Soluziona Years 1998-2001

What can I say? I owe my career development to Soluziona.... For the first time in my life I came face to face with challenge when I got employed by Soluziona. Not only was the pay an improvement from KTN, for the first time i was working in a group of age mates, more than 50 and it was in the challenging world of IT.

I was actually late on the first day.... I left Dandora at 05.45 am... The journey from Dandora to Laxcon House should ideally take 15 to 20 minutes maximum. The Nairobi traffic though is out of this world. Getting public transport was always drama... We usually had to walk to kariobangi South a good 30 minutes walk from Phase four because the vehicles turned back that far during rush hour. I remember arriving at 8.15 am with really dusty shoes. That was to be the straw, because I did finally move to my servant quarter in South B the very next month... My mother was really excited.. She even offered to go shopping for household equipment for me.

In Soluziona, I started off my career in SAP. As is the case, I got given the heavy manuals to read and edit being the junior consultant I was hired as. Those agonising moments reading pages and pages of system configuration documents and training materials were to prove priceless.... Being a Spanish company all our bosses were from Spain (naturally) My first boss was called Vicente Bayarri, a tough talking spanish man who had injured his leg in an accident and the resulting walk made him look like a real toughie.. In reality though, he was a very fair guy who believed in hard work and rewarded it. My inspiration though was definitely my team lead Katuku, presently Mrs Wahome!.. She took time out of her schedule to coach me and Mohib...

In Soluziona I made really great friends.. We had our famous Ole Polos nyama choma trips, organised by yours truly JKK... I need to find some of those pics and post them.. Great friends from Soluziona, Owiti, Edu, Nyaema, Ngure, Mwamunga, Spyke, Wahome, Mohib, JB, Maragia, Sila, Sartaaj. Kerai, Paulo.....Wow The Iber family is rather large...
Interestingly very few of thise original consultants remain at home, most having moved into the diaspora. Maybe some day we shall all return and turn the IT industry on its head..........

Most of Soluziona colleagues are now parents, many of us became parents in these past 2 to 3 years.. Which pushes me into my next blog... Today...............

KTN 1997-98

My first job after graduating college was as a marketing assistant for an outdoor advertising firm TONY DISPLAYS. I actually landed the job almost by chance. I tarmacked(was jobless) for almost 2 months and in July 1996 a friend called Tony from ICC church told me of a friend Dylan whom he did for artwork. He informed me that Dylan was looking for a marketing executive. The company was based in Bunyala Road off Baricho in Industrial area. I arrived on Monday morning dressed in a tie and blazer bought from Kikomba. But the most memorable piece of my ensemble is my briefcase. I had a redish brown briefcase that I procured in India in preparation for the tarmacking. Dylan was indeed amused...

I got the job anyway. The deal was i find companies that wanted to have signs made. it paid 5% comission and that was it. With my cheap wardrobe, I must not have made a great impression on the sleek company executives. To make it worse I had to traverse the vast dusty industrial area on foot, carrying sample advertisement material. Most of the times hungry. I cant blame the executives. My break came 5 months down the road. Dylan was prepairing to sack me, well he had actually informed me that it was not working despite my good intentions... And that indeed that was to be my last day. A dark day indeed. With this job, i had somewhere to go, to escape the dreary grey looking buildings in Dandora. Here i could escape into the fantasy world of the executives I discussed with daily. In particular, the marketing crew at Haco industries had taken to me. They gave me the break.

Landing in the evening of my sack, they proceeded to make an order of golf promotional material for an event scheduled 2 days after that. Only our company then could handle this at a short notice. However overtime had to be called for, which meant that we had to charge them for this. They didnt like this. I begged Dylan to consent to not charge them overtime. He agreed, we completed the order and I made my one and only visit to Sigona golf club to date. I was impressed out of this world....

After this contract, funny enough i was busy after that.. But I didnt see a future in advertising so when KTN came calling with an offer for a business reporter in Jan 1997, I didnt think twice. The only problem was Dylan was extremely mad... Made this and that threat but in the end he saw my point that I was really hungry to make something of myself...

Highlights in KTN

Saba saba riots in 1997.. Being teargassed in kamukunji and Kikomba area...
Working the morning news shift, being collected from Dandora at 3 am. The dangers that God saw us through...
The major sack of the staff after the saba saba media coverage during the dark days of media censorship in the Moi era... never seen anything like it. I remember my colleagues, Vitalis Musebe, Isaiya Kabira, Mercy Oburu, Christine Nguku, Solomon Mugera, The late David Mageria(achiever), Linus Kai Kai, Farida Karoney, Henry Marete, Bwana D, Topi Lyambila, Mutali, list is endless....
Even though i enjoyed my time in KTN, I was not cut for journalism and I was happy to leave only after a year!

KENYA 1996-2000

I arrived finally in 1996 early after a brief holiday in 1991. When I went home in 1991, I weighed 49 kgs. I dont blame people who havent seen me from those days when they have trouble placing me. In 1996, Kenya was a hard place to be for a fresh graduate with a degree and post graduate diploma and no experience. I settled back into life in our then home in Dandora ph 4. Life in Dandora seemed out of this world. Indeed there were 2 distinct lives that we lived there. The daytime normal life and the night life when we boarded up our houses and prayed that the night without the screams of another family being attacked by robbers.

During these chilling experiences, the men of the household would have to get out and go assist the stricken family. Failure meant that when your turn came the neighbours would avoid you. I remember getting out of the house at 3 am with my neighbour and walking to the distress calls. We would wait to hear the other doors open before we ventured out. I wasnt much help during these experiences. I just had to show up. In the morning when I woke up all that would look like a nightmare from a distant land. In most cases we only always got there after the thugs had left because, the distress calls usually were in the wake of the departing thugs and mostly also because neighbours didnt neccessarily rush out lest they meet the thugs.

Apart from the vigilante experiences, my other recollections of Dandora were of the loud loud music played night after night when the members of the Luo community lost a relative. No one really complained partly because Dandora was a noisy place anyway and we had learned to sleep through the ruckuss but also because there was some sense of security provided by these nightly vigils. It always seemed strange when the music was finally shut, usually after a month or so.

I made good friends in Dandora who believed in my quest for a better life.

Back to the Future

I havent blogged for a while having taken time off to grow up a little and also make a family. However the truth is really that I didnt just get round to it. Which leads to the dilemma of recollecting my train of thought. To make it easier for everyone, I will just fast forward to the future. A lot can happen in two years which is the last time i sat down to make an entry here. I have been very lucky, The Lord has shone his merciful face on me. A lot happened indeed!

INDIA
1991-1996 : I spent this bit of my life in India, the first 3 years in Chandigarh India and the latter part in Pune. In the process I obtained my bachelor of Arts inEconomics. Highlights of my Indian adventure are too many to be penned down. It was a period of my life that I discovered that I had a real enduring strain in my character. The toughest moments of my life so far were in this period. I have faced some challenging times after but the Indian experience is special in its own way. At the end of it, I managed by the grace of God and I value this period.. I really do!
Friends made in India
Ranjit Bennett, James Angawa, John, Amos and Robinson Chigiti, the Late bossom friend James Kiboi, Flo Mbeti, Pastor Cathleen Rob, Ajit, Priti. The list is endless and these are people who passed my way and influenced my life in a way that was life changing. I pray for all of them for God's face to shine upon them and their families always.