Memory Pamella Kadau

I Was Fired Two Days Before My 40th Birthday. I Could Not See What Would Follow. On 8 March 2016, two days before my 40th birthday, I was fired. The details, and the full story, will find their place in my memoirs. But there is something I can say today that I could not have imagined saying then: Thank God for that season. At the time, I felt the humiliation, the uncertainty and the weight of having to face people when I was struggling to face myself. Some of the deepest wounds came from people I had considered close. In a season when I needed kindness, some added to the pain. Others quietly disappeared. I chose silence. That silence held more than people knew: isolation, embarrassment, the pain of being maligned, and the bewilderment of discovering how quickly relationships could change when my circumstances did. During that season, I also lost my father, and my marriage ended. There are losses you cannot put into a neat story of resilience. You carry them. You grieve what happened and the future you thought you would have. Some days, getting through the day is all you can manage. But looking back, I can see that something was changing in me, even when I could see no way forward. I came to understand people more deeply. I began to separate my worth from my position, and to discover who I was when the familiar things that defined my life were gone. Over the years, my feelings towards those who fired me have changed. Today, I regard them as my destiny helpers. Whatever their intentions, their decision set me on a path I might never have had the courage to choose. How much of the life we are meant to build remains unexplored because we are holding tightly to the life we already know? The video below speaks to a part of my story that words have sometimes struggled to reach. This new chapter has only just begun. As I enter it, I remember the man approaching his 40th birthday, wounded and uncertain, with no idea how he would begin again. I wish I could sit beside him for a moment. I would let him cry. I would let him ask his questions. And I would tell him that there was still a life ahead of him that he could not yet imagine. I remain grateful to God for carrying me through that season, and for the person I became along the way. It hurt then. Gratitude has taken years. Both are true.

The Rally Was Full. The Ballot Box Was Empty. Every campaign season, politicians fall into the same expensive trap.They invest heavily in T shirts, billboards, posters, adverts, rallies, branded vehicles, stages and campaign theatrics. The assumption is simple: visibility equals support. Yet very little is invested in the work that actually converts political support into electoral power. Registering supporters. Building structures. Recruiting members. Collecting data. Identifying voters. Organising communities. Tracking supporters. Mobilising them to vote. Then election day arrives. The rallies were full. The T shirts were everywhere. The billboards dominated the streets. Social media was buzzing. But the votes do not match the spectacle. And everyone is shocked.They shouldn’t be. A Crowd Is Not a Voter Database.A person wearing your T shirt is not necessarily registered. A person attending your rally is not necessarily your supporter. A person cheering your candidate is not necessarily in your constituency.Even a genuine supporter does not automatically become a vote. Support must be organised. Every serious campaign should know: 1.Who are our supporters? 2.Where do they live? 3.Are they registered? 4.Where will they vote? 5.Who is responsible for organising them? 6. How many new voters have we persuaded? 7. How will we mobilise them on election day? If you cannot answer these questions, you may have a publicity campaign.But you do not have an electoral machine.Stop Measuring Campaigns by What You Can See Political campaigns are obsessed with what photographs well.A billboard can be photographed. A rally can be filmed. Thousands of T shirts create an impressive image.But the most important campaign work is often invisible. It happens in databases, communities, branches, door to door conversations, voter registration drives and thousands of individual interactions between organisers and citizens. It may not trend. But that is where elections are won and lost. After every election, politicians ask: “How could we lose after attracting such big crowds?” Perhaps they should ask a different question: “How many people in those crowds did we actually organise into votes?”A full rally can create an illusion of victory. The ballot box exposes whether you actually built a campaign. It is time we stopped building campaigns that look powerful and started building campaigns that are organised to win. #PoliticalCampaigns #CampaignStrategy #VoterRegistration #PoliticalOrganising #DataDrivenCampaigns #GrassrootsMobilisation #CampaignManagement #Africans