Josephine's story: Bouncing back

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Josephine is a single mother of four in Kibera, the sprawling slum in Nairobi, Kenya. At the beginning of the pandemic she was working as a cook, but soon, like many Kibera residents, lost her job, and when the BBC's Ed Butler spoke to her a year ago her situation was dire. In this final episode in the series, Josephine looks to the future, and how she might retrain herself to find new ways to put food on the table. We’ll also hear from Kibera community organiser Kennedy Odede, how Josephine’s is just one of thousands of stories in the township. Dr John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, tells us of his concerns about East Africa’s ability to recover from the virus, given the unequal rollout of vaccines. But Kennedy Odede says we should not underestimate the resilience of Kibera residents.

Producer: Frey Lindsay.

Special thanks to Henix Obuchunju of Pamoja FM in Nairobi.

(Picture: Josephine and her family. Picture credit: Josephine Muchilwa)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service.
0:06.8	We're back with you for the fourth and final installment of a Kenyan woman's struggle through one year of pandemic.
0:15.2	Josephine's story.
0:24.0	Today I received eight customers.
0:29.5	So for today I got a profit of 170 shillings.
0:31.1	Josephine Mucilba.
0:35.4	Well, as we heard, she did manage to get a small business up on its feet during the pandemic in order to provide for her kids.
0:38.2	She was almost making it work, it seemed, until the government bulldozers arrived.
0:43.8	They just came very early in the morning and they demolished everything.
0:49.7	That they really cried.
0:51.3	No business and now no income.
0:54.7	How will Josephine manage?
0:56.6	Episode 4 Bouncing Back.
1:06.6	They just came very early in the morning when people were still sleeping and they broke everything down.
1:14.7	Now they just wake up that day and demolished everything.
1:19.4	All the money that I had I had invested in that course, but now everything was down.
1:25.4	Josephine's heart-rending struggles came to a head in last week's program
1:29.9	after the government demolition teams flattened the rented booth
1:33.7	that she'd be using to sell vegetables.
1:36.4	Without warning, she says,
1:38.1	her stock and livelihood were swept away,
1:41.1	along with that timber-gray shack she'd been using.
	...

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