KenyaOnAShoeString: Real Advice for Real Kenyans

“They said I should be grateful I had a job. But I was working 7 days a week, 14 hours a day, for a salary that barely fed me. I was too tired to think. Too scared to leave.” There is a story here that echoes across Kenya—quietly, persistently, and in the voices of people trying to make something of themselves. But often, it’s not progress they are making. It’s pain they are collecting. Because sometimes, we accept destruction in the name of progress. The Girl Who Chose Pain Over Poverty Take a girl from Kibera or Mathare. She is 16, maybe 17. She’s missed school for weeks because she doesn’t have sanitary towels. Her mother sells vegetables; her father is rarely around. A boda guy in the area notices her discomfort and hands her a pack of pads. The next month he brings another. Then chips and soda. Then small money. Then she moves in with him. And just like that, she stops being a child. The guy turns violent. She gets pregnant. She drops out of school for good. At 18, she’s a mother ...

In Kenya, survival is not just a phase—it becomes a personality. A way of life. We know how to stretch a coin, how to skip meals, how to walk instead of board, how to delay joy in service of something bigger. We know how to sacrifice . But no one ever teaches us how to stop . You fight to build a life. You give up weekends, comfort, health, joy— even yourself —so your child can finish school, so you can buy that plot, build that house, survive that disease, leave that bad marriage, or finally be free of the debt that has followed you like a shadow. Then the fight ends. The child graduates. The house is done. The cancer is in remission. The toxic relationship is over. The money finally makes sense. You made it. But now, you find yourself staring into the quiet… and you don’t know what to do with it. What Does It Mean to Live After You’ve Been in Survival Mode? A man once said, “I sacrificed everything so my children would have a better life. I don’t even know what I like anymor...

There’s a kind of grief we rarely speak about in Kenya—the grief that comes not from loss, but from survival. Many Kenyans know what it’s like to give up entire decades of their lives for the sake of family. We raise children who aren’t ours. We care for ageing, ailing parents when healthcare fails. We build homes from scratch while still repaying loans. We battle court cases over family land, support siblings through school, and somehow still show up to work, church, harambees, and funerals with a smile. We are excellent at pushing through pain. We endure. We provide. We hold everything together. And so we often tell ourselves: “I’ll rest when I’m done.” But what if done never comes? Even after the chaos ends—the illness, the debt, the heartbreak—we don’t rest. We move the goalpost. We chase another opportunity. We dream of new lands and new starts. We keep running, because stillness feels foreign. We are a nation that knows how to hustle, how to survive—but we don’t know how t...