The Ladies of Kibera

I want to tell you about my students.

Usually, entrepreneurship classes are full of men. Our Mathare site this year certainly reflected that stereotype, with a ratio of three women to ten men. But Kibera was different. We had a good portion of a women’s group join our class, so between the two Kibera classes we had 15 women out of a total of 30 students. The majority of the ladies ended up in the Swahili-focused class, since they weren’t completely comfortable in English, and since they preferred to stay together.

And while I did get to know a lot of the guys very, very well, I taught primarily in the ladies’ class, and so it is their stories that I want to tell you.

Most of the ladies were in their late 20s or early 30s, though we had girls as young as 17 and a few ladies old enough to have 17-year-old children. Many of them came to our program through a support group for HIV positive women, though I never asked exactly who was part of that group. Almost all of our ladies already owned their own businesses, so the SE101 course was more a way for them to improve and strengthen their businesses rather than to learn how to manage the day-to-day operations.

(Most of) the ladies of the Swahili-speaking Kibera class on our networking day. 

Pascalia is a mother of seven children ranging in age from 5 to 18. She runs a grocery store so that she can afford to pay the school fees for all of her children. Her oldest son is currently in university studying to become a doctor, and you can hear the pride in her voice when she tells you about him. She knows that a weakness facing her business is her inability to be on time (oh Africa time), and she’s working on that. She knows the best places to get fresh fruits and vegetables, and has a special way of preparing maize that makes it taste better than her competitors’ maize. Pascalia has the sweetest smile… I hope I get a chance to visit her business some day.

In contrast to Pascalia’s innocent sweetness, we have Janet. Not that Janet isn’t great – she’s a perfectly lovely girl – but she definitely says exactly what she thinks. There are absolutely no euphemisms in her speech. Janet is a hairdresser, and told us that anyone who wants to smoke while they get their hair done can just go away and smoke somewhere else. Janet is in her early 20s, but she’s already got a three-year-old son.

Janet’s friend and potential future business partner is Seline. Seline was our winner for top student in one of the Kibera classes because of her excellent class participation, her willingness to help out her classmates, and because her homework was always impeccably completed. Seline and Janet have such contrasting personalities – Seline’s calm, tactful personality balances out Janet’s exuberance perfectly.

Then we have Hellen, a mother of four children under the age of 7 who is the sole income earner in her household. She runs a chip stand, but her real passion in life is singing. She sings in her church choir, and would love to learn to sing better when she has the time and money. However, her children are the most important part of her life, and she’s willing to put her goals aside for the time being so that she can pay the school fees for her kids.

Asha was one of the few girls brave enough to join the English class. She’s only 21, and she’s determined to become a cereal wholesaler before continuing on to higher education. Part of her personal mission statement is to become an independent woman, to avoid relying on any person – specifically any man – in her life to get her where she wants to be. When she made this statement to the (90% male) class, a few of the guys gave her a hard time. Her confident responses put them in their place, and impressed her teachers to the point where she won the award for best presentation in her class. Of course, it’s not all hard work and seriousness with Asha – any time music is playing, she is dancing, and on my birthday she decided to pick me up by the knees and spin me around the room.

If it wouldn’t make this blog post entirely too long, I would tell you about every single one of my students. I can tell you that every one of them has made an impact on my life, an impact I suspect I won’t recognize the full ramifications of for some time yet.

And though I have left Kenya and moved on to the next phase of my life, I will always remember my ladies’ names, and I will always remember their stories.