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

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