- When Winnie Wadera lost her job, she hid the painful truth from her visiting mother, spending her days walking nowhere to avoid difficult questions
- With bills piling up and food running low, she survived on faith, determination and a plan to monetise her skills.
- All seemed hopeless until a chapati business helped her discover she could thrive without the job she once thought she couldn’t live without
For many people, losing a job is more than a financial setback; it is an emotional battle filled with uncertainty, fear and difficult decisions.
Source: Facebook
For Winnie Wadera, the experience was so overwhelming that she spent days pretending to go to work while secretly struggling to figure out her next move.
Wadera recounted how her world changed after receiving an email from her employer just before Christmas informing her to prepare for a layoff in the coming year.
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The news immediately robbed her of any festive joy. Although she initially hoped the message was a mistake, her fears were confirmed in January when the company officially terminated her employment.
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As the family’s breadwinner, the prospect of losing her income weighed heavily on her shoulders. Rent, bills and family responsibilities suddenly became a source of anxiety.
Determined not to alarm her mother, who was unaware of her situation, Wadera kept the news to herself. However, one night, an electricity token alert nearly exposed her struggles.
She recalled sweating with worry as the token beeped loudly in the middle of the night while her mother slept.
“I called on God and said, ‘Father, please, I don’t want to start explaining why my token is beeping,'” she said.
Fortunately, her mother slept through the alarm, allowing Wadera time to find a solution. By the following morning, she had managed to secure money to sort out the electricity issue.
The challenges did not end there. At lunchtime, she realised she had no food to prepare for her guest: her own mother.
In desperation, she considered borrowing vegetables from a nearby kiosk but worried people would suspect she was facing financial difficulties.
She then approached a woman who sold chicken parts, hoping to get some on credit. The walk to the seller’s house, she said, was one of the hardest moments of her life.
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“I had never imagined I would be walking somewhere to borrow chicken parts,” she admitted.
When the cost proved too high, she abandoned the idea and remembered that her mother had brought a live hen as a gift.
She quickly prepared it for supper and later jokingly told her mother she had been craving traditional chicken.
To avoid questions about why she was no longer working, Wadera left the house every morning and spent hours sitting under trees, at boda boda stages or walking aimlessly before returning home later in the day.
“It wasn’t because I was faking life. I was avoiding stressful questions whose answers I didn’t have,” she explained.
The experience taught her an important lesson about empathy and the need to give struggling people space instead of overwhelming them with questions.
Despite her prayers, Wadera did not receive a miracle in the form of money. Instead, she received what she describes as something even more valuable: a plan.
She began listing her strengths and skills and decided to monetise them. Whether it was making chapatis or offering other services, she resolved that every skill she possessed would become a source of income.
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Within six months, the strategy transformed her finances.
According to Wadera, she eventually reached a point where she no longer missed her former corporate job and had no desire to return to it.
Today, she encourages people facing unemployment not to be ashamed of taking any honest job that can help them survive.
“Write down your strengths and monetise them,” she advised. “No shame, no fear, no worrying about what people will say. Whatever you find to do, do it.”
Source: NgGossips
