A Blow, Not a Death — Roseline, Her Group, and What Building With People Actually Means
There is a phrase that keeps coming back to us when we think about Roseline. A blow. Not a death. We didn't coin it. She lived it. Roseline runs an M-Pesa agency in Kibera. She also runs a bookshop, and alongside it, a beverage business she started when she got a fridge from Coca-Cola and stocked it with soft drinks and water for her M-Pesa and bookshop clients. Three streams from one location, built by one woman, serving one community. Then, within weeks, she lost nearly all of it. A fraudster walked into her shop while she was away and her employee was alone. The employee was drugged. The entire KES 30,000 M-Pesa float was sent out—gone before anyone could stop it. Then came the demolitions. Her location was razed. The beverage business she had barely started was suspended before it had a chance to prove itself. At this point in the story, most people would have stopped. The rational response to two catastrophic losses in quick succession—fraud, then forced displacement—is ...