Job Search & Career Blog

Making a living during civil unrest.

February 28th, 2008

Surviving Loss of a Job: Kenyan Survival Stories

You wanted a job, right? So you wrote a good curriculum vitae that pointed out clearly your unique selling point, the skills, name it. And you got the job. From a state of hopeless joblessness to one of having a good job, possibly living well, just like you wanted. All of a sudden, something bad happens…your country is in chaos, you can’t report to your work station at the company fearing the insecurity outside your house. Soon, you realize that your company is preparing to fold up due to losses incurred from the violence that has erupted in your country. With the close down, your job goes as well. All in a flash! What to do?

A friend of mine has been having working in a hotel in the southern coast of Mombasa, Kenya. During the recent skirmishes, the city of Mombasa, which is heavily dependent on tourism as its mainstay, experienced some of the worst violence. Fighting was anywhere and everywhere: from the city centre, to the world-famous Fort Jesus tourist site to the remote outskirts in the north: Mtwapa, Mbombolulu and Bamburi areas. Immediately the Western governments realized what was happening in Kenya and Mombasa in particular, they issued tourist advisories aimed at their nationals who had booked flights to cancel them – chartered & otherwise – and with that, hotel bookings slumped to a low of 35% occupancy from a normal of 85%. And with that, my friend lost his job. He fled for his life with the little he had to Nairobi, where he’s being hosted by friends and it’s no secret he’s going through hell, just a month after losing a well paying job.

Personal finance coaches will tell you that my friend missed two important things in his employed life: personal planning and saving for contingency purposes. Personal financial planning is crucial if one has to truly be stable. Financial planning at personal level actually boils down to how well you’re able to maximize your earnings while at the same time keeping your expenditure at the lowest possible. The long and short of this is, your assets (savings, investments) side of the ‘balance sheet’ should be healthier to comfortably absorb the shock brought about by a sudden loss of job that provides you with the income needed to sustain your desired living standard. Saving for unforeseen or contingency purposes is crucial. The saying that a penny saved is a penny earned has never been truer like it is today. For to save means you’re insuring yourself against the unexpected which can happen at any time.

However, it may turn out that you’d invested or saved enough, yet this can’t keep you going for long. Like in the recent violence in Kenya, everyone, including big time investors and those who had fat accounts are feeling the pinch, too. So, how do you survive under such circumstances – where violence robs you of a means to earn (job) or your investment (hardware shops, supermarkets were torched)? Here, you need to think beyond your CV and any formal training to make it. As the following revelations indicate, it’s just ingenuity at work during hard times.

Mike, a 24-year-old auto mechanic, resides in Nairobi’s Kibera slums, where more than 650,000 people live. Before the political unrest being witnessed, he used to walk about 1 mile from his Kibera house and across the city center to Makaburi-Kariokor, where many vans, autobuses and buses get repaired. He had co-worked very well with colleagues who are not from his ethnic group. This changed all of a sudden when his ethnic group, supporting the opposition, clashed with another ethnic group supporting the government. Mike could no longer be hired by his new ‘foes’ and decided to stop reporting at the garage for security reasons. The ingenious Mike, with little savings, bought a motorbike. He knew how to ride one and he’s now doing brisk business evacuating members of his ethnic group fleeing violence in central highlands of Kenya. He says the business is good as compared to the garage work where he only earned about $4 a day; he now makes in excess of $6 on average, sometimes even $10.

Joseph is another Kenyan who knows how to survive. He has been kicked out of his 2 acre farm in the fertile Rift Valley province, arguably Kenya’s breadbasket. After sitting idle at his tent in the Nakuru Showground for close to a month, an idea clicked. His fellow internally displaced persons (refugees in their own land) have had no access to water and food. So he decided to provide water in 20 liter containers and selling it to them. He now makes a cool $3 up from zero income just a few days ago. But his idea probably is nothing compared to David’s. David, a Bachelor of Education degree holder from a local university and also among the displaced from their jobs and farms, now makes money selling teach-yourself cassette tapes to the many parents at the camp with children who are supposed to be in school but are not due to the rampant insecurity. These cassettes have basic lessons on English, Swahili and social studies. While he makes close to $10 a day, he’s planning to collaborate with UNICEF country office to further market his idea and hopefully get funded. That’s survival 101 you! Doing more with the little there’s.

But with all the above said, there’re still some jobs that remain unscathed by any chaos in a country. In Kenya, writers and journalists are having a field day gathering the many ‘breaking stories’ and filing reports for international media houses such as the CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera or Sky. Writers and journalists, ironically, are a beneficiary in the ongoing chaos as their pay is now more due to the depreciating value of the shilling! Before, the shilling traded at between 56 and 60 against the US$ but now it’s gone to 72 shillings to a green buck. But it is clear that not everyone is or can be a writer or journalist; better save for a sunny day. The dollars spent unnecessarily, when saved, could just prove to be the difference maker in times of turmoil. Ask the Kenyans, they now know better…