S2 EP016 | Joyride With Expatriates – Kenyan Culture Meets Canada

[00:00:00] INTRODUCTION

[00:00:00]

[00:00:05] Taty Fittipaldi: Hello and welcome to The Leadership Nest podcast. This is season two of the global leadership podcast that combines stories, knowledge and science to soar the leadership in you. I’m your host Taty Fittipaldi. During this season, we invited 20 different expatriates from around the world to share their stories, their learning journeys, and their tips to make you a better leader and an inspired person. You can also watch the live interviews on our YouTube channel! Search for Coaching Expatriates® channel, then select the playlist called Joyride With Expatriates.

[00:00:43] Taty Fittipaldi: In today’s episode, we’ll meet Fezi Mauncho, who originally comes from Kenya and has amazing stories to tell about living in Canada. Here is her story.

[00:00:57] JOYRIDE WITH AN EXPATRIATE

(This section’s transcript was AI-generated and may contain errors)

[00:00:57] Taty Fittipaldi: [00:01:00] Fezi, welcome to our show. I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:01:05] Fezi Mauncho: Thank you for having me. It’s wonderful to be on the show with you.

[00:01:08] Taty Fittipaldi: So how about we start by, you telling us where you come from and anything from your background.

[00:01:16] Fezi Mauncho: Okay, so I’m, I’m Kenyan by birth.

[00:01:20] Fezi Mauncho: I’m born of a Kenyan father. and a Swazi mother. My mother’s from Swaziland or Eswatini. And I was born and raised here in Kenya in East Africa until I was 12. And then after that, I lived in Southern Africa in Swaziland for about eight years or so. And then moved to Canada where I went to university and got married and became a Canadian citizen and had my kids and, you know, I, I started my adult life as a young Canadian, young African Canadian.

[00:01:54] Fezi Mauncho: Yeah. So that’s a little bit of my background. Uh, I actually think probably my [00:02:00] professional experience was established, uh, or founded in Canada and, and I got a very good Canadian foundation before I I travel back here now and I’ve been here for the last, uh, nine years, nine years or so. So you’re back in Kenya the past nine years.

[00:02:18] Fezi Mauncho: Yes, and I live in Nairobi, the capital city. So, so Fezi, tell me, so you, as you were a young, you know, a child, you were, you know, you lived some, I’m very curious because I only read it from the books, right? But I’m very curious to read your experience. as a kid, and maybe even your parents experiences about the apartheid.

[00:02:48] Fezi Mauncho: So can you tell us a little bit how that was for you and, you know, share some of your experiences. Okay, I can, I can talk a little bit about it from maybe my mother’s [00:03:00] perspective because my mother is from Swaziland, but many of the, all the Southern African countries that neighbor South Africa were very, very connected with South Africa.

[00:03:11] Fezi Mauncho: First of all, because Most of them would send miners to go and work in the, in the mines in South Africa, in the gold mines, in the diamond, diamond mines, and the different mines. And my grandfather and, uh, some of our family members worked in the mines in South Africa. And, uh, so, uh, there’s that connection through the, through the males in my family that would have worked in South Africa.

[00:03:36] Fezi Mauncho: But then my mother used to go to school in Lesotho, which is a tiny little country. Entirely surrounded by South Africa. So to go to a school that have to cross the whole country. And so when they were in Swaziland, they were blacks or the, sorry, they were African, whatever that means. But then when they were in South Africa, they were black people.

[00:03:55] Fezi Mauncho: And so then they would experience segregation. And apartheid means apartness. [00:04:00] The apartheid government did not want the races to mix. And so they would ride at the back of the train and they would be treated, you know, like black people, like, like, like, like second class citizens, so to speak. Many of the countries as well that surrounded South Africa, uh, were, had bases where the liberation movement would, would house their freedom fighters.

[00:04:23] Fezi Mauncho: So many, many, many of the people who are leaders in South Africa today would have grown up in Swaziland. In Mozambique and Zimbabwe and, um, actually the, you know, you might know in history, the president of Mozambique was shot down by the apartheid South African government because he was protecting the liberation fighters.

[00:04:43] Fezi Mauncho: So that that touches me a little bit, just through my, my education and my schooling because I went to school with some of the children. of the people who are in the liberation movement. But generally in terms of our life, we were very connected in solidarity. We were very connected because of being a neighbor.

[00:04:59] Fezi Mauncho: [00:05:00] So for example, you could, you could go shopping across the border to, uh, like my, my family, I lived with my uncle for a short amount of time in a, in a, in a border city called Bulembu on the Swazi side. And on the South African side, it was called Babaton. And instantly when you crossed the border, everything was very different.

[00:05:17] Fezi Mauncho: How so? How? Uh, yeah, you felt the separation, you felt the segregation. Yeah.

[00:05:23] Taty Fittipaldi: So you were clearly discriminated because of your color there when you crossed the border. I was wondering, how you felt when you cross and you saw that difference. How was that for you or for your mom more specifically, right?

[00:05:39] Fezi Mauncho: Oh, my mom, my mom used to talk about it and, you know, they used to talk about how, how degrading it was.

[00:05:45] Fezi Mauncho: They used to talk about how angry it used to make them feel. When I was a teenager, South Africa, apartheid was coming to an end. So there was a little bit, it was not as hostile, but it still was very, very tense wasn’t [00:06:00] necessarily the rainbow nation that it is today. Um, yeah, so I, I know through their memories, through the songs that they used to sing and through the stories that they used to tell about the oppression that they felt.

[00:06:15] Fezi Mauncho: And the anger that they felt because of what was happening in South Africa, but it’s, it would spill over to the, to the surrounding nations in that the surrounding nations would interact with them because South Africa was very powerful. Many people would go and work there. Many people were many, many people were born and raised in South Africa, including my mom as well.

[00:06:33] Fezi Mauncho: She was, she spent her early years in South Africa as well because of her father working there.

[00:06:38] Taty Fittipaldi: And so it’s interesting that you’re bringing up the messages about your mom. So I have a question about that. Offline you mentioned to me that your mom, your family, they raised you with songs of freedom, of equality. She taught you about every person being a spiritual being, uh, everyone is [00:07:00] equal. And, you see people from their inside, right. And not from their outside. So I was wondering, how important that was for you to become the person who you are and how different it would have been if she raised you with messages of anger and bitterness.

[00:07:19] Fezi Mauncho: Yeah, that’s a very good question. Um, And you, I think you asked about even music in, um, early on and yeah, you know, um,

[00:07:28] Fezi Mauncho: My mom and my dad raised me to be a powerful person. I think it was important. And I still think it is important to tell the story to tell our history so that a generation never repeats the atrocities from the past.

[00:07:41] Taty Fittipaldi: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:07:43] Fezi Mauncho: Yes. But it’s not to bring accusation and it’s not to bring condemnation because that’s not useful.

[00:07:49] Fezi Mauncho: My mom, uh, I actually was thinking about this. There’s a song that Miriam McKibbers sings. And the name of the song is called Fair Food. Fair Food was one of the [00:08:00] presidents of South Africa. And the song says, uh, Mr. Fair Food, be careful. Watch out. Here comes the black man. Now imagine the black man was in the place of oppression and supposedly second class, um, citizenship, but they never forget, forgot who they were.

[00:08:18] Fezi Mauncho: They were warriors. They were business people. They were tradespeople, artists. Educators. Did you know that one of the oldest mathematical artifact in the world comes from Swaziland? Tiny little Swaziland. It’s a measuring instrument. No, they were astronomers. That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And then all over Southern Africa, there are these They kind of remind me of a little bit of stone Stonehenge.

[00:08:41] Fezi Mauncho: They’re like calendars that are, that are, that are set in, in stone and very, very interesting. Um, archeological, uh, sites that, that speak of the fact that we were very highly educated, maybe not in the western education system, but we, we had knowledge systems, so my parents raised me telling me about [00:09:00] things like that.

[00:09:00] Fezi Mauncho: My, my father taught me that. Uh, the people around my, the people around where my family came from were, were artisans. They made, they made, uh, tools and utensils and all sorts of things out of metal. But then when, when, uh, when the colonialists came to Kenya, they also, the British government of the time, the empire was looking for a place to trade.

[00:09:26] Fezi Mauncho: And so they brought their goods. And when they found that we were working with metal, you know what they would do to prevent People from making, um, um, metal things that would cut your hands off. They’ll tell you you’re not allowed to make, to be an artisan from now on. So they’ll cut the hand off the main blacksmith or whoever, so that it as a warning to the other people.

[00:09:45] Fezi Mauncho: But did they fear the competition? That didn’t make me, I mean, made me angry, but then it said to me, Oh, look at us. They were thriving civilizations that were, they came and found here. So that taught us that we are powerful, that we can learn, we can, [00:10:00] as long as we have access to knowledge, we can, um, we can transcend anything that has been, has been given to us, uh, anything negative that has been, has been given to us.

[00:10:10] Fezi Mauncho: But it also spoke to me about how powerful we were. And some of those songs transmitted. Our identity, they taught us who we were as human beings. And, and one of the things you mentioned about spirituality, my mom and my dad and my, and my people are spiritual people. Uh, we are following in the, in the tradition of Christ.

[00:10:31] Fezi Mauncho: And I think Christ belongs to everyone. I don’t think Christ is exclusive to a certain person. And, and, and, and there’s a mindset of, of, of kingdom and kingship. That to me is very, very, um, reminiscent of my people and my, my particular, my father’s clan is a clan of kings. So some of the things that when I read the story, sometimes when I, when I read the stories and I, and I, and I read Jesus’s teachings, I see it’s about freedom.

[00:10:59] Fezi Mauncho: It’s [00:11:00] about power. It’s about you as a spiritual being connecting in the universe. And I don’t see how that is any different from my, um, my African spirituality. Maybe the Jews had, they could, they saw something that I think is in all humanity. And it just so happens that maybe they captured it in a book.

[00:11:18] Fezi Mauncho: And because of our history, whatever ours was has been erased and it’s only passed on orally. And coincidentally, a lot of the Old Testament is very, very similar to my culture. Very, very similar to my culture. And so, um, again, it was, We were taught who we were so that we understood the power of who we were and it will teach us that there’s nothing that we cannot do.

[00:11:45] Fezi Mauncho: And I think we talked about this offline about this whole idea of Ubuntu or Utu in Eastern Africa that says, I am because we are, and one of, we were talking about a greeting as we were, as we were getting to know each other, and the, and one of the [00:12:00] greetings, which is found in the, in the movie Avatar, the blue people like, I’m wearing blue today.

[00:12:05] Fezi Mauncho: It’s a coincidence. I forgot about that. And they say, when they see, when you, when when you encounter somebody, you look at them and you say, I see you. And that means I allow you to look in the windows of my soul and see the essence of who I am. And in Siswati or Zulu we say. Sawubona And the other person responds, Yebo which means, yes, I see you.

[00:12:24] Fezi Mauncho: Do you see me and vice versa? And then it, and then there are other ways that, you know, it continues, but there’s that essence of who I, you, you are a person and I’m a person. And one of the things we talked about a little bit, the last time was that fact that in, in, in, in our Bantu languages of which I belong, we don’t have, um, we don’t have he, she pronouns and all of that when, when, whether it’s a man or woman, they, uh, they.

[00:12:49] Fezi Mauncho: And I, and I was talking about spiritually, you are a person and so when I, when I’m referring to Tati, I’ll say, Oh, you know, Tati said this or Tati said that I [00:13:00] wouldn’t, we don’t say she said this, or she said that or he said this or he said that. The, the, the word that we use for the pronoun we use is a, they pronoun.

[00:13:09] Fezi Mauncho: And it also tends to be a pronoun of honor as well. Like honor is very, very critical in our culture. It is, we are, we are raised with honor as young people. And so whenever we encounter each other and for us, it doesn’t matter where you come from. What matters is that you are a righteous person and righteousness has to do with.

[00:13:28] Fezi Mauncho: Respect, honor, and see how you do see me and you can see back into me. So we, we treat each other like we would want to treat each other. I hope that makes sense.

[00:13:38] Taty Fittipaldi: Yes, no, it does. And you know, it’s giving me the chills because I, I love this. How inclusive! Basically, what you’re saying is that the language, your language already envisioned it in such a way that it creates an environment of inclusion. Because you’re not segregating [00:14:00] genders or you’re not segregating people; you’re just seeing people for who they are internally, in their hearts, and not if they have any issues or anything in their faces or, you know, if they have one or one or two arms, you don’t care about that.

[00:14:16] Taty Fittipaldi: You care about, as you said, and I love this word, the essence, right? So I love it. I simply love this. I’m very interested and fascinated.

[00:14:26] Taty Fittipaldi: And, this is a good segue for our next question. So you told us that you went to Canada, right? So how was it for you to be a foreigner in Canada? Tell us your expatriation experience. How was that?

[00:14:40] Fezi Mauncho: Yeah, so I went to Canada, and I, um, I got married. I met my husband there and I raised my children. And I also went to university in Canada and, um, Canada is Canada is potentially a very inclusive nation. And my experience in Canada was not one of racism [00:15:00] or oppression. Of course, when I was there, I met a few ignorant people, just as there are ignorant people all over the world.

[00:15:10] Fezi Mauncho: It was also very interesting. Some of the things that are coming out right now in terms of Canada and experience with native Canadians, which, you know, the whole again the whole idea of colonialism and some of the atrocities that are still yet to be accounted for. But in terms of my individual experience.

[00:15:31] Fezi Mauncho: I, I met beautiful people I met people who also have the same outlook. Interestingly enough, it was very interesting to connect with. Native Canadians as well and talking to them and engaging with them. Uh, we have very, very similar outlooks towards life and, and even, even a very similar spiritual sense if, um, if I can put it that way, but despite that, um, uh, on paper, Canada is very [00:16:00] honoring of all people.

[00:16:01] Fezi Mauncho: Canada is very inclusive Canada is built on multi. I wouldn’t even say multiculturalism they don’t really they don’t like to say that as well, but they they are very intentional in being inclusive. That doesn’t mean that it plays that well. All across the board, but raising my Children was was a very interesting idea away from my people.

[00:16:22] Fezi Mauncho: And, um, again, I tried to raise them with the same ethos that I was raising in that we are first, more than anything, we are spiritual people, which means that, yes, we we had the privilege of being born African. And I always taught my children that it was a privilege for us to be born African. It’s a privilege for us to carry this beautiful brown skin, but it is the skin with which we encounter the world.

[00:16:46] Fezi Mauncho: It is the, it is in our hearts are the, the, the spirit with which we encounter the world. And when I remove your skin and you remove my skin, We are no, we’re not, we’re not very different. Sometimes people will differ to treat us differently [00:17:00] because of the color of our skin, but we are never to forget how powerful we are.

[00:17:04] Fezi Mauncho: And I just had the wonderful blessing of being able to meet people like that in Canada and interact on that level, on a spiritual level, on a powerful level. Equal people, neither, you know, doesn’t matter whether you’re a man, a woman, age doesn’t matter. Very interestingly, there’s a beautiful, beautiful lady who, uh, she just took me, me and, uh, and a friend of mine who ended up becoming my sister in law.

[00:17:29] Fezi Mauncho: But she took us on, these two African girls, and she raised us like her own children. And she happened to be present at the birth of all three of my children. My children, she used to smoke and she had a very husky voice, and my children would know her voice. And, um, she was Canadian. She was, she was a white Canadian, but, uh, she loved us and we loved her.

[00:17:50] Fezi Mauncho: And I just, I mean, I can tell you many, many interesting individuals like that who mentored me, who taught me and who, um, introduced me to other [00:18:00] adult life. On Canadian soil as an African, but they honored who I was as an African and they loved it. And one of the things that they particularly loved about me is my, my African music.

[00:18:11] Fezi Mauncho: Cause, um, because of the, my, my upbringing amongst Africans who are always singing, I was always singing. And I didn’t know that that was something special about. Who I was as an African and, and African music to open so many doors for me in Canada and people appreciated that about me. And of course, I mean, yeah, I’m not only, it’s not my music that, that that’s not the only part of who I was.

[00:18:35] Fezi Mauncho: It opened doors that allowed people to see other aspects of me that were equally as powerful and transcend color borders or anything. They’re just me as a human being.

[00:18:44] Taty Fittipaldi: That’s fascinating. You told me something very interesting online and you didn’t mention it. So I wanted to bring it up. You told me when you came back to Kenya. Your Children asked you mom what it means, you didn’t tell me what it means to be [00:19:00] black.

[00:19:00] Taty Fittipaldi: And I wanted you to clarify this and I wanted you to tell us about this and about how your family experienced the repatriation when you went back to your own country.

[00:19:13] Fezi Mauncho: Yeah. So, um, when, when I came back home, I, uh, we came back with my children who had always lived in, um, in Canadian society and they always, they happened to be the only black kids at school and in many, many, many different, um, forums.

[00:19:29] Fezi Mauncho: Uh, we lived in Ottawa for a few years where Ottawa is very cosmopolitan and Ottawa has people from all over the world. So there they have the experience of, For just a few years of seeing difference more than in other parts of Canada, but still we always were the minority. And so when we came back home, and all of a sudden, they said, Mom, how come there’s so many brown people here.

[00:19:52] Fezi Mauncho: And they’re hearing different languages and they’re seeing different experiences and interacting with relatives, aunties and, and uncles [00:20:00] and they are seeing, hmm, it’s a little, it’s different to be a woman in Africa. It’s different to be a girl in Africa. Um, there’s different ways of being and, uh, they, it was very interesting to see them experience Africa as, as African children who are born outside.

[00:20:18] Fezi Mauncho: But then because they are so innocent, they asked beautiful questions about. Humanity. And why, why do they say that? And why do they speak like that? But they didn’t, um, they were loved, which was key. They were loved and they were welcomed because Africa is that, you know, if you came home to my country right now, you become my sister because I brought you and it doesn’t matter.

[00:20:38] Fezi Mauncho: It doesn’t matter as long as I bring you, you’re fine. So they had that experience, but they, they, they, um, they, they, they were fine until Um, uh, George Floyd’s death, uh, in 2020. And all of a sudden there was a conversation about being black that because they were now older, they had not been able to [00:21:00] participate in.

[00:21:00] Fezi Mauncho: And we did not necessarily engage them in, uh, from a hostile perspective. So when we were growing up in Canada, I taught them about the Africaness. I taught them about, you know, our history. They understood that, but they, they just, you know, They just understood that it’s a part of who we are, but when they saw the, the, the oppression rise up again of being black, the, the, the bitterness and the anger and the frustration, which we all felt, we all felt.

[00:21:30] Fezi Mauncho: And particularly us, uh, people of African descent. And now they’re teenage girls. They felt as well. They said, Mom, why did you not teach us what it means to be black. And I said, But you are very young and I didn’t want you to grow up angry in a context where I couldn’t connect you with the rest of our people because they weren’t the rest of our people so that you could experience our culture and see our culture.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Fezi Mauncho: It was important for you first to be human. It was important first for you to be spiritual because you are human and because you’re spiritual, you’re powerful and you can, you can carry the anger because there’s a level where anger is righteous. And then you can do something about it and you can do something about it so that we maintain the power that we have so that we can teach future generations differently without passing on bitterness and without passing on hatred, hatred and bitterness are counterproductive.

[00:22:35] Fezi Mauncho: They don’t help us. I said, we need to be educated. We need to be economically powerful. We need to be influential so that we can change systems, not only systems on our African continent, but even as we build our nations, our African continent, and even our individual countries, and we showcase the beauty, the strength, the power of who we are.

[00:22:56] Fezi Mauncho: We have something to offer the nations of the world. You know [00:23:00] what I mean?

[00:23:00] Taty Fittipaldi: Yeah.

[00:23:00] Fezi Mauncho: And so, uh, we, I don’t, we don’t need anyone to tell us how powerful we are and we don’t need validation from outsiders that, that must come from within ourselves. We have to understand who we are for our own self. Uh, but, but we also have to know that, um, that what we have is beautiful and what we have is, um, is worth sharing just the same way that being African really has been There’s a, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a purity about who I am as an African, but, but there’s no, there’s no such thing as pure because we are constantly being influenced by everybody.

[00:23:34] Fezi Mauncho: So much has been taken from the African continent to the rest of the world. So sometimes by force, but it is still shaping, even if, even when it’s taken by force, it still shapes those countries for good. And we are saying for the first time, how about if we give it and, and then, and there’s, and there’s an, there’s an exchange that comes back, but it is on, on an equal plane.

[00:23:57] Fezi Mauncho: Not, not oppressor oppressive or, you know, you know, [00:24:00] there’s a, there’s a concept we have here in Africa when you talk about politics and foreign relations and all of that, we call it thieves by pens. We have thieves who steal by the pen here and thieves who steal by the pen from outside through, you know, bilateral agreements that are not equal and, and they, and they place us always at a disadvantage.

[00:24:18] Fezi Mauncho: It’s very difficult to understand the nuances of how those things work if we are full of anger and hatred. You do see what I’m saying? So, so being an educator, being, um, being whatever I am, I have to keep love as, um, the foundation of what I do and love sometimes can be tough. Love can say, Nope, you can only come this far, and I’m not, I’m not going to let you into my country, or I’m not letting you into my family, or whatever.

[00:24:47] Fezi Mauncho: You know what I mean? Yeah. It doesn’t mean that you’re a pushover or a doormat. .

[00:24:51] Taty Fittipaldi: No. Yes. I agree. I think it’s part of being a, being of love is also telling people what your boundaries are. Right? [00:25:00] What’s exactly good for you and what your boundaries are.

[00:25:02] Taty Fittipaldi: Because if you didn’t care for them, you wouldn’t even tell them what the boundaries are, right? You just… you don’t care. So you would just leave or you would just ignore, right? But because you are telling them your boundaries, how much far they can go, it also is an act of love. I do believe that. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:25:23] Fezi Mauncho: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:24] Taty Fittipaldi: That’s so beautiful. I love it. I really love it. Fezi, tell me something. So you had the expatriation experience to Canada and then another expatriation experience, which was the repatriation, right, when you came back to your country.

[00:25:40] Taty Fittipaldi: So tell me. Maybe in one word, what these experiences teach you?

[00:25:49] Fezi Mauncho: These experiences teach me, I think the biggest one word is love. Yeah, and love first for me. One of the things that I really loved about being in [00:26:00] Canada was I became so fully alive as an African in a way that, because I didn’t, I was always an African, I had nothing to compare it with, right?

[00:26:08] Fezi Mauncho: I didn’t know what that meant. And I was young, I was a child, and I went to Canada just as I was becoming a woman. You know, just leaving childhood behind, becoming a woman, encountering people in the professional space in the adult world. And I, and I saw, oh my God, oh, this is what it’s beautiful to be me.

[00:26:25] Fezi Mauncho: It’s beautiful to be a woman. It’s beautiful to be African. And then, and, and so, and, and, and I had to choose, well, how am I going to then be, I, I, how am I going to be, am I going to share that? Or am I going to try to change with that and become Canadian or whatever anybody else wants me to be? Or am I going to retain that and, and, and operate from that?

[00:26:47] Fezi Mauncho: And even, even professionally share from that, you know what I mean? Um, so, so it really taught, because love me before you can love anybody else, you have to love yourself and, and, and. Being with Canadians [00:27:00] taught me that. I mean, that tells you the kind of people that I met who were beautiful and, and gave me an opportunity and to flourish.

[00:27:07] Fezi Mauncho: And then when I came to be yourself, right, to be authentic. Yes. And I lived in Canada for 15 years. So that means there’s something about Canada that was going to rub on me. And honestly, when we came back home, they always used to refer to us as the Canadians, because I think that this, the essence of whatever of that, of that was very, very powerful on the inside of us as well.

[00:27:30] Fezi Mauncho: And, um, I don’t know if they, I don’t think they call us the Canadians anymore, but I think I, I had, I had that to bring back home. I had, I had, um, I had my experiences, uh, going, being educated in Canada, living with Canadian neighbors, um, having friends. And the beautiful thing I loved about Canada was, again, just people from all over the world.

[00:27:53] Fezi Mauncho: So it was, I didn’t, I wasn’t only ever with only white people. I was with Canadian people, I was with Congolese people, other different kinds of [00:28:00] Africans for me, Indian friends. And so that allowed me when I came back home to, to find my place. And now I had to know, what does that mean to be Kenyan? I can speak the language.

[00:28:13] Fezi Mauncho: I know the culture, but the work environment was very, very different. How do I navigate that? How do I, how do I share with other people? So I ended up starting, um, I, I, I worked in the corporate world for a very, uh, short period of time. I found that it didn’t fit with me. I think being Canadian maybe had an influence of that because people do business very, very differently.

[00:28:37] Fezi Mauncho: And one of the things I’ll say that is because of some of the, some of the struggles, we will be transparent. It’s very, it can be very difficult to do business in Africa. You have to understand the language. You have to understand the nuances and it’s not necessarily because of culture, although you do have to be educated in the culture, but you also have to know the business language, how do people operate?

[00:28:54] Fezi Mauncho: Kenya is a very cosmopolitan city. It’s a very, very international city. There’s a lot of. Uh, [00:29:00] companies and non governmental organizations, big ones like the UN and IMF and it’s been like this for a long time in Nairobi, particularly. So you have to, if you want to come back here and do business or live and work, you have to understand how that works, connect with other people.

[00:29:15] Fezi Mauncho: So that was important. But then I felt for me, my space was in the, in a little bit of maybe private sector or whatever, none. So we started a learning, we call it a learning space because you can see I’m very artistic. Um, you, somebody would say, some people call it a school, but we don’t like to call it a school because it’s not a formal school in terms of our approach to educating children and, and teaching them.

[00:29:39] Fezi Mauncho: So ours is very arts based, but doesn’t mean we don’t do science and, and math and. And in any and stem, we actually are a steam center where we, we do, we do all of those and, and the focus is very artsy and the focus is also very African. So learning about our traditional African instruments, learning, and that, if you learn about the traditional African [00:30:00] instruments, you will understand that one, one particular one, call it a TT, that is eight stringed instrument.

[00:30:04] Fezi Mauncho: And if you can trace that instrument all the way to Egypt, From here, all the way to Egypt, all through the river Nile, all the people along it play that instrument in one form or another. And we like, we, we think that that’s probably what they talked about King David might have played in the Bible. We don’t know, but we think that that’s probably the same.

[00:30:26] Fezi Mauncho: So, and then we have this, this fiddle. That, that is played all the way from here till China. It’s just a very, very similar, you know, instrument. And then we were learning that one.

[00:30:38] Taty Fittipaldi: It’s two chord, right? It’s um,

[00:30:40] Fezi Mauncho: ours has just one court. Oh, I can do so many different things with it. Yeah. So you can learn about history, but you, I mean, music, but you learn about history.

[00:30:47] Fezi Mauncho: You learn about math. You learn about physics. Yeah. So that professionally, that’s the space I, I ended up in. And so, um, and, and working as an educator. being [00:31:00] creative, but again, again, imparting Ubuntu and imparting strength and spirituality. We, our, our education is very African based, not because of anything, because we have, we live in Africa, but we have, we have had children from all over the world, um, be educated by us.

[00:31:17] Fezi Mauncho: And it is the most beautiful thing to see children of all colors playing our, we call them Ohangala drums, or bull drums, and they’re beating them and they’re singing our songs and it’s. Absolutely fantastic. And I always wonder when they go to Brazil or they go to whatever they go China. What are they going to say about the encounter they had with us, and more importantly they’re going to be singing our songs and I love that.

[00:31:42] Fezi Mauncho: I love that.

[00:31:44] Taty Fittipaldi: Yes, absolutely. It’s fascinating because I so believe in educating people from all over the world, um, because I think it creates exposure for people. They are exposed to new things, to [00:32:00] different things. And when we are exposed to different things and meet new people, meet all types of people, we become less fearful, right?

[00:32:09] Taty Fittipaldi: And when we become less fearful, we become less prejudiced, right? So it’s, I think it’s so important. That’s, that’s incredible. What you’re doing is great. It’s awesome. I love it.

[00:32:22] Fezi Mauncho: I love what you say about being less fearful. That is so important that, you know, and you, you remind me of, we were doing a show once at a, um, outside and out of, out of shore.

[00:32:31] Fezi Mauncho: It was a market, a flea market, and it was people from all over the world. And we were singing the Korean song it’s called Arirang. It’s, it’s very famous. And so the kids were just singing and it was beautiful, sunny day. And somebody walked by us, an Asian man, and he stopped and he looked at us and he just came alive.

[00:32:48] Fezi Mauncho: We didn’t get to talk to him, but we think he might’ve been Korean. And in Nairobi, he heard a song from his home country and we felt a beautiful connection with him. And then he carried on and he was shopping and doing [00:33:00] other things and we kept singing and it was a beautiful, beautiful experience. So I love that, what you’re saying about, I don’t think he was fearful, but.

[00:33:06] Fezi Mauncho: It was, I think it was even, it transcended fear. It brought an intimacy and a connection and he’s so into us. And we saw

[00:33:12] Taty Fittipaldi: you feel included, right? You feel, you feel like part of, because right. I, I think that’s fabulous. Yeah.

[00:33:18] Fezi Mauncho: Yeah.

[00:33:19] Taty Fittipaldi: I just wanted to thank you so much for being here, for sharing your stories for sharing your experiences. They’re very valuable. And I’m sure that they’re going to be valuable to other people to also learn about your experiences. So thank you so much for being here.

[00:33:36] Fezi Mauncho: Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity and, again, just having just a very, very, very conversation just full of life.

[00:33:47] Fezi Mauncho: Thank you so much. And I wish what you’re doing is so important. I wish there’d be more conversations like this in, in, in, in the, in the professional world. I know we do talk about our jobs and our [00:34:00] experiences and all those things, but maybe we sometimes just talk about our soul and our, our humanity because that’s who we are.

[00:34:08] Fezi Mauncho: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. You’re brilliant and I love that. Thank you.

[00:34:13] Taty Fittipaldi: Thank you so much for being here. Thank you.

[00:34:16]

[00:34:17] HIGHLIGHTS

[00:34:17] Taty Fittipaldi: This brings us to the end of this Leadership Nest episode. I trust you found value in acquiring insights that can elevate your decisions and performance in critical global leadership roles and situations. Stay tuned for a next joy ride with expatriates interview! We promise to surprise you with new stories and concepts to help you learn more about international relocation, acclimation and cultural integrations.

[00:34:44] Taty Fittipaldi: Wherever you are in the globe, this is Taty Fittipaldi wishing you a beautiful day.

[00:34:50] Taty Fittipaldi: If you have any questions, you’d like us to answer in a future episode of this show, just go [00:35:00] to speakpipe.com/tatyfittipaldi or click the link in the show notes, to leave us a brief audio message.

[00:35:08] Taty Fittipaldi: Make sure to visit us on our website www.theleadershipnest.com, where you can subscribe to our show anywhere podcasts are streamed, so you never miss the fun.

[00:35:21] Taty Fittipaldi: While there, if you find value in our show, you can also subscribe to our global leadership weekly newsletter from Coaching Expatriates®, where we deliver bite-sized lessons on global leadership, decision-making, and cultural competence to help you learn how to think, relate and strategize in a whole different way as a global leader.

[00:35:43] Taty Fittipaldi: If you liked our show, you might want to check our online global executive leadership program. A nine week leadership development and learning system, that will help you lead internationally while making financially conscious and impactful business decisions.

[00:35:58] Taty Fittipaldi: Taty Fittipaldi is also [00:36:00] available for private coaching. See the websites for more details at www.coachingexpatriates.com/executive-coaching.

[00:36:11] Taty Fittipaldi: Thanks for joining us this week on The Leadership Nest podcast. I trust you found value in acquiring insights that can elevate your performance in critical global leadership roles and situations.

[00:36:23]