The Lioness Within

Lessons in Courage, Resilience and Leadership

Future

“Defeat,” I said, out loud, to myself. I kicked the stone on the dusty tan path, sending up wisps of dust on the clay-like sand, as I aimlessly walked on. The dust arose, slowly, and fell back down almost with a smack. Gravity is always unforgiving. “Like me,” I thought, “the dust is trying to rise up, but gravity is adamant on keeping me and this dust down.” The burden of my school bag dug in, making the sweat running down my shirt cling even harder to the small of my back. The brutal, tropical afternoon sun beat on my nose and ears. With each breath, my nostrils singed with the powerful stench of burned motor oil emanating from the dala dala minibuses parked at the makeshift bus station to my left on Morogoro Road. On my right, I eyed the sugarcane juice stand at the corner of Morogoro Road and Libya Street. I could taste the tangy sweetness of the juice on the back of my throat. I longed for a refreshing chug of that juice, but I didn’t have a single shilling in my pocket. I simply couldn’t afford the luxury. I had to hustle, to get home. There was homework to be done before a busy evening of work ahead. I could feel the social pressure in my head. “If you don’t have First Division grades in Form Four, you won't be anything in life.” After rushing through as much homework as I could, I had to lug my VHS camcorder over to the wedding hall on Kisutu Street. Some kind soul was going to trust a recording of their wedding memories to a sixteen-year old me. When, in a few days, I’d rudimentarily edited the recording and delivered it to them, I’d get some money that my family much needed. Yet, I aimlessly, slowly trudged home, defeated. There seemed to be no road, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, that led to my dream of going to college in the United States. That was my defeat. We couldn’t afford it. The future, that my road led to, was to be the “camera-wallah.” The guy that aunties would call over to ensure that a shot of themselves would make it into the bride and groom’s wedding memories. The proof that these aunties attended that very wedding wearing their best outfits and bulky jewelry. 

Twenty years prior, a young woman named Jyoti, walked along the side of the “talav” in Mandvi, India. As she trudged back from her high school, she sidestepped the freshly dropped cow pats along the side of this man-made pond. Her face beset with heavy glasses to correct her short-sightedness made an interesting contrast against her pig-tails bound with black ribbons. She looked, at the same time, both mature and young. She was walking home to an afternoon of chores, then homework in the light of a dimly lit oil lantern. Her road led to a more certain future. Like many other girls her age, she would soon be married. Suitor propositions were slowly dripping in through matchmakers. But, Jyoti had four other sisters and two brothers. So, there was a pecking order in marriages, and she was fifth in the line of seven. In those days, the marriage of a girl represented a lifting of a weight to an Indian family, it was important to marry girls “off” at the right age. Jyoti’s parents weren’t particularly well-to-do, so investing in a further education that led to a career for Jyoti was never an option. She’d have to be married by the age of seventeen to someone, somewhere. She’d have to be a devoted wife, respectful daughter-in-law and raise a few kids. The outfits worn by her aunties at the wedding would be simpler, the jewelry less flashy and the camera-man would only take still black-and-white pictures. That was her future.

Terror

I kissed the ice-cold flesh of his right cheek, as he lay there on a metal morgue tray. His lifeless body had been washed, but I could smell the death, a strange mix of rot and sandalwood. He had been dressed in a new light blue short-sleeved buttoned shirt and tan pants. “It’s time to go,” someone said, behind my back, causing my tears to flow more freely. “Raam, bolo bhai, Raam” chanted two other voices, invoking the name of the Lord, and signaling the beginning of the final journey about to take place. This was the last kiss I would give him, ever. The painful sting knowing that fact caused me to flinch. I looked up urgently at Jyoti, who was sitting sobbing, in a white saree signifying widowhood, on the other side of my dead father. Somewhere, deep inside, I refused to believe that this body was my father’s. How could he be gone so suddenly? My mother, Jyoti, was three months pregnant. My sister, seated on the floor next to my mother at this wretched going-away event, was only seven. And earlier, someone had whispered in my ear that I had to have courage, because I was now going to be head-of-household. Head-of-household, at age twelve? Surely, they were being ridiculous.

Jyoti looked back at me, we stared at each other not knowing what to do. Men started crowding around the metal tray, lifting it up. Someone gently pulled me aside as my wails got louder. “You have to be strong, we have to take him.” On the other side, I saw a woman help Jyoti up to standing position. We all followed his body as they carried him to the hearse. Time moved so slowly, that each step to the hearse felt like a year. As they shut the rear door of the hearse, I clung on to Jyoti. “I can’t do this,” I said. “Neither can I,” she said, “but it’s your responsibility to cremate him, you’re his son. Be strong. You’re a brave child.” There wasn’t a courageous bone to be found anywhere in my body. I let go of her and half-stumbled into the front seat of the hearse, next to the driver. I was terrified. Terrified of my father’s body that I could see over my left shoulder. Terrified that he was gone. Terrified of the uncertainty he had left behind. And terrified that I was about to go through the ceremony of consigning him to flames. After which, he would be forever, forever gone.

Courage

Jyoti looked at me firmly, her eyes full of determination. “I will take over his business,” she said. The day after I had cremated my father, we sat across from each other, both hurting tremendously, but desperately searching for what to do next because we had to survive. Through tears, I recall questioning her, “But, you are a woman?” I was keenly aware that there was an order to our society. Men worked, or owned companies, and provided for their families. Women were mostly homemakers. Some women worked for a living, but it was uncommon. Some people considered working women scandalous. Widows were expected to depend on inheritance or others for their well-being. Unfortunately, for Jyoti and I, my father had passed too soon to leave us an inheritance. Jyoti, being incredibly smart and observant, had watched closely as my father had led his home improvement business over the thirteen years of her marriage. She helped my father, mostly at night, writing up work estimates for his clients, typing invoices and running payroll for his consistent crew of five craftsmen and other temporary resources he hired as needed. She decided that her knowledge would be enough to get the business going again. She’d face into the man’s world of home improvement, and provide our family the same kind of living we’d enjoyed with my father. She sat with my father’s crew of craftsmen and asked for their support. She explained to the crew that she would do her best to keep the business going, but they’d have to help teach her the business. Out of loyalty to my father and to Jyoti, they all committed to staying, helping, and teaching Jyoti the ropes. About a week after we had cremated my father, Jyoti and her crew were out completing my father’s unfinished projects.

At seven months pregnant, Jyoti stood on the top rung of a ladder surveying a roof replacement of a one-storey bungalow that her crew had just completed. I stood at the bottom, holding the ladder for dear-life. My father had been killed by a fall from a few storeys high while surveying some work. I remember feeling that same terror of losing my father all over again. No amount of imploring was going to bring Jyoti back down to ground-level that day. She was the chief executive of her enterprise, ultra-conscious of her status as a woman competing in a man’s world, and she would survey the work herself, come what may. Her reputation, the business’s success, everything really, depended on the success of each and every job she took on. I imagined a lioness within Jyoti had been uncaged. She was going to protect her cubs, hunt to feed them and maul any vicious creature that she viewed as a threat. Whispers in the community around Jyoti ranged from highly supportive to chauvinistically repressive. Someone once caught me on the street on my way back from school to question the appropriateness of my pregnant mother running a business she had no business running. Widows, after all, were to be relegated to the farthest back corner of society.

Resilience

The man’s world won. Jyoti was sidelined by clients who wouldn’t trust a woman with home improvements, competitors who underpriced her for spite and men who spoke ill of her. The closure of my father’s and now her business brought us to our knees. But, Jyoti wasn’t giving up. For fun, years earlier after coming to Tanzania post-marriage, Jyoti had taken a certification course in hair-dressing and aesthetics. So, she decided that she was going to provide those services to women at home. In today’s world, we’d say: she decided to go in a different direction. She cobbled together enough money for a supply kit and started calling people she knew and her home-service beauty business took-off overnight. But earnings were meager, and barely enough to keep us afloat. Jyoti had to balance raising my baby brother with her job. My sister and I could no longer afford to attend the private school we were at. My dream of being able to go to college in the United States became a receding ocean tide and it felt like I was going to be consumed in the quicksand the tide left behind. I started kicking stones as I walked back from the local public school that I now had to attend. The best anyone did after attending this school, was go manage their family business, go to a local vocational school or the University of Dar Es Salaam, none of which were my calling. I had always dreamed of my future in the United States.

I recall that on one particularly difficult day, at age fifteen, I was missing my father and having a crisis about non-existent future opportunities. Jyoti made me sit down, sat next to me, put her arms around my shoulders and said, “I know you think that all doors are closed for you. Let me tell you that where some doors close, others will open. You just don’t know it yet. And, if you need those other doors to be forced open, I will force them to open.” Jyoti was 4 feet, 10 inches in height, but in that moment, to me, she became my giant. She was evolving into a force to be reckoned with. She made it clear that she had no plans of giving up, and I better hang on for the ride to come. 

Leadership

There are two places Jyoti forced doors open for me. First, a few days after she promised to force open doors, she negotiated a good deal to buy me a used VHS camcorder. This set me on a path to earn some supplementary income, for our family, to help make ends meet. As people in the community saw me filming weddings, they began to admire me for my youth, dedicated work ethic and well-filmed videos. More business came my way, which meant more school weeknights and weekends of filming and even later nights of editing and overlaying soundtracks. Jyoti was always by my side, holding the flood light for every shot that I filmed, at every wedding, after doing the bride’s make-up and hair earlier in the day. We worked hard, she worked harder than me. We fought together for our family’s survival.

Second, when I was seventeen, she knocked on the door of an influential businessman in Dar Es Salaam. This gentleman had sponsored an International Baccalaureate (IB) education, at our local International School, for other students in need. She requested this gentleman to consider my dreams of a foreign higher education, which were only going to be possible with an IB diploma. The International School was the only institution in Dar Es Salaam where this diploma was offered. This gentleman then met with me and offered to pay for my two-year IB education with a promise that I should pay his kindness forward. During my meeting with him, I recall being desperate, almost pleading for him to support my dreams. He calmed me down, gently saying, “I know Jyoti has instilled good values in you, I know you will work hard and you’ll succeed.” I knew, then, that I had become an extension of my mother’s brand.

Lessons

Jyoti has reinvented herself many times in her life. After successfully graduating IB, when I left Tanzania for college in the United States, Jyoti added “elementary school teacher” to her resumé. After seven years of teaching, she inaugurated her own salon, which she ran successfully for years. Of the numerous lessons I have learned from Jyoti, there is one that sticks with me in every moment of my professional life. Courage, Resilience and Leadership are interconnected.

Jyoti’s courage in being vulnerable with her home improvement crew helped her run that business far longer than her own expectations. Years later, Jyoti shared with me that she knew from the beginning that she was more than likely going to fail, but she resolved early that if she failed, she’d be ready to go kick open some other doors. Being courageous in pursuing different professional roles wasn’t just a matter of our family’s survival, she had to show the world that she would persevere. A team, a family, must see their leader’s vulnerability in adversity, so that they recognize that vulnerability is okay. All of us need to find courage to tackle challenges head on, and courage is born from vulnerability. With courage, a leader must openly demonstrate and display resilience so that her team may follow her example and never give up even in failure. Finally, a leader must force open new doors for their team, in the face of challenges, so that the entire team may flourish. 

Gratitude

Professionally, I have tried to emulate Jyoti’s humble leadership style, constantly striving to remove obstacles and open new doors for my teams. From Jyoti’s story, I know that none of us will individually succeed until all of us join forces to succeed together. So, I have to open doors for others, and in the process, I might open some doors for myself. 

I still have a lot to learn from Jyoti, and she teaches me lessons in courage and resilience everyday. I stand on the shoulders of a 4 foot, 10 inch giant. My journey in life would look very different without Jyoti’s grit, perseverance and strong belief that, where one door closes, another opens … and sometimes you have to force it to open. I’d still be defeated and kicking stones on a dirt path in Dar Es Salaam. 

Thank you, Mom, for having the courage to stand up for all of us when Dad passed. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for opening doors. Thank you for being by my side, holding up the flood light next to me in a way that made the aunties’ jewelry at the weddings shine extra bright. And thank you for being there as I search for my inner lion.