The tragedy of strength

Those who came before us, our grand mothers and grand fathers, our aunts and uncles, our communities etc, always taught us to be strong. Weakness was condemned and despised. And strong we became. 

Strength to overcome adversity is important, vital and a necessity particularly in Africa where as a woman you grow up being objectified all the time and given more or less the same status as children..."a bus travelling from X to Y carrying 80 people had an accident. 40 people died including 16 women and 12 children..." the story lines always remark.

But strength can be burdensome. Strength can be a heavy load to carry. Strength can be lonesome. Strength can be a liability because as you remain strong and grow stronger, you can unconsciously minimise those around you. People around you can become weak, not because they choose to, but because your strength overshadows without empowering them, it sidelines and is overarching without tooling them on how to be strong.

To be strong is to draw from a power located right at the core from inside you, the self. That process of drawing from within the depths of yourself is personal. The outcomes are overt but the process of delivering the outcomes is covert. You can only tell people to be strong but there is no manual on "how to". It is a personal journey influenced by those that were around you when you were growing up.

The tragedy with wielding too much strength is that should you ever stumble and become vulnerable and require particularly emotional support from those around you, the beneficiaries of your strength, if your strength disabled them over the years as you became the only reservoir from which strength could be drawn, there will either be resistance or failure to rise up to the challenge that is making you vulnerable. Vulnerability therefore becomes a luxury. 

That is why many strong African women I know just get on with it. There is no time to notice your vulnerability and seek that help one gets from air conditioned offices on the couch, where they recommend popping all sorts of small pills whose names are taboo to mention! 

That has been my very own personal experience. Nowadays, often, I wonder whether it was a wise thing to be strong. I wonder, I ponder, I experience self doubt, I question and even quietly weep, but I do not regret it because I was never taught weak. Strong is all I know. Strong has always been the Alpha and the Omega. I do not know how I could have been anything else but strong ~ Gloria Ndoro-Mkombachoto

And then...

After telling a waiter this morning that waiters are the ones that destroy people's businesses because of shoddy service, shortly thereafter, I ended up nicely tucking my tail in between my legs with humility. 

I had been dropped off at Sam Levy to do this, that and the other. As the driver was still far running errands, I decided to go to The Deli at Sam Levy. There were no free seats. I did not want to wait so I walked across to Millers Cafe by the front of Food Lovers' Market. It was almost empty with one or two people trickling in and out.

I settled in reluctantly and started replying emails. I was given the menu, decided on what I wanted and continued with my online activities. 

Forty minutes later, the driver called and told me he was going to be another thirty to forty minutes late. That is when I realised I had not been served. There was noise in the restaurant of staff chit chatting. I waved to one of the waiters and irritated, told him to go next door and see how the competition, The Deli was doing. I went on and on about how standards had gone down, how they were destroying the business at a time when many would-be patrons just cannot afford going out anymore. I was in my element and on and on I blurted out a whole lecture on customer service as if I was a stuck record.

Satisfied the message had been heard, some five minutes later, I ordered. The coffee arrived first in five minutes and the rest in fifteen minutes. By the time the main arrived, I was full from the coffee, so I nibbled on the ribs and asked the rest to be packed away for my dogs. I proceeded to ask for the bill.

Another twenty minutes later, the driver called to advise me that he was outside. I stood up, went to the front counter and quietly requested my bill, exercising restraint, with difficulty and literally biting my tongue so that I do not speak another word. The bill was presented. 

Then the frantic searching for my purse began. First I thought it was too dark in my big black bag so I put on my glasses. Then, everything in the bag came out, followed by shaking of the bag vigorously.

The purse was nowhere to be found. I called the helper at home who advised me that I had left it on my desk in the study where I was working before I left.

I asked the cashier how much? He advised $11. I told him to ask someone to follow me to the car where the driver saved the day. 

At the counter, I had wanted to say this last word, "Sorry, no tip, the service was shoddy." The missing purse, saved them from hearing that. How do you refuse to pay a tip of less than $2 when you are "claiming" that you have left the purse at home!!!

These are hard times, I could very well have been lying. Others do.

Moral of the story : Before giving unsolicited talks on customer service in a restaurant, please make sure your purse is in the bag :) :( :) :(

Manage your ego and succeed in life

I have met many young people who think that one needs a magic wand to get ahead. They are looking for a quick deal, a quick opportunity, in essence a quick fix to get money and success now. Conspicuous consumption and the I-want-it-now-this-very-moment mentality is now the order of the day amongst these impressionable youngers. They judge success based on the visible, material abundance on display. They do not care how the person got there. They do not ask, what business are they running, where do they work to achieve this conspicuous wealth. All they strive for is to be the same, to be like them in order to be successful.

What I know for sure is that the rules for success have not changed. They have remained the same since time immemorial. The is no short-cut to sincerely, consistent and dedicated hard work. Determination, focus, tenacity,   perseverance, honesty, authenticity and consistency are all key ingredients to success, but it is your attitude that is the determining factor, the most important factor of all. Skill, education and experience are important, but without a managed attitude, an ego that is constantly put in check, success will be elusive to many.

Cry the beloved Zimbabwe

Today the 25th February, 2015, I salute everyone who calls Zimbabwe home and who has decided to stay under the harrowing circumstances we find ourselves in.

I salute you:
- for holding on to the umbilical cord when the Mother long severed ties with both the cord and baby.
- for putting up with the economic hostility that has altered your social lives in more ways than one and choosing not to chicken out through suicide as others are doing.
- for bearing the unbearable.
- for accepting the unacceptable.
- for tolerating the intolerable.
- for your deafening silence in order to prevent many from loosing leg and limb.
- for harnessing your Creators' gift of discernment and in the face of attacks from all directions, you have chosen to remain first class citizens at home in a world where citizenship is a source of exclusion and a justification for further attack.
- for being courageous and waking up every morning, energetic, yet agonising, wearing a smile-like mask that hides our sorrow, the thorns in our hearts and the bleeding wounds.
- for minding your own business where there is nothing else to mind but your very own business.
- for being quietly helpless where helplessness means self preservation.
- for recognising that we are so far gone, it is better to cower, survive and live than to shout from rooftops and be shot at.
- for your hope, that all shall be well, one day, some time, sooner or later, one way or another.

I salute you all, my Zimbabwe family. Your courage is contagious. It gives me strength and hope.

The Elusive Virtue of Suffering in Silence

Recently, in conversations with close girl friends we have realised that our discussions have shifted. The most part of our girl talks centre around the changes in our bodies and that of our partners, the impact of those changes on our lives and the health implications. We are surprised, yes, surprised, that getting old just creeps up on you and is a very personal, often unwelcome and sometimes indescribable experience. We are aged between 48 and 58 years old, are a bunch of informed, educated, well read, travelled and cultured girls. 

Do not get me wrong, we have never been this self centred and self preservation focused before. We have been there, done that and burnt the t-shirt. We still work harder and smarter and most of us within our collective are business owners. Amongst us a few have done our version of national service - development work, in country and abroad and some continue to do that. We are also very focussed on charity work, because there is a need out there, but most importantly because we derive a lot of joy from giving. Be that as it may, increasingly, we have realised that we have been gravitating more and more into the me-myself-and I-and my girlfriends space.

Some of our mothers are still alive and we were wondering why they never suffered the same ailments that are bedevilling us, never had the operations we have had from hysterectomies, liposuctions to gastric by-passes, never had to tattoo their eye lashes, never taken Prozac, never seen a shrink or even had Botox injections for non- surgical face lifts, yet they look wonderfully young in their 70's and 80's.

We have been asking, how come we did not know that age just creeps up on you like that and in a non- negotiable, very undemocratic fashion, arrests some of your most valued freedoms - like having a tiny waistline and flat stomach and not have to worry about wearing those dreadfully awful spandex tights, we have come to call bambazonke (hold every thing in and tight) - that you have always taken for granted, locks them up and literary throws away the keys.

So two of us with mothers alive, asked, why they never told us these very important ingredients of life so that we could have been better prepared. The mothers both said, they were raised in an era where, privacy was guarded at all costs and most importantly, you were meant to suffer in silence, in fact, there was pride and dignity enshrined in silent suffering. Certainly, a tall order for our girl friend collective.

Privacy, never mind its cousin silence are little known words in the days of our times. Living in a world supposedly signalling the end of privacy and confidentiality and giving rise to a new era of full disclosure, my girlfriends and I are surprised that even with the confines of a nuclear family, when we dare share the details of the body pain, itches or twitches we are experiencing, even our young adult children, with a high propensity for sharing on Facebook, twitter, google, Instagram and you tube, would complain, "Mom, you are sharing way too much information!" It turns out, that even the generation that puts much more of the "social" in social networking is much more discerning what personal information they want to hear...particularly if it is from their mothers.

Where does that leave us, we wondered. The obvious answer is, in the same situation, the same box as those who came before us, our mothers. But, perhaps our mothers bore the silence because their generation whilst ageing at the same pace as us were healthier and better prepared to remain silent.

We resolved that we were not going to be silenced. We were going to be heard, come rain or sunshine. We were not going suffer and die in silence. For us, the dignity and pride our mothers found in that, is elusive.

An anecdote on the ugliness of our helplessness in dealing with GBV.

The word Sorry has become such a misused and exploited word. You do something knowing very well the consequences and after the deed, you apologise. It is that easy, I guess. Mistakes do happen and apologies are made. But when the same person repeats the same mistake over and over again, it becomes a choice and the apology sounding like a stuck DVD, is insincere. When fully grown adults repeat the same undesirable behaviour and say the word, sorry, one more time, I feel abused, cheated and angry. When is a promise a promise worthy of honoring? 

Five months ago in July 2012, one of the workers, M, who live and work within our compound beat his wife, G, also an employee. We had a meeting with S the Supervisor and we expressed our dislike of one human being battering another, no matter the circumstances. M said he was sorry and promised that he would never do it again. I cautioned him that violence was against my very core as a human being. 

Fast forward to Dec 2012, M, beats again G, who is now 4 months pregnant. G misses four days of work because of the beating and M, tells me that G is sick because of the pregnancy. As we were at a client's place, I advised M, that it was not an issue I wanted to discuss then and we would discuss it at a later, more suitable time.

Meanwhile, I am completely enraged and decide to cool down for some weeks whilst I decide on a plausible course of action besides firing M. 

Eventually, I muster the courage to be 'reasonable' about an unreasonable situation and I call both M and G who are both on leave but present in my quarters to come for a meeting. I ask M what happened and he says it was not a beating. G maintains it was. I remain calm, for a bit. Then all of a sudden I completely loose all my marbles. I find myself outside of my skin looking at the performance of whatever bodily remains represented myself. M realises that this is serious and he says he is Sooooorrry. Again!

I climb back into my body, trying to maintain my composure and ask the perpetrator of the abuse to explain to me what it is that a fully grown adult capable of making a woman pregnant cannot discuss verbally and resolving without resorting violence. M, remains quiet. I ask if I am talking by myself and he mutters a faint and limp no.

I advise G to assess her options as a woman and think hard about the wisdom of choosing a life of violence having made it clear to them earlier that no self respecting person causes grievous bodily harm to another person they refer to as their loved one. G, stares at me. I do not know where it was stare of disbelief or surprise or she had just had her aha moment.

I confirm then, what I have always known, what I always feared, that it is unfair and unjust to impose my will on others, particularly those in a position of less power and influence than myself. G tells me that she is still unwell. I give her money to visit the clinic for a check up. I advise the couple to pack their bags and look for alternative accommodation elsewhere because I never want to have this conversation with them again on my premises. If they still want to work, they are welcome to, but I would be damned if I were to continue to have gender based violence (GBV) taking place within my compound.

They left yesterday and are both due to report to work on the 21st. So why am I still angry and outraged? Why do I feel violated when I am not the survivor of the violence? 

I believe I know the reason. It's my sense of helplessness that ushers in the rage. There was no lasting solution to the GBV. As a person raised by men in my family who admired, cherished, affirmed and dearly and unconditionally loved the girl child, I am at odds to understand GBV. It makes my temper flare up in a manner that scares me. I am, however delighted that I am not a gun totting and panga wielding person, otherwise, I would not have been responsible for my actions, particularly, that time, when I stepped out of my skin for a bit.

I feel helpless because there are no lasting solutions for women who are survivors of GBV. I personally do not believe in half way homes for the women. When they are reintegrated back into society, the societal and familial pressures force them to go back to their abuser. He is your husband, they remind them. To many people in this part of the world, marriage is an accomplishment and an achievement that must be aspired for. Most importantly, when women are poor, vulnerable and not economical empowered enough to be self sustaining for themselves and their children, not only do they make bad decisions, the basket of choices from which they can consider various options is just not available to them. So they stay and the GBV continues unabated.

I believe I made a stand, a selfish stand. I chose not to see and entertain GBV in my compound. That is all I chose to do, for now. I do not want to deal with it. It is time wasting and emotional draining on my part. I do not want to continue footing health bills associated with the GBV including their already compromised health. GBV in my compound is a distraction for me and interrupts my social and business life. I am fully aware that the posture I have taken is as ugly as the GBV itself. I have taken this posture for my personal sanity and self-preservation. In this incident involving M and G, the GBV is likely to worsen because the forced eviction from my free accommodation and other amenities is going to lead to an erosion of their economic circumstances and therefore the fights are going to escalate. I am unable to stop it and I know third time around, the GBV incident will be presented on doorstep of my compound. When that time comes, I will terminate both their employment. I believe it is easier to deal with GBV when the perpetrator and the survivor do not have a connectedness with your social (living in my compound) and business (M works as one of my valued welders/painters and G is a valued cleaner at the lifestyle centre) life.

Yes, GBV is one of the reasons why I find the S word overused, fickle and insincere. The human race has made phenomenal advances in science and technology and yet we still do not know how to live side by side with each other peacefully as human beings. I rest my case.

Your character determines your credibility and integrity : guard it with everything you have got.

I used to be in banking once upon a time.  With a team of seven people, I helped set up what used to be called the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation (ZIMBANK) Small Business Services Division (SBSD).  The late eighties to early nineties was one of the most illuminating periods of my life. I learnt about people, honor and entrepreneurship in a way that has stayed with me up to this day.

For many countries through out the world, the promotion of small and medium sized businesses (SME’S) is a cornerstone of economic policy. Government support for small enterprise appears to be based on the widely held perception that the SME sector is an incubator of economic growth, a place where innovation takes place and new ideas become economically viable business enterprises. In addition, policymakers routinely point to SMEs as important sources of employment growth. It is not surprising, then, that there was widespread political support for government programs and other subsidies aimed at encouraging the growth and development of SMEs in Zimbabwe during the late 1980’s and throughout the nineties.

A particular area of concern for Zimbabwe policymakers was whether small businesses where accessing enough credit and if there was credit extended to them at all, to fund their business operations. After all, many SMEs at inception have little or no credit history, no collateral and questionable capability as many aspire to venture into areas they have no experience in. Lenders have ordinarily been known to be reluctant to fund SMEs with new and innovative products because of the difficulty associated with evaluating the risk of such products. These difficulties are classic information problems; obtaining sufficient information about the parties involved in a transaction; and they may prevent otherwise creditworthy companies from obtaining credit. If information problems are substantial, they can lead to declining of loans or credit rationing. Credit rationing is when loans are allocated by some mechanism other than price. To the extent that credit rationing significantly affects SMEs credit markets, a rationale exists for supporting SMEs through government programs aimed at improving SME access to credit.

During that the late 80’s and early 90’s, the government of Zimbabwe (GOZ) introduced many enabling initiatives, the most generous of which where located within the former Credit Guarantee Company (CGC), which was a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Millions of Zimbabwe dollars (long before hyperinflation and the Zimbabwe dollar was still regarded decent and tradable currency) where placed within the CGC to act as a guarantee for all loan advances to SMEs through the five commercial banks. This was before the financial services industry was deregulated to allow new entrants into the market place and therefore there were just five banks, ZIMBANK, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe and Standard Bank of South Africa (STANBIC).

As these banks (referred to then as “traditional” banks because of their being averse to lending to the SME sector) jumped onto the bandwagon of setting up small business divisions as a result of the increased guarantee scheme within CGC, the entrepreneurial market responded accordingly. Many people set up businesses and accessed financing from the different banks.

As bankers targeting SMEs at ZIMBANK SBSD, one of the criteria, albeit very traditional that we used in appraising business proposals from the SME sector were the three C’s, Collateral, Capability and Character.

Collateral is the security, preferably immovable, which if available, for example, the Bank would secure the title deed and register a first or second mortgage on the property as security. We became creative and if the business loan was going to be used to buy equipment for the business, the Bank would have a lien over that property. This is a rather simplistic example but forms the essence of what collateral we secured from the SMEs.

Capacity involved assessing for managerial capacity to run the business, including analyzing the skill sets the project promoter and their employees had in the business to be funded. For example, if a lawyer wanted to set up a construction business and they were going to do the work themselves, we would obviously be worried and probe the applicant further. The complexion of the application would change if for example, the lawyer project promoter had a foreman and brick layers, carpenters, engineers, roof technicians and so on who were qualified to execute all the construction projects.

Character entailed investigating the level of indebtedness of the person with other people, organizations and financial institutions. We also tracked down people who had transacted with the person and asked them to provide objective opinions. The personal interview also provided a lot of clues about the nature of the project promoter. During the interviewing process, I personally worried, about people who did not answer the questions asked, body language and reading in between the lines. This is all very subjective stuff but I believe that when one acquires experience over time on interviewing potential borrowers, one hones their skills on hearing clearly what the other person is not saying during that communication process.

For example, we realized that many men who wanted to access these interest low and guaranteed loans had bad credit ratings. They then submitted their project proposals in the names of their wives, sisters or girlfriends, who were acting as fronts for them. During the interviewing process, we quickly picked up from discussing the essence of the business that the wife, sister or girlfriend was being set up as a front. When we probed enough, they owned up as it became increasingly apparent that it was not their business idea to start with. It is very difficult to be passionate about business when you are not business minded or to be passionate about a business idea, which you did not generate. The entrepreneurial zeal was therefore a key factor in our determination of the character of the entrepreneur.

Personally for me character assessment was the most exciting part of the project appraisal process. I remember recommending to the Advances Committee borderline SMEs whose project promoter characters were sincere and abundant with integrity. There are many who came with viable projects but whose characters were shady whom I did not give favorable recommendations.

I observed that, at about ninety five percent of the time, I was right in giving Character, the largest weight amongst the three Cs, because I saw many borderline SMEs whose promoters were genuine, grow from strength to strength and obviously viable SME projects whose promoters lacked credibility struggle or fail completely.

What many people do not realize is that your character is your passport to opportunity as it determines your credibility and integrity. It impacts on everything you do at home, socially and particularly in business. It is impossible for a person to have a different personality for the home, with friends and at work. If that is the case and you are a potential lender to this person, be very very worried. Consistency is a key ingredient in good character development. When you are not consistent, it is my considered opinion that you must be doubted.

Character is everything. As an experienced lender, you ignore your intuition at your own peril. That is the fundamental reason why after everything is said and done, people prefer to transact with either people they know or who have been recommended by people they know. Why? Because the person who is being referred or who is already known to you or others has had their character qualified or validated by one means or another. Just because you hold an MBA or a Doctorate in your field of expertise does not necessarily qualify you to have the right of passage to participate in certain transactions.

It is said that a lot of business deals are generated, discussed, apportioned and concluded on the golf course. Why? Golf players spend a lot of time together, walking the course, talking and of course playing the game. An 18 hole course, I understand might take some five or so hours to play. If say two teams of two people each play just twice a week, that is forty hours of sharing and of course bonding which is necessary in business. Escalate that to twice a week for say forty weeks per year, that amounts to some one thousand and six hundred hours of talk and bonding time. Perhaps that is why golf mates first seek each other out when opportunities present themselves than accommodate someone from “outside”. This is because, when you spend one hundred and sixty hours per month of playing, walking, talking, bonding, laughing and so on, you are bound to know each other fairly well. If you change your playing partners every month, it means you are expanding your territory of networks, people who can vouch for you.  After everything is said and done, it is the intangibles that matter and character determination is an intangible.

In order to successfully defend your character for prosperity, here are three concise suggestions to nibble on:

1.     Meet your financial obligations when they become due: If you cannot pay your debts or bills on time, do not bury your head in the sand like an ostrich hoping your incapacity to pay on time is going to go away. It will not. Contact the lender first before they contact you and renegotiate the terms of payment.  Be honest by advising them that you are experiencing a temporary cash flow situation. Do not lie by telling them long stories that you are waiting to be paid from the liquidation of your shares or something like, you are waiting to transfer money from your offshore account. Lenders are patient. They will document what you have said and wait for another excuse until, you have eroded your integrity and widened the credibility gap with them. The truth is the only way out. It is easier to remember the truth, than to remember a lie. Those who are now financially secure know all too well the challenges of cash flow when a business is still in its infancy and struggling to pay its bills. When you keep quiet, the lenders’ mind starts to become fertile with imagination; has the borrower run away? are they dead?, does the borrower have no intention of paying back?, and so on, etc.

2.     Live within your means: Whether you are in business or not, you need to postpone consumption, be frugal, save and live within your means. This is easier said than done. If you are unable to do it now, make it an aspirational goal. The media is one avenue solely responsible for people living beyond their means by encouraging conspicuous consumption and the “I want it, I must have it right now” mentality.  Someone once said, “it is a crazy world out there, when we buy what we do not need, with money we do not have, to impress the people that do not care about us and then spend the rest of our lives regretting it.” When you tarnish your financial credit worthiness, it becomes very difficult for you to transact in a highly networked society. We are living in the information age where people underestimate the movement of information from one place to another and the sharing taking place amongst people.

Our families’ trust recently walked away from a potentially viable business transaction we wanted to invest in because of the character of one of the business owners.  She borrowed money from a mutual friend and under the veil of moral superiority and all kinds of misrepresentations, is now delaying paying that debt back. This is totally unacceptable. Refrain from masquerading, tell the truth, explain your circumstances, whilst living within your means and ask for more time to regularize your financial matters with the lender. It pays to be truthful.

3.     Embark on any journey, business or otherwise for the long haul: Short-termism a term I use to describe those people who like short-term results, short-term businesses, short-term relationships and so on has led many a people down the narrow road towards despair and desperation. Getting into business, stay in business and making a success of it is no easy fit. Sometimes one needs nerves of steel, a sense of humor to laugh at ones’ self, sheer grit, tenacity, perseverance, commitment, timing, working both hard and smart, sometimes luck and sometimes knowing somebody who knows somebody who knows where to get something that you want. You must be hungry enough to want it so badly but remaining mindful of the fact that the rewards do not come overnight. You have to be in it for the long haul. That means not quitting when it becomes tough and unbearable, hanging in there when its easier to walk away, staying the course when perhaps all you see is a hazy ray of light far away into the pitch black unknown space. If you do not have these character-istics, then you are not suited for entrepreneurship and you are better off staying away from it as far away as possible. Never listen to anyone who tells you that they made money in their first year or two years of operations. It is not a business they are running, but a quick buck dealer-ship and during that year, they have participated in several deals.

I am now calling years 2000 -2010 in Zimbabwe the lost decade. Cultural values, business ethics and most importantly personal governance of the self have been diminished and minimized. Every nation in the world has got its barbarians waiting at the gate that it never allows to let in because they are deviants. During our lost decade, the barbarians were erroneously allowed in and they have taken over and redefined the character-istic of the Zimbabwe value system landscape we all used to be proud of. Choose not to subscribe to the ethos of the barbarians in your courtyard. Reclaim your space. Take back your power and fight hard to redefine your character so that it stands for trust, honor, credibility and integrity by following these three above-mentioned suggestions and watch the positive changes in your life.