Beatrice

For women running informal businesses, phones don’t just enable work, they shape how capable and credible they feel to customers. When access is downgraded, women adapt, but often at the cost of confidence, visibility, and income.

How She Uses the Phone 

Beatrice is a 35-year-old hairdresser in Njoro, Nakuru. She moves from home to home, depending on where clients call her. Throughout the day she is concerned about being reachable. Most bookings come through simple calls or missed-call alerts, so she keeps her phone close. ​“If I miss a call, I miss that client,” she says.

Her phone is more than a communication tool; it is central to how she presents herself professionally. When she had a smartphone, she took photos of completed hairstyles and shared them with clients via WhatsApp. She liked how it looked in her hand. ​“A hairdresser must have a smartphone,” she says. ​“Clients want to see styles clearly.” It made her feel confident when showing her work or browsing style ideas with customers. After she passed the smartphone to her son and shifted to a Tecno feature phone, she began to feel limited. The small screen, lower picture quality, and unfamiliar menus made it harder to show styles the way she used to. She notices the difference when clients scroll through her phone. ​“Sometimes they show me pictures on their phones instead,” she says, ​“because mine is too small.”

Still, she saves as many hairstyle images as she can on the feature phone. 

Receiving files is easy for her, but sending them is harder; she often forgets the steps and prefers asking someone for help rather than risk pressing the wrong option. These saved photos form a small, portable catalogue that she carries from house to house.

Because she no longer has a smartphone, Beatrice often learns new hairstyles directly from clients’ devices. If someone wants a trending braid or a specific wig installation, they show her a photo or short video on their phone. She studies the pattern carefully and memorises the steps.

Beatrice has been considering buying a smartphone again, possibly through a lipa mdogo mdogo plan. She knows it would help her work because of better photos and easier browsing, and it would be something she feels proud to show clients. But she is hesitant after hearing stories of phones being blocked when payments are missed. ​“What if I fail to pay one day?” she wonders. With a business that depends on daily bookings, she worries about taking on a device she might not always be able to keep active.

Her Ecosystem of Learning and Facilitation 

When Beatrice shifted from her smartphone to a Tecno feature phone, many things she used to do easily suddenly became harder. She had to rely on Bluetooth daily for her work, mainly to receive hairstyle photos from clients or other hairdressers. Receiving files was still simple. ​“If someone sends, I just accept,” she says. But sending images is a challenge. On her smartphone, she could open the gallery, select a photo, and send it without thinking. On the feature phone, the unfamiliar menu, small keypad, and multiple steps made the process confusing.

Her husband has been trying to teach her how to send photos via Bluetooth. He shows her the steps slowly. But Beatrice often forgets the sequence. ​“On the smartphone it was straight,” she says. ​“Here you must open many things.” She worries about pressing the wrong button and prefers to pause and ask him again rather than risk losing her saved photos.

Sometimes the lessons become frustrating. 

She knows learning new hairstyling skills matters and sending trending photos helps clients choose what they want, but she struggles to remember the steps to do all this on her feature phone herself.