The Day I Saw My Face on a Billboard

I wore my lucky dress to the Barclays interview and arrived twenty minutes late.

To this day, I feel the dress fulfilled its responsibilities. Getting me there on time was apparently a separate department.

Over time, I’d noticed that whenever I wore that dress, something good seemed to happen. I’d make a new friend, meet someone I was glad to know, or get a lovely compliment. So I started calling it my lucky dress. Naturally, I began treating it with the respect such a garment deserved. When Barclays invited me for an interview, there was no discussion about what I would wear.

Getting that invitation, however, had already surprised me.

For years, I had wanted to join a leadership programme. While working at Standard Chartered, I applied several times for opportunities within the bank. I also applied for a World Bank fellowship year after year. The age limit was 32, as I remember it, and I kept applying until I was no longer eligible. That was that for the World Bank.

Then there was AFRIKA KOMMT!, a programme that offered the chance to work with a German company. I applied several times. Each company had its own requirements, so I focused on the ones looking for people with a business background. I had a master’s degree, I was within the age limit, and I had experience working for a bank. I could already picture myself going to Germany, learning how another company worked and coming home with the leadership experience I’d been looking for.

I even read through the alumni profiles. A lot of the people I came across were from West Africa, and when I read their stories, I thought, These are ordinary people like me. Some of them have the same qualifications I do. I think I can get this one.

That one didn’t happen either.

Back then, I treated the requirements on an advert a bit like a checklist. If I could look down the list and say, Yes. Yes. Yes, I have that too, I expected to hear back.

Then I would submit my application, fairly confident that somebody would soon contact me.

Somebody usually did not.

I came across the Barclays leadership programme by chance on their website. I remember looking at the advertisement and wondering, What are the odds that I would actually be hired for this programme?

But I wanted this opportunity, so I submitted my application.

Then an email arrived. I had been shortlisted.

I almost needed to read it again to make sure they were actually inviting me for an interview.

The interview was arranged for a Wednesday at 11:00 am at Bunyala branch on Masaba Road. I put on my lucky dress, a nice coat and my favourite brown heels. I looked ready.

By 11:00 am, unfortunately, looking ready was about all I had achieved. I was still in a matatu, stuck in traffic.

My heart was racing. How could I be late for a job interview? I had wanted an opportunity like this for so long, and now that somebody had finally invited me, I could not even arrive on time.

On the way, I began preparing an explanation. Traffic would feature prominently, of course. That part was true. But I kept thinking I needed to explain it properly, so I started assembling other details in my head.

By the time I arrived, I had considered so many versions that I could no longer remember the correct order of my own excuse.

It was about 11:20 am.

At the reception, I expected a look. You know the look. The one that tells you somebody has already decided what sort of person you are before you open your mouth.

Instead, the receptionist was lovely.

“Are you Christine?”

I said yes, and she escorted me to the manager’s office. She didn’t scold me or even glance at the clock. I seemed to be the only one worried about the time.

Then the manager made matters even more confusing by being pleasant.

“Ah, Christine, welcome. How are you?”

I said I was fine, although I was sweating and mentally watching my chances of getting the job disappear.

He began talking to me quite casually.

“So, Christine, how are things going? What made you apply for the programme? What interested you about it?”

“I’ve worked in banking for five years, and I’d like to see how other parts of the bank work. I’ve wanted to lead a team for a while, and when I saw this programme, I thought it might give me that chance.”

I answered him, but part of my mind was still waiting.

Are we not going to discuss the fact that I was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago?

I had prepared an explanation. Several explanations, actually. I just needed him to ask.

“Here at Bunyala, we handle the bank’s day-to-day operations.”

Then he offered me coffee.

Coffee?

I had arrived expecting to defend myself, and now somebody was bringing refreshments.

I accepted, obviously. There was no reason to lose both the job and the coffee.

We continued talking. The conversation felt so ordinary that I kept wondering when the interview would begin.

Eventually, he said something along the lines of, “I’d better get to the agenda of the day, which is to hire you.”

Before I left, he casually said, “See you next week.”

I went home unsure what that meant. Had that been the interview? Was I coming back for another one? Or was he giving me a second chance to show up on time?

I was used to recruiters saying they would get in touch or that an email would arrive with the outcome. “See you next week” was a very different ending. I wanted to be excited, but I was still trying to establish exactly what I was excited about.

As it turned out, that really was it. My lucky dress had maintained its record.

My role at Barclays began on 2 February 2015. The programme also took us to South Africa for training and summits, where I met colleagues from other African countries.

I had worked at Standard Chartered for five years without becoming a manager. Now, at Barclays, I was a manager with people reporting to me, earning the salary I had hoped for.

Only a short time earlier, I had returned from the UK without a job, trying to rebuild my life while carrying the weight of other people’s judgments. Suddenly, I had responsibilities, colleagues depending on me and a future that felt promising again.

I worked with letters of credit in import and export operations at Barclays Plaza in Nairobi’s CBD. George Konde, Philip Kilu, Josiah Kitawi, Edwin Sifuna, Angela and many others made that office such a friendly place to work. We’d get on with the business of the day and still find time to laugh and share stories. I enjoyed going to work. After everything that had happened before, it meant a great deal to find an office that began to feel like a second home.

Towards the end of the programme, we travelled to Johannesburg for our second and final summit.

Participants selected from nine African countries gathered there for a week. By then, I had already made friends at the first summit, so it was lovely to see everyone again, including colleagues from Botswana, Mauritius and Zimbabwe. We had so much to catch up on.

And apparently, we needed to do all that catching up while eating.

They fed us extremely well. All the meals were taken care of, and we ate so much that one of the participants eventually became concerned about the intentions of our hosts.

“These people are fattening us like pigs. Do they want to slaughter us?”

Everyone burst out laughing.

We had gone to Johannesburg to develop as leaders, and now somebody was worried we were being prepared for something else entirely.

Nobody could complain that Barclays had left us hungry.

The photographs from that summit bring back so much. The awards, the group pictures and the moments when we were simply enjoying being together.

During the summit, we were divided into groups and asked to develop ideas that could improve sustainability in areas such as farming and small businesses.

Our group focused on digitisation. We were the last to present, and I was the final speaker. The team before us had talked about using a smartphone to irrigate a field. As I went through our slides, I kept thinking about one detail in their idea. So I ended with a question.

“But how is the farmer supposed to water the field with a smartphone when the phone has no data bundles?”

That one question brought the house down. I hadn’t expected it either. The whole room burst into applause.

Our group won, and that presentation led to my being selected to help promote the next intake. We signed an agreement at the summit, so I knew Barclays would use the photographs. I just hadn’t pictured all the places I’d end up seeing them.

The first surprise came from George Konde.

“Eeh, Christine! I just saw your face on the ATM. You must be very loaded.”

“What? What do you mean?”

I went to see for myself. Sure enough, there I was on the ATM screen. There were days I went to that same ATM to withdraw money and my balance was zero shillings. So much for being loaded.

Friends started sending me pictures of the billboards. Then one day I was driving along Valley Road and saw one for myself. There I was in a green shirt and hat, smiling down at the street. I pulled over, took a picture and stayed there for a moment, just looking up. I was so happy, and yet I kept having the same thought. My goodness. That’s actually me up there.

My photo appeared in a ReadytoWork advert in Pulse, and I was also featured on the Rising Eagles website.

Pulse also published a photo of a lecturer speaking to students at Strathmore University. At first glance, it was a picture of a lecture. Then you noticed the ReadytoWork banner behind him. There I was again, in a picture inside the picture.

One minute I was checking my inbox, hoping a recruiter would shortlist me. The next, I was pulling over on Valley Road to take a picture of my own face. Things really can change in the blink of an eye.

The Barclays programme remains one of my proudest achievements. I am proud of getting in, of the work I did, of our winning presentation and of being chosen to represent the next group of applicants. I also remember the friendships, the laughter in the office and that week in Johannesburg when we were fed so well that somebody began fearing for our lives.

And I still enjoy looking at those photographs.

Whenever I see the billboard picture, I remember the excitement of discovering how far that opportunity had taken me. Whenever I remember the interview, I think of the dress.

It really was a very good dress.