have lost hope and they need support to know that they can live with this condition.
For me I was so sure I would not reach the age of 32 years because I was so exhausted. When you have a condition that you do not know how to handle, no doctor is helping, and no medicines are working – you really wanted to give up. You go into depression. You lose the will to live.
Then some people found me in some international group based in US and I was shocked to find so many other patients out there in the world who were struggling just like me while all along I thought I was all alone. I was encouraged to find out that there are other patients who had passed through similar experiences as my own.
Because of that gap and because of the long suffering, I decided I wanted to do patient advocacy and the international patient group Engaged me to continue raising awareness and look for doctors who were interested. It is an inherited condition and so if you find one person you find a family and so I decided to no longer focus on myself but on other people as well.
What I learned from the international group is that there is a way you can manage it. Though there is no cure, there are medications that can help in management and they have always been available here in Kenya. Yet no doctor had ever prescribed them for me. I do my advocacy not just in Kenya but in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Do you mind sharing how your underlying health condition came to play when COVID-19 came calling?
This condition comes about because of lack of a certain protein that I was not born with. Just like the way people living with Albinism do not have a certain protein. For me there is a protein that is not sufficiently produced in my red blood cells.
In Hereditary Angioedema the body swells and without proper medication it swells continuously for 5 days. It becomes life threatening when it swells near the throat or face area because it can easily close your throat. It has many triggers, some of them being stress, anxiety or infections like flus and colds.
When COVID-19 came I was like…I don’t like flus and colds near me. I felt the need to take extra precautions and so I actually put my car aside and stopped working. I didn’t think it was worth the risk having fought for 30 years just to keep alive only to fight 14 or 21 days with something I could have avoided.
What really gave me a scare is that I carried someone who was very sick in my car. They had just arrived at Wilson and were going direct to hospital. I don’t know what this passenger was suffering from but he was very sick. It was some time I think in February or March so Covid was already here. He was sneezing and was very feverish and after that I decided to closed my app until Government and WHO understands what this Covid is.
I was sad and frustrated about halting my side hustle and my projects and that’s how Covid affected my job. Then Bolt sent an email to all drivers about the protective shield that they wanted to fix in the cars and I felt that that would really help since I was only carrying passengers at the back. This made sense because the air would not circulate all round the car. It made me feel safer, so I went to Bolt to fix the shield and I immediately put on my app and went back to work.
Because you know some passengers get into the car and remove their masks because they feel that now they’re away from the eyes of the police. And then they want to converse. So the shield really makes me feel safe. With that I was able to get back to work without too much fear. I think the shield idea was very bold for Bolt to come up with as fast as they did. That was very good of them and we’re back to work. I am back to my side hustle.
