Turning 45 and Celebrating Ndisu’s First Birthday: A Year of Sovereignty and Becoming

"Dreams may be one of our first technologies, the source of visions for the world we want to build."

Tomorrow, November 20, I turn 45, and quietly, Ndisu turns one. When I stepped onto the stage at MozFest House Zambia last year, I thought I was launching a consultancy. What I now understand is that I was stepping into a year that would reshape my relationship to sovereignty, my work, my choices, my voice, and the way I inhabit my own life.

Building Ndisu has been an exercise in claiming agency. It asked me to trust myself even when the path felt uncertain, to define my value outside the traditional narratives of the sector, and to build something rooted in alignment rather than urgency. It taught me to slow down, to hold boundaries, and to honor the pace that serves me. It demanded clarity, honesty, and a kind of emotional resilience I had to grow into.

A major part of that growth came from the leaders who trusted me with their missions. This year I supported people working across an astonishing range of commitments. I worked with those providing safety and stability for families navigating homelessness, and with advocates raising awareness about dyslexia so children across Africa can access the learning support they deserve. I partnered with a collective leadership initiative shaping grounded, ethical leaders for the continent’s future. I supported women entrepreneurs fighting to keep their small businesses alive in economies that rarely center them. I walked alongside a team from the Democratic Republic of Congo building a future where technology, agriculture, and youth innovation intersect to create opportunity in Kivu.

I collaborated with cultural stewards who ensure that African identity, language, and history remain sources of pride and belonging for the next generation. I supported community builders in Zimbabwe who have carried the work of local development consistently and quietly, long before donors ever arrived. I advised educators in Eswatini preparing to celebrate a decade of teaching children with intention and dignity. I worked with researchers documenting bee populations and environmental health across Southeast Asia. And I partnered with leaders seeking to build sustainable fundraising systems that honor their missions and the communities they serve.

These missions are acts of sovereignty in their own right. They represent communities choosing their futures, choosing their narratives, and choosing their paths even when resources are limited. Many of these organizations do not have development teams or communications staff. Some operate through volunteers or a single Executive Director holding everything together. And yet they showed up — ready to learn, ready to try, ready to build. Their commitment reminded me that sovereignty is not a declaration. It is a steady posture, a quiet discipline, a willingness to keep moving through uncertainty.

This year would not have unfolded the way it did without the person who builds beside me — Banele. He brings a calm, steady presence to the work, the kind of grounded support that feels both gentle and deeply reliable. His energy is soft-spoken in the best way: thoughtful, observant, and patient, yet anchored by the maturity of a father and husband who understands responsibility at a level that goes beyond the job description. He adapts quickly, learns new systems without fuss, and often anticipates what is needed before I voice it. His consistency strengthened the backbone of Ndisu this year, and his partnership reminded me that sovereignty does not mean isolation. It means choosing collaborators who hold the mission with integrity, humility, and quiet power.

Turning 45 feels like stepping into a new kind of alignment. Not because everything is perfect, but because I feel more anchored in myself than I ever have. I understand the pace I want to move at. I trust my instincts with a clarity I didn’t always allow. I know the kind of clients I want to serve, and I know the body of work I want to expand. I am choosing to build from alignment rather than from survival, and that choice alone has transformed the way I meet my own life.

So today I celebrate all of it: the lessons, the slow seasons, the breakthroughs, the quiet progress, the leaders who let me walk beside them, the missions that reminded me why I chose this path, and the collaborator who helped hold Ndisu steady when the year demanded more than one set of hands. I celebrate the woman I have become, and the one I am still becoming.

Happy 45th birthday to me, and happy first birthday to Ndisu. We made it through a year that asked for growth, honesty, and sovereignty. And as I step into the next chapter, I do so with gratitude, clarity, and a deeper sense of grounded power than I have ever known.

If this reflection resonates with you, I’d love to hear how your own year has shaped you. Reply, comment, or share your story. We’re all becoming.