The Stories of Our Lives: The Inspiring Success Stories of Six Men and Women from Africa Through Europe and America

By Morrison A. Muleri PhD

Morrison Muleri was born in 1968 in Lumakanda, Lugari District of Western Kenya.

He holds a B.Com. and MBA degrees from the University of Nairobi in Kenya, postgraduate certificate in Public Financial Management from Harvard University in the USA, and a PhD in development effectiveness from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. He is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants of England and Wales (FCCA) and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Management Consultants.

Morrison has worked for several reputable employers in Africa, Europe, and the USA. He currently works for the World Bank in Washington DC, as a Board Operations Officer. He has travelled widely to over 30 countries and met leaders in different spheres.

He lives in Olney, in Maryland with his wife and their four sons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477155554

Morrison A. Muleri PhD

Morrison Muleri was born in 1968 in Lumakanda, Lugari District of Western Kenya. He holds a B.Com. and MBA degrees from the University of Nairobi in Kenya, postgraduate certifi cate in Public Financial Management from Harvard University in the USA, and a PhD in development effectiveness from Sheffi eld Hallam University in the UK. He is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certifi ed Accountants of England and Wales (FCCA) and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Management Consultants. Morrison has worked for several reputable employers in Africa, Europe, and the USA. He currently works for the World Bank in Washington DC, as a Board Operations Offi cer. He has travelled widely to over 30 countries and met leaders in different spheres. He lives in Olney, in Maryland with his wife and their four sons.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Morrison A. Muleri, FCCA, PhD.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012914163

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4771-5554-7

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4771-5553-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4771-5555-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

119683

DEDICATION

To all those who sacrificed in one way or another, however much

or little, to give us a better chance to succeed in life:

our families, friends, colleagues, and teachers.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Morrison A. Muleri, Mba, Fcca, Phd

Chapter 2 Major. Moses A. Mulehi (Rtd)

Chapter 3 Angela M. Lusigi, Msc, Phd

Chapter 4 Bina M. W. Kakusa, Msc, Fcca, Cpa-Us

Chapter 5 Linda Bonsu-Liwewe, Mba, Fcca

Chapter 6 Pamela Steele, Mba, Mcips

Epilogue

Acronyms

Endnotes

PREFACE

WHENEVER I SPEAK to youngsters, be it in my home country of Kenya or in my countries of residence (the UK and the USA) or anywhere else, they always ask different versions of two questions. How different was your early life from ours? How did you make it from such a poor rural background to where you are? My responses usually leave them awestruck. Yet my story is not a unique one.

There are many people who, like me, and some more than me, have risen from humble beginnings in very poor countries to compete shoulder to shoulder in education, employment, training, and exposure with the best there is in the world. I bring you six stories of such people in this book. They are a few representatives of many. By no means do we imply that those featured here are the best examples there are, but their stories give you a good flavor.

I conceived the idea to write this book sometime in 2007, after I joined the World Bank. I am an avid reader of biographies and felt I could emulate my heroes by eventually writing my own memoir. However, I realized that I had not yet experienced life long enough or made enough contribution to write a comprehensive memoir. So after consulting some friends, I decided to publish a collection of a few carefully selected short individual stories. The idea was to share those experiences while also encouraging the authors to seriously think about publishing their own memoirs at some point. I selected and invited fifteen potential authors. Ten showed great enthusiasm. Eight acted on their enthusiasm and drafted their short stories. I selected five and my own to appear in this book. The selection process was quite a difficult task owing to the high quality of all the stories. I only managed to make the selection based on a carefully prepared list of considerations. We went through several iterations to improve the selected stories to reach this point.

I am delighted that you have picked up the final product of this group effort, and I hope you will make the best use of it. This book is not fiction. It is not a book about super human beings. It is not a book about some very rich men and women. It is a book about a few ordinary human beings, like you.

In the pages that follow, you will find truly inspiring stories of people you can either relate to or look up to. They are stories of ordinary men and women who have overcome whatever odds that were stacked against them to make the best of their situations. These are stories that can help you to believe, once again, in the traditional but proven values of sheer determination, hard work, and perseverance. As they say, success lies in your state of mind: that whatever you can conceive and believe in, you can achieve. They call it the CBA concept that Napoleon Hill bequeathed the world. It encourages you to develop a dream and to wake up so as to work toward its achievement. This book will show you how six people made CBA work for them.

The people featured in this book have some common attributes, which will be explored further in the epilogue. These stories are about three men and three women, born in poor African Commonwealth countries (Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia). What they share is a commitment to making it in life. The authors range in ages from thirty-seven years to sixty-eight years, and all of them have had opportunities to study or work in Africa, Europe, and the USA¹. They have all invested substantially in education.

If success is defined as the ability to exploit one’s potential to his/her satisfaction and to derive a comfortable living from it, then these are all successful professionals. They all work in the development sector but represent different professions. You will get insights into the making of a development governance specialist, a military pilot cum purchasing manager, a rural development specialist, resources management specialists, and a logistics and supply specialist. They have all studied and trained hard to become experts in their jobs. They hold or previously held responsible jobs. They have travelled much across the world. They have developed reliable support networks. They have invested. They have principles and ideals they hold dear.

Another common attribute the people behind the stories in this book share is decency. No one can accuse them of theft, corruption, hot temper, conning, or even refusal to meet their obligations or settle their debts². They have played by the rules and worked their ways up. The stories will no doubt convince you that there is an honest way to succeed in life. It is not imperative to have a godfather to succeed. It is not a must to steal to succeed. You do not have to pull others down to succeed. You do not need to inherit your parents’ material wealth to succeed. If you can conceive what success is for you, believe in yourself, and set out to work hard for it, you can succeed in an honest way.

The stories tell of professionals who have worked for the Ashanti Goldfields, Kenya Shell, Coca-Cola, DFID, IFAD, FAO, Kenya Air Force, Malawi College of Accountancy, Oilcom, Oxfam GB, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Sierra Club, the UN (UNDP, UNEP, UNFPA, and UNICEF), and the World Bank, among others.

The aim of this book is not to make money. In fact, all the authors wrote their stories free for the poor youngsters growing up in the developing world and in the inner cities in the West. They aspired to have this book reach them free of charge. The authors could have used their most valuable time for pecuniary gain. They decided the poor youngsters in the South and in the inner cities in the North, who often lack mentors and adequate guidance, are a better investment. We put in our own time and money to have this book printed and made available to you. Take full advantage of this opportunity.

In return, we all just ask one thing of you: to read this book very carefully, take the lessons therein to heart, and to believe in yourself. Let the stories remind you that you are not the first one to encounter hardships; others have been through them and still succeeded. If these six people made it in their circumstances, then you have no reason to fail. Follow in their footsteps as much as possible, or just learn from their experiences. Always remember that your parents taught you very early on to get up whenever you stumble and fall.

We pray that The Stories of Our Lives will salvage some lives from hopelessness. If the book can change and energize even a single youngster who is losing the race to success to change direction, then our investment will be worthwhile.

I now invite you to meet the authors of these inspiring stories.

Morrison A. Muleri, MBA, FCCA, PhD

MM%20PP%20D400.jpeg

Dr. Morrison Muleri currently works for the World Bank in Washington,

DC, as a board operations officer. He has travelled extensively for work to over thirty different countries in Africa, North America, East and Southern Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He owns property in the USA, Nairobi, Lumakanda, and Kitale. He lives in Olney in Maryland, USA, with his wife and their four sons.

Morrison was born in Lumakanda in Lugari District of Western Kenya in 1968.

He attended Lumakanda DEB, Ikobero and Kiragilu Primary School from where he passed CPE very well in 1981. His record is yet to be surpassed. He attained a first division in KCE at Kakamega High School in 1985 and attained seventeen points in KACE at Kabarak High School in 1987. He obtained bachelor of commerce (B.Com.) and master of business administration (MBA) degrees from the University of Nairobi in 1991 and 1999 respectively. He completed the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants of England and Wales (ACCA) studies at Strathmore College in 2000. He joined Harvard University in the USA in 2006 and achieved a postgraduate certificate in public financial management. He fulfilled a doctoral research program at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK and was awarded PhD in 2008.

Morrison has held progressive career positions in Kenya, the UK, and the USA. After working for Mbaya & Associates Auditors and Kisii Coca-Cola Bottlers, he joined ETC East Africa Consultants BV in 1993 and rose to the position of deputy director. He then joined Oxfam GB in 1998 as the regional financial coordinator for the thirteen countries that form the Horn, East and Central Africa (HECA) Region. He was later promoted to Oxfam Headquarters in Oxford in the UK and made the regional financial adviser to over eighteen countries in East Asia, South Asia, and Southern Africa regions.

In 2004, he was recruited by the Commonwealth Secretariat in Westminster, London, as the corporate management accountant. He later joined the World Bank in Washington, DC, in 2006 initially as a resources management officer in the corporate budget department. He was appointed a board operations officer in the corporate secretariat unit in early 2011. In this position, Morrison works at corporate level as an interlocutor between staff and senior management of the World Bank on one hand, and the bank’s executive directors on the other, to help facilitate decisions and policy making at the World Bank.

His story is the first one in this book and starts on page 27.

Major. Moses A. Mulehi (Rtd)

Book%20pp%20Mulehi.jpeg

Maj. Moses Mulehi is currently a businessman in Nairobi, Kenya. He retired in 1992 from Kenya Shell Ltd. where he was the purchasing and office services manager. Before then, he had a distinguished career as a pilot in the Kenya Air Force (KAF), where he held the rank of a major when he voluntarily retired in 1980 to join Kenya Shell. He received specialized training in Kenya, the UK, and the USA. Moses settled his otherwise migrant parents in Matunda in 1971. He owns property in Nairobi, Eldoret, and Kitale. He mainly lives in Nairobi with his younger children.

Moses was born in 1943 in Ikobero in Sabatia District of Western Kenya and spent his early years in Hamisi District.

Moses attended Museywa Primary and Intermediate School from where he passed Kenya African Preliminary Examination (KAPE) in 1958. He then joined Friends School-Kamusinga where, due to his very poor background, he spent most holidays at