I have had to pick up and restart my life from the ground up five times.
I’m talking about complete overhaul; stripping down my place of residence bare and morphing into Bob-the-Builder to refill holes and repaint walls, haggling with landlords over deposits, riding the wave of angst over finding a new home for my books because they’re entirely too heavy to lug across the world, the borderline existential crisis of trying to justify moving with those ultra thick snow boots that were so delectably perfect for trudging to the lab during a snow storm, to a place where 14°C is the coldest it will ever get.
And then there’s the unseen parts, the devastating parts of picking up and restarting. The breakups: with friends, with lovers, with coworkers, with mentors, with restaurants, with the barista at your favourite coffee shop who winks at you and starts on your order the moment you walk in because he knows how much of a creature of habit you are. Even those you have to forget: your habits, your routines, your comforts.
Five times may not seem like many (it all fits on one hand after all). But if you exclude the first half of my life as a dependent, the rest averages out to a complete overhaul every three or so years. Do you hear the shudder in my voice? If it’s not clear at this point, I abhor change.
My last move was the most difficult. It came with a surfeit of change that I was poorly prepared for, especially as a new mother. I was forced to make choices that unbelievably, still, are disproportionately borne by women. I gave up a structure of living that had taken me several years post-PhD to build: an apartment I loved, the freedom to travel on a whim, a rather forgiving bank account for my indulgences.
I arrived in Nairobi excited first, to eat all my favourite foods and second, to reconnect with friends and family, yet silently, terrified of what the move meant this time. I was encumbered with postpartum anxiety and a reluctance to use the medication my beloved doctor had insisted I carry, a tangible reminder of the life I had once again severed.
Every step I took in those first few months back felt like a misstep. I second-guessed myself in a manner very unlike me.
In my 20s, moving hurt, but it also felt like a never-ending adventure. It allowed me to explore the parts of myself that I felt the world had seized. When I lived in Kilifi, I swam across the creek often. By myself, at odd times of the day, unafraid of what lurked in the waters beneath, unbothered by how it looked to the curious onlookers in a small conservative town on the Kenyan coast. It rekindled a connection to 8-year-old me, swimming 40 laps with my mom and my sister, training physically and mentally for an abstraction of a future of preparedness and discipline.
But now in my 30s, whilst more educated (and importantly, more knowledgeable), more financially secure, more mature, I find myself more fearful of what lurks in the waters beneath, more bothered by how things look to curious onlookers.
At first I hit the job circuit fervently, applying to roles that offered a return to familiarity in terms of expertise and compensation. I was qualified, but the work felt small. When I set up my first doctor’s appointment with a renowned Nairobi OBGYN, I was surprised at how incensed I was by the experience. I felt dismissed and spoken at (not to), as though I had no understanding of my own body, despite being, objectively, a more informed patient than most. When I browsed the shelves in the women's health sections of popular wellness stores, I found them barren of imagination; products imported wholesale from other markets, repackaged sameness, an absence of innovation that had somehow become acceptable.
When I began courting the idea of building something different, I was asked the hard questions: Show us the data.
Is women's health truly a pain point?
How do you prove product-market fit in such a vast category?
And of course, would women in Africa buy, defying venture models that assume we have little purchasing power?
These were not insults. They were challenges.
So I did what I have always done. I researched. I surveyed. I listened.
I spoke to women in Nairobi; across ages, professions, incomes. The pattern was not dramatic. It was something quieter and more damning: many felt dissatisfied but did not know there is a better way.
They did not know that products could be designed for them rather than adapted from elsewhere. They did not know that feeling unseen in healthcare was a structural failing.
At the same time, I observed behaviour. Kenyan women are already paying for prestige beauty products. For imported supplements and niche beverages. There is a palpable shift towards self-care, wellness and conscious consumerism. The question shouldn't focus on purchasing power. It is a matter of value proposition and vision.
I still second-guess myself when people ask whether this could be a “real” business.
But each question forces me to sharpen the thesis, to refine the argument, to interrogate the assumptions that have quietly governed what is considered viable.
I am not waiting for the fear to disappear. I am letting the evidence outgrow it.
That Misala began with an uncertain move to Nairobi feels almost poetic. We are starting with conviction - messy, afraid, unsure - and building certainty as we go.
And as for me, I am still swimming. The current has not softened. The curious onlookers remain. The shadows grow beneath the surface. Misala is about building something prodigious, with calculated risk, not in the absence of fear but in full awareness of it.
And that is not something you do standing on the sidelines.