Pursuit of happiness

In life, we all carry memories of the people we love or loved. A few days ago, I found myself laughing after my sister told me something my grandmother, whom we fondly call Agoo, had said to her. Agoo told my sister Juu that the money she sent to her that day felt like consolation for the death of her mother, my great grandmother who passed away in 1980.

She said she explained the events of that day, recalling them so vividly, even though she was just a young woman then. Ju and I laughed at the thought of mourning someone who died so long ago, in 1980 let alone connecting the money and the death. But in the end, we both realized something profound, mourning never really stops.

We continue grieving the people who were once so close to us the people we loved. We carry their memories wherever we go, even as we choose to live our lives as though everything is normal. Perhaps that is the nature of life beautiful and painful at the same time.

Behind every face is a story, behind every story is a journey and through those journeys we discover who we truly are.

Meet the banker who loaned to women when no one else would...

Jennifer Riria grew up in a rural village in Kenya. She didn't ever imagine she'd get into finance one day - but she knew she wanted to get out.

"When I was very little, that meaning five, six, seven, even up to 10 years old,
I wanted to get away from the village. It was hard, it was a poor life. I
hated to see my mother suffer."

As she grew older, she realised it wasn’t just her mother who was suffering - it was other women and girls in the village.

She remembers examples from her childhood: women in the village being beaten over small things - even for food not being ready on time. It was a widespread experience, she says, affecting many of those around her.

Then, at the end of high school, Jennifer had an unplanned pregnancy.

She describes having “no place” in the family after becoming pregnant as a teenager. Her father, she says, was “very bitter”, and her mother stayed silent. According to Jennifer, he told her to leave the family home - a moment that pushed her to strike out on her own.

She did leave, first earning a bachelor’s degree in education in Tanzania and later winning a scholarship to study for a master’s in the UK, taking her baby with her.

It was a formative experience. Alone with her baby, and with few resources, she found herself relying on the kindness of strangers.

"Wherever I went with my child, I found very kind people who even fed us when we didn't have any food," she says.

She returned home to Kenya, and for ten years she worked as a university lecturer.

But in 1991, she joined the Kenya Women Finance Trust, a microfinance organisation that was poorly staffed and losing money. Jennifer saw its potential - and turned it around.

"Nobody at that point in the early 90s, nobody's thinking a woman can borrow a loan in this country and repay," she says. "Women were not supposed to be creditworthy."

Jennifer organised women into groups, trained them how to save and set up businesses - and they began to repay their loans.

Now, she's the founder of Kenya Women Finance Bank and CEO of Kenya Women Holding - and has helped millions of women across Kenya borrow, save and build businesses of their own.

🎧 Hear Jennifer tell her story on Business Daily https://bbc.in/4qOPKKu

Pursuit of Happiness: Good afternoon

Good evening

Loud and clear

There are moments when you open up, hoping to be understood, only to be met with silence or a casual you’ll be fine. It’s in those moments that invalidation quietly settles in when someone minimizes what you feel simply because they can’t relate to it.

Being told to move on or that others have it worse doesn’t heal pain it deepens it. It teaches you to hide your emotions, to question your right to feel. Over time, you begin to shrink your voice, apologizing for emotions that are simply human.

But feelings are not wrong just because they make others uncomfortable.
You can be grateful and still feel hurt. You can be strong and still feel lost. Both truths can exist side by side.

Validation isn’t about agreement it’s about acknowledgment a simple recognition that what you feel is real. So, when others dismiss your emotions, remind yourself: your feelings don’t need approval to be valid.

Because being human means feeling and that is never something to apologize for.

Pursuit of Happiness

Just Mercy, then Grace

Someone once asked me, “You say you tell real stories where is yours?”
I didn’t have a perfect answer. I simply said, “One day,” unsure of what exactly to share.

But the truth is, everyone has a story. And so do I.

Ten years ago, I was just Mercy, Grace was not there may be I had not yet met grace. Ten years ago I was just a mother of two, a wife, and MSCE holder.

I knew then that I wanted to do something with my life apart from having kids and being a wife. I knew I needed a skill to be able to make some money but also I had no idea how important that was.

Then, I had tried enrolling in a diploma in business administration. I wasn’t even sure it was what I truly wanted or maybe it was because I felt the need to do something and ended up not going through with the course.

I remember when I was young, I once had a dream of being a lawyer or a radio announcer, dreams that I never thought would come true too.

At this time, that dream of becoming an announcer? I had buried it long ago.

Since at this time I had just given birth to my second-born baby girl, I concentrated on raising the baby first until a year later, when I asked my husband if I could apply for a journalism diploma at MIJ.

Despite having the firstborn without any preparation, our second child came as surprise too. My husband and I agreed that we were going to have a second child after a number of years, and I wanted to have the second child when I reached 30.

We wanted to build a little future for ourselves first because the first child came as I was still living with my sister, who was shocked and disappointed after learning that I was pregnant.

My sister, being someone who had taken on the role of a mother since the death of our mother, supported us in the best way she could. She didn't have much but she had a heart to provide and share.

Our mother died when I was in form four. During her illness, my sister and my brother, the firstborn in our family, provided for the family. I and my little sister took care of her; she had a stroke then.

When she died, I don’t remember being motivated to do something after MSCE, but I repeated, and my sister looked forward to me doing something with my life until I fell pregnant, which disappointed her.

Marriage was a choice I made because I and my husband convinced each other about marriage since we started dating.

Lucky enough, he never forgot his promise of sending me back to school and made sure I did what I wanted.

I remember sharing the news at a family event. Someone said journalism wasn’t a good idea because my husband was in the same field. But to me, the thought of becoming a journalist meant something to me.

I completed my two-year diploma. And though my future started late, I now see it was never too late.

When I started my internship at a radio station, I felt that my dream come true, because growing up I had a number of radio personalities I admired, I loved newscast by Mbawuwo Chavura and Siphat Nsusa.

I loved Mada Kalamura, Kondwani Chisasa and many other MBC radio personalities then

However, my husband has been in print, he molded me to become a print journalists, I am what I am today because he taught me what a story is and how to craft a story and I am grateful.

I am not where I thought I’d be the day I discovered I was pregnant. In the past five years, I’ve worked my way up from intern to professional. I’ve built a career, a name, and earned a degree I once thought impossible.

Looking back, I see grace. I am not where I was ten years ago I decided to add grace to my name because Mercy is not just a name. It carries history. It carries pain and hope. And Grace, grace that made me who I am. And the word "grace" makes me emotional.

Sometimes our wounds hides in silence, its depth unseen until time unmask it. Then, reality arrives heavy, unbearable, all you built begins to tremble. As Justice Mzonde Mvura once said in a recent ruling, “like a house built on sinking sand, waved down by the tides of oceanic justice.” The waves come, and your world collapses. Even in that wreckage, hold close the small faith, for tomorrow delicate as it may be still carries a promise of a new dawn.
.

Pursuit of Happiness

As for me I keep on thinking how to improve the upcoming story. Coming up this week: Just Mercy, then Grace🩷

Be kind and have a wonderful day everyone. .

The Sweet Caring Tiger

Pursuit of Happiness

A few months ago, I was asked to pick up my husband from a place he was catching up with his friends after work and he ended up inviting me in to say “hie” to his friends.

My husband’s mates ended up asking me to hang around for a few minutes and as they discussed and debated a number of mundane life issues and current affairs, my attention was repeatedly drawn to a new noun they kept referring to: Tiger!

When I went in and join them, they started talking about a number of things including the different journeys of life.

Initially, I thought Tiger was a nickname to one of their mutual friends, but alas, I was damn wrong.

I soon learnt I was a Tiger for Tiger, in this club of husbands, meant a wife. Not just a house wife, but any woman in a marriage.

I left the place wondering what kind of Tiger I was and why men, of all nicknames, would prefer to christen us after the big cat.

But even from the various stories, what impressed me, if not consoled me, is the fact that it was so obvious that even to this group of working class, middle income and educated men, Tiger was as relevant as before.

And was as relevant as in any class of society. As I eavesdropped on the conversation and later on joined the peer talk—fueled by one alcoholic drink after another— I could also see that the men, at times, appreciate the role Tiger play at home: how he keeps them grounded, help them make sound economic decisions, remain health, eat well, dress well, behave well etc.

But we, the Tigers, were being praised for the bigger picture—the positive influence on the family—we were also accused simultaneously of ‘biting and scratching’ a bit too much for their comfort.

Of course some of the complaints, from my biased perspective anyway, were a bit lame. Complaints like us being pushy in certain circumstances or even acting like FBI when it comes to surveillance of the actions of our spouses.

A dose of jealousy and protectiveness can surely be expected and, perhaps, the question ought to be of the manner and scope of actions as we women, protect our love interests.

Back to a woman’s life contribution to a family, though. It’s important to add that although a lot of women do not contribute equally financially to their households as men, for a variety of reasons, the role they play in raising a happy home is as valuable.

While most fathers can pay for children’s financial needs, most of them cannot much women in mentoring them and ensuring the whole household is healthy. Indeed, in our Malawian context, very few men show interest in day to day children’s behavior change.

Kudos, then, to the very few men who take keen interest in the daily family affairs of their families, engage them both socially and spiritually, and participate even in mundane affairs of their children. These men, often, have found out too that the Tigers in their homes are beloved pets rather than dangerous marauding animals whom together they can raise upright children, develop their homes, do business together, enjoy life together until our maker calls us home.

The men who respect and love their tigers ensure there are no dysfunctional homes contribute to the state of poverty we live in; fewer street kids, fewer suicides, fewer children born in the wardrobe, fewer criminals since most kids receive proper upbringing etc.

Call us Tigers or whatever, and whether we embrace it or not, it can never make us shortsighted from pursuing happiness and dreams.