After Captain Koki Mutungi of Kenya Airways went to her high school to give a talk, all the girls she knew wanted to be pilots. "
There was no other dream because no one else spoke to us," says Rose Muturi. "I don't remember anything else I wanted to be." She didn't become a pilot.
Instead, she studied statistics and computer science at JKUAT, a diploma in information technology and an Executive MBA at Strathmore Business School before getting into financial services. (StanChart, Chase Bank, Tala, Housing Finance).
Now she runs Branch International as the managing director, of East Africa.
Where did you grow up?
Ayany in Kibera. I had a fairly uneventful childhood, grew up around many communities because it was very cosmopolitan.
In school, we mostly spoke Kiswahili and pockets of English. Before that was my mother tongue at home. So, a very stable childhood.
What do you want for yourself in the future?
I want to sit on a hammock on my farm in Diani (chuckles). We have a farm in Diani where we do fruit farming. So I would love to just spend time with our seven dogs, and see, what else can these dogs do after training.
I don't intend to do things that stress you out, where you're thinking about, oh, my goodness, balance sheet and core capital and so on. That's in the future.
Right now, I can do it and I'm excited about it but in the future, I just want to do fruit farming. We grow mangoes, dragon fruits, apples, pawpaw, there are quite a few.
Are you guys farming because you love it or it's just a business?
So my husband loves, loves, farming. He's the type that knows the scientific names of plants. I've learned a lot from him. If you look at our YouTube feed, you'll see a lot of YouTube farming hacks.
That's what we watch a lot. When you start seeing the crops coming out, or the fruits, you're like, hmm, it's not that bad. It's fun. So I've become more and more interested in farming because of him.
What's with the seven dogs?
I used to be very afraid of dogs when I was young. When I was younger a dog chased me. Knowing what I know now, maybe the dog just wanted to play but I thought it was chasing me so I was running for my life.
Since then I was like dogs, no way. Then during Covid, a neighbour of ours who kept dogs got a litter of puppies and one of them was so sickly, about to die. So we asked him to sell it to us.
That dog lived and it taught us so much. It taught us something new each morning. Dogs will give you that. They're so excited to see you every morning and every evening. So from there, we now started seeing it's easy to train them.
We then got a second dog and a third and we just went crazy, getting out of control…like really out of control, just getting many dogs. We have seven now. We have a German Shepherd, Boerboel, Great Dane, Rottweiler and then we have three Kenyan Shepherds.
Kenyan shepherds. Ha! What's your dog and why?
The Boerboel. Because it's so endeared to me. I think maybe because when it was so tiny, I'm the only one who was around.
So when all the others are doing whatever it is, this one would go with me wherever I went. And it's so big. So people are scared of it, but secretly it's such a docile creature. I like it.
What have you learned about yourself through dogs?
Dogs wake up and they go about their day. They don't even care how they look. They don't say, 'Oh, am I fat today?'
They just don't care. They are dogs. They feed off your emotions if you're feeling sad or you're feeling excited. Dogs move on. 'So you were not happy with me today because I chewed your shoes.'
Tomorrow they wake up, they're like, 'Hey, can we play? Can we hang out? Are we still friends?' Dogs don't hang onto things. I've learned from dogs not to take things seriously.
Sometimes I ask myself, is it worth getting super angry or is it worth getting stressed out about a particular issue? One year or six months from now, will this matter? No, it won't. And you move on.
If you were to look back at your life holistically, are there certain parts that you'd want to tweak or just skip altogether?
(Pause) I wish I was bolder at the beginning. Right now I'm the kind of person who if people are queuing, I will go right to the front of another queue and ask whatever I need to ask, let them send me back.
I don't have the shame of being told, aah wewe rudi huko nyuma (you go back there). When I was younger I would queue in the wrong queue, afraid to ask if it was the right queue.
Now I challenge the status quo because I don't have shame. What's the worst that can happen? On the personal front? I went through some personal things, which I wish I didn't go through, but that was during the post-election violence.
But it also taught me not to be materialistic because whatever you have today can be replaced. And that made a big difference. So I'm not attached to material things at all.
Are you able to talk about that or is it too personal?
Well, it was traumatising. A crowd of people came to our house carrying stones, guns, and machetes and asked us to leave.
Some of these people were our neighbours, people we knew. I recall us hiding in a neighbour's house. They took everything from our house. We sneaked out at dawn and walked away from the only home, the only life we had known.
Rose Muturi is the managing director, East Africa of Branch International. PHOTO | POOL
I remember I only had my national ID in my pocket. Everyone just walked away, literally with nothing and so we had to start from scratch. So that was a very interesting period because although we lost everything people came through, friends and neighbours and colleagues at work, and we got a lot of help.
In the end, I was like, wow, all those things that you used to hang on to, didn't matter really. The good thing is we came out with our lives. But it was a very scary night, one of the longest nights ever.
How do you think that affected you?
I don't like loud noises at all! I also don't like crowds of people running, whether it's for fun or not. I can take part in marathons but when I get to the stadium, I'm like, hm, now this is a bit loud. It makes me nervous.
How did all that affect your parents?
It did, especially my dad because he felt he had worked so hard all those years for everything to disappear in one night.
Now if you tell him, "Dad, let's do something, something long-term" he won't be too interested. I think in his mind he's like, for what, why should I spend my energy doing this when I did this before close to 30 years and lost everything? I think it affected him more than it did my mom.
Do you have children?
I'm in a blended family — so two teenagers from my husband. When you are around teenagers you realise that you are boring (chuckle). You never see them even though they are in the house.
You wonder, is it that our conversations are not exciting? When we say, hey, let's go hang out, maybe it's dinner or it is just whatever family outing, they'll get excited but they get bored very quickly.
So we've learned to live with it. I guess we were also the same when we were teenagers. We just wanted to be in our own space.
What's probably the scariest thing you've done?
Let's see (pause). I guess getting into the marriage that I'm in now. I had many questions, and so many blind spots, because this was someone who already had a family.
I took a gamble because I didn't know how it would work. I had to deal with three sets of family — his family, the ex's family, and now my family. It was a good decision, but that scared me for some time.
What were the lessons there?
I've learned that everyone has their own life to lead. You don't owe anyone any explanations or excuses, at least if you're responsible for your actions.
When do you find yourself to be vulnerable?
I can say I can be super vulnerable when if I'm answering correctly when I'm with my husband because he knows me 100 percent.
He can even predict what I'm going to do or say. We've been together since 2011 but we got married in 2016. What have I learnt about marriage?
Respect is more useful in marriage than love. Sure, you love each other but you have to respect each other. I would say we have both. We run businesses together, we share ideas.
What's the toughest question you're asking yourself around this time of your life?
So, what will people remember and does it matter? Did I make an impact? That bothers me quite a bit because I would want to be someone who made a difference. I want to enrich lives. I want to matter when all has been said and done. I think about that a lot now.
Is there anything you're trying to unlearn?
Yeah, taking myself too seriously. That one I would like to unlearn because sometimes I will push myself, I'm like, this must work and maybe it's not the end of the world. So I need to relax a bit.
What's your extravagance now?
Travelling. We love it, we enjoy it, we purpose to do it. I would rather spend money travelling than buy something I'm keeping for the future.
