Faith Chemutai’s journey to becoming one of Kenya’s top golfers has been rocky. Chemutai’s story is one of perseverance and unwavering drive to succeed. She has worked as a grocer (mama mboga), waitress, watered construction sites, worked in a lumber store, sold airtime, and then taken up golf.
Her love of games began in elementary school, but she had a unique function; she just loved to distribute sugar to the players or hold the finishing tape. She only recently began taking part in organized sports—six years ago.
“I tried various careers before I started playing golf”, she said in her introduction. Due to a lack of money, Chemutai failed to complete his secondary education, so she began selling vegetables. The youngest child in a family of four adds, “I found life as a mama mboga(grocer) very challenging, so I quit it.”
In Kachibora, Trans Nzoia County, she subsequently signed up to volunteer for the Kenya Red Cross Society. She lost her work when thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) from the 2007 post-election violence were resettled from Mount Elgon in May 2008.
Faith then worked at a timber shop but the owner of the shop where she later worked closed it a few months later because timber had again become so expensive. Fortunately, Chemutai had set aside Sh15,000 in savings. At the timber shop, she was paid Sh3,500 each month.
Chemutai nearly tried her hands on the mitumba business but got put off after she found out that a bale of the second-hand clothes costs Sh28,000. She couldn’t raise the Sh13,000, so she decided to start selling airtime credit.
She put up a kiosk worth Sh5,000 and started selling scratch cards before converting it to an M-Pesa business, which also did not survive.
She sold a chicken to raise fare back to Kitale to live with a relative. Since she was jobless, she decided to take up the job of watering a building that was being constructed, for one month.
It was during that time that a friend invited her to Kitale Golf Club where the seed for her golf journey was planted.
She concluded that golf was a game for the rich after learning that one needed Sh250,000 to become a member of Kitale club.
Since she could not raise that amount, her cousin Elkanah Limo, a golfer, too, advised her to start as a caddie. She got some free lessons from Limo but ran into a stone wall when he went to Nairobi to pursue his studies.
Fortunately, Chemutai met this man who was in charge of operating the driving range. “He offered to train me but on condition that I pick all the balls and wash them. I accepted, so I used to wake up very early to hit between 300 and 400 balls per day.
At first, I got angry at myself because this did not go as expected. However, I never gave up. After four days, I saw great improvement in my golf swing. I realized that golf is all about commitment,” says the handicap 3 player who climbed from handicap 24.
Fast forward to today, Chemutai is now a top female golfer in Kenya and a businesswoman in golf apparel. But there are still difficulties. She gave up being a caddy because the golf equipment was too cumbersome to handle.
Chemutai has benefited from golf in a variety of ways, including travel to different Kenyan cities and the development of personal and professional relationships. She sells golf accessories like tees, shoes, and skirts.
Since 2019, she has started teaching kids the sport. The team that will travel to Tanzania for the All Africa Challenge Trophy Championship includes the gold star. She’ll attend the event of supporters.
Chemutai owes her success in golf to perseverance, dedication, discipline, and a lot of practice. Her great sporting aim is to run her own academy and discover talented athletes from lowly backgrounds.
