04/06/2025
I recently came across an old schoolmate on YouTube modeling in the Paris Fashion Week .
I could not believe it. Was that Khalid?
I was so excited that I had to surf through his social media page and really verify it was him.
Him, posing as a fashion model in different places that he has had to visit—China, Turkey, France.
To be honest, I felt a little jealous.
Then it dawned on me. We were indoctrinated to believe that we only had to be doctors, pilots or engineers, to be successful.
Not only by the teachers - who somehow had a preference for the smart students—but by our parents and society in general.
I know of people who started out as teachers but felt the pay was low and found the classroom and teaching to not bring any excitement. So they pursued entrepreneurship as barbers—and they are doing okay.
Or that person who quit med school early on to become an agripreneur, as much as they tried, they couldn’t. The calling was too deep.
Or that economics student who thought she needed to hold a PhD, only to pursue entrepreneurship in fashion.
The internet has changed the way we think about making money.
And to be honest, I envy anyone who took a leap of faith to silence the external voices and pursued something different.
Perhaps I should now pursue my childhood dream.
Do you agree with my worldview?
Have you been one of the “exceptions?”
28/05/2025
My rich Aunt Beverly (not her real name, not my real aunt) left Kenya in the 1980s on a government scholarship to study art in Belgium. She was a painter .
Europe embraced her talent. She built a life there: exhibitions, grants, a cozy apartment in Brussels.
But in her 50s, she wanted to come home. Every time she packed her bags, she’d think about the pension she’d lose, the free healthcare, the stability. Kenya called, but reality held her back.
A rock and a hard place!
Perhaps too European for Kenya, too Kenyan for Europe. She belonged nowhere.
Now in her 70s, her hands tremble when she paints. She keeps a jar of Kenyan soil in her kitchen and sniffs it once in a while when nostalgia hits.
If you had a chance to go, will you go?
If you were to go, would you ever want to come back?
Or is Africa irredeemable?
22/05/2025
Let’s agree — or agree to disagree — that having a will is critical. And to take this even further, if you have any investments, registering them under a company is also important. Let me tell you why.
There’s this property that has been depreciating in value. It used to be a technical college, so the infrastructure was well thought out and up to standard. But when the owner died, there was a dispute on how it should be distributed. He had two wives and another family that wasn’t officially introduced.
Anyway, this opened up a huge dispute — even the deceased’s brothers started claiming inheritance. The matter was taken to court, there was corruption involved and... well, you’ve probably heard of such stories.
The technical college shut down, until recently I noticed it’s being renovated.
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I recall a conversation I had a while back with a Kenyan-American who has registered his properties in Kenya under a company.
“So that in case something happens to me, there will be a smooth transition because of the shareholding allocation that will be in my will, ” he said.
By the way, this is actually the norm in most parts of the world.
Yes, I’ve seen a few Kenyans doing this — especially affluent politicians. We often see their family disputes play out publicly, but you’ll notice the noise dies down pretty quickly. Why? Because there was a will. The shareholding of assets was already set out.
I think we should normalize this. Or shouldn't we?
16/05/2025
About 1 million shillings worth of savings were gone! Stolen, swindled... whichever word describes it.
It’s 2009, and there's a chama (group savings) of 25 women. Here's how it worked: each woman contributed 5,000 shillings consistently every month since January, for 8 months.
The only mistake they made? They had the money saved in the personal bank account of the chairlady.
So, when August came around, the chairlady quietly flew to the U.S. with her children. No one suspected a thing—her children didn’t even mention to us, their friends, that they were leaving.
And she flew away with the money.
By the time the group members realized, there was no plan of action they could take.
To this day, someone very close to me has never fully recovered as she recounts this story.
Do you still trust chamas?
21/04/2025
Let’s all agree that if you owned a piece of property and urgently needed cash in a week or even a month, it might not be that easy. Not to say it’s impossible for someone to give you 3 million, 6 million, or even 500k in exchange. It’s just that, sometimes—or most of the time—the timing and location don’t align.
That being said, if you’ve ever owned a piece of property, or you know or have heard of someone who’s tried to sell one, approximately how long did it take you (or them) to actually dispose of it?
06/04/2025
What I’ve found to be true is that whichever direction you take, you’ll never really know what the outcome would have been had you chosen the other path.
Maybe you tried an investment like onion farming, and a flood wiped out your harvest.
Or you opened a salon, optimistic that the loan you took would be paid off by cash flow—but things didn’t go as planned, and you had to shut down. Maybe the location wasn’t right.
Or you ventured into real estate, but the project is still incomplete.
What you do is learn to accept and move forward.
“What next?” becomes the question that matters most.
“What could have been” only leads to despair—because honestly, how could you have known?
Move forward, but this time, smarter.
03/04/2025
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