DREAM TEAMS “your life is a blank canvas, as a soul you choose your starting colors, which are your body, your personality, your country, your family. Then you come in to your life with your paintbrushes and colors ready to begin the art work called your life. Your life purpose is to hold your paintbrushes with joy and to paint a picture of life that is true to you.” After having the “grand opportunity” slip away and I accept, I will not be going  to Nigeria, andwill also not be meeting Oprah, I start to revisit my business. It was key to create a system, so that we don’t just get lucky, we have a plan. So, on this day at 4:00 in the AM, I got an epiphany. What if we had a network, acommunity of people in Business and Marketers. Then we would share networksand more links to markets. That way, entrepreneurs would always have a tribe to belong. Mimi nani, I start to draft the Idea,immediately. I called it the Network. It was going to be everything I wished I had ...

That awkward moment when you realize you have nothing going for you, he he he. From EVERYTHING to NOTHING. Looking at my decade, starting at 19, a writer, actress and at 27 still wondering what was that??? You mean I am not rich already??? I only own a few dishes and a collection of words of wisdom, amazing experiences. Mbio za sakafuni zimeishia ukingoni, weh!!! And truly again, as Obama put it, “I was b eginning to question the path I had chosen!” Aware that life is not happening to us, life is responding to us. And, what hurts most is that everything we have become, always is a direct result of our choices or lack of or the state of our mind. Only, it is easier to attach to attach blame to the government and Witchcraft  . But it is only the time when you come face to face with the reality, that you have walked this road to here. It is here you accept, yes, I have failed. I am lost! Now what??? Personal development . It is not just key in Business, but also i...

Esther Neema: Shooting Expressions Back to what I know. Still quite unsettled. Two years of this, and I faced with the question. What's the next? I am “ wanting to make an impact ”? Ideally it should have been the news/production as it would offer me consistency. So, when the opportunity presented self, I pounced on it. I went past all the stages, before I was busted that I don't even know the name of my MP :D. IGNORANCE . Only knew the Dramatic MPs, MPIGs. Considerably, I only noticed things that are presented DRAMATICALLY !!! Such as when watching news, I was probably focusing on hair and styles or shoes. So, I didn't make the headlines. And I remember being so broken. It was “expected of me”, that I began to expect of myself. Turning this in to an entire spectacle. For the second time I understood what it meant to be so close to “ THE DREAM ” and have it yanked out of your mouth, when I believed to be “worthy of it” in spite my challenge with ignorance and ...

Esther Neema It is not easy coming out of County 001. As they say , Kungia Happiness , kutoka Sadness . It was. First when I was leaving, I was leaving in jubilation. Watu hawakutosha. Everybody had to know I was by the beach, he he he he. Only now that I was returning, I was creeping back in to the city. Hiding from everybody. Quite ashamed, that no sooner had I left had I returned. Nitaambia nini watu. Nimerudi after announcing to the whole village of my departure. To make it worse, being in Mombasa sort of made Nairobi feel so cold. I was now sounding like my clan who say, “Eh jamani, baridi ya Nairobi siiwezi”. It was the season of purple flowers. And though it often had been my favorite season, I just couldn’t stop freezing. Nairobi felt hostile a little . One can really miss the thought of waiting for coconut falling from trees and posing by the beach. For the first time, everything was quite fast, and I am not fast with it. And I am trying to catch up, but weh...

Esther Neema in Mombasa So , I am in the mid st of having the time of my life in my entire brief Career. My days are made of merry. Shoots at beautiful spaces that make me feel touristic half the time . Cruz dinners of course non-existent in Nairobi , Feasting on Chapati s and maharagwe ya nazi DAILY and Biriani on Fridays. Occasionally crossing the ferry on to the other side of the ocean, and quite honestly at this moment, this is my idea  of THE DREAM . In spite days of ultimate hunger from earning very little, but quite sufficient for a twenty something year old. Plus who needs a lot of money as long as you can see the beach daily. I realize, I need so little to be happy, and nature is one of those basic needs for me. Plus, I was just in love with the population, the teams, the office, the drama and the endless surprises daily that always left us breathless with laughter. I could feed off this. Very few times did money cross my mind. But just in the midst of ...

Esther Neema in Mombasa I am in Mombasa. Quite having the time of my life. D oing stuff I love. I am with amazing people, and everyday when going home , I get to see the ocean. What more can a girl ask for? I ask self,   truly, why was I stuck in Nairobi suffering ? To imagine that at the coast with 4k you can live in the town with decent accommodation. And you could eat samosas at 10 Bob. And you could be anyone. Now, I had come to just present shows. S tarted as a reporter, weh. So we go to the field to pick news and we have to come back and summarize it in to some thing consumable. First all, this is to happen in Swahili !!! So I speak amazing Swahili, and write it as well , it would be quite lame to pretend I don’t know Swahili. B ut when it was coming to news, it sounded like a different skill should be used, yaani unahitaji kutafakari. Weh, so what wa s taking other people 2 minutes was taking me my whole day . Making me question; what is the true mea...

Still on professional gallivanting  :) . I get a call. "We have see your work on You-tube, we'd like to meet you". Its the CEO, and I am over the top about it. I call my entire village. Y'all, I am en route the coast. I am so elated that I am saying goodbye to full time boredom in to a bright future. Remember, I have many projects ongoing, but at the moment were beginning to feel dead beat. And as they say alwa ys, "missing an opportunity is like missing a branch". So I am excited to go start a "new life". Mimi nani, I announce to everybody Mombasa is calling. Forget about the Catering and Events and the new office I had been given with the best view ever, and I am like, this will have to be done in Mombasa, by the beach. You bet, the was no such thing  :D . There was something greater. Waking up in the morning everyday for something you believe in. Being part of something bigger than yourself. Meeting amazing people. And it was ...

Meanwhile, I was doing the show. But once I put my microphones down, I was up galivanting on river road. Some streets quite creepy, but was informed that is where the treasure is. Sigh, it was such a great discovery how the dirty steel and tires was where money lay . It was my quest to seek how people did it. They didn’t look IT, but were IT. A s the farmers who tilled , got their hands dirty, but their pockets were far from dirty. Doing things everyone was running away from you was a great opportunity. So occasionally I would attempt to sell as they. For the first time, I came to discover that selling can be quite exciting. It had always seemed daunting, but I realized each of us selling something. That even if I didn’t have to sell shorts and tops, I would still do it . This was starting to look confusing. I was becoming Esther of ALL TRADES . Even I didn’t know how to answer the question of, “ WHAT DO YOU DO REALLY? ” Well, uuuuurm, I would catch myself unsure. D o...

My madness leads me to the office. "Greetings sir". There is such joy until I start to talk about our plight : " I am shocked people I respect and hold in high regard such as you doctors would be part of such deplorable act s as not answering calls and emails after food consumption ". I would see him adjust his seat and self . Quite shocked, the said Esther who was calm had turned to be quite the opposite :D . This was my chance to defend the entire youth race. I had turned a revolutionist suddenly. Hayo mambo ya catering were forgotten. T hinking of the many young people whose introduction to life was this . Of people hiding in holes when workers were seeking pay. I was becoming increasingly aware of the sacrifice people went through to get any pay. W alking home after service , for some luck but went back home empty, n o rent . This was personal. As revolutionists say, an injustice to one of us is an injustice to all of us. That o...

So far so bad. A terrible 3 weeks. We have missed the consultancy opportunity because we were at the Airport round the clock, miserable , surrounded by “ingrates”, who at this point hate us, and afraid to say the feeling is starting to be mutual from the team . The reality of the #C hallenges O f B usiness facing us. And truly we start to miss Yusuf.   Not only are we suffering, we are also short. Following our terrible negotiation, we realize that if we head in to another week, we will be going in to the extreme negative of money we don’t even have . I t will not be well with our soul, for the service is likely to get more pitiful. So my brother advices, it were better to end this deal, than to persist with this obviously sour relationship. “This is not working”, I told the head. However, due to the excessive inconvenience caused, we cut cost on most days . Now offered the last two days free, we wait for pay day. So, we think about it with a degree o...