10 Years of Unpicking

Author(s): Jennifer Futter

Location(s): Nairobi, East Africa, Kenya

Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs

Era(s): Mid 1980s to mid 1990s

At the age of thirty an aspiring, ambitious fashion designer left her design workshop in Edinburgh with her sewing machine to embark on the journey of a lifetime to become the principal of the ‘number one’ fashion college in East Africa. Hapless and naïve she tried to fit in, but many obstacles to personal and professional fulfilment puckered her seams along the way. The tale captures a decade of transition in Kenya’s history, twenty years after colonialism. In 1986 design was a fledgling industry and there were few educational establishments offering fashion design studies. Jennifer would mentor the next generation of Kenyan and sub-Saharan African refugee students, alongside establishing a corporate clothing company. The book stitches together the trials, tribulations and adjustments to a different culture and the complexities of living and working in Nairobi: the daily commute, a design consultation with the Board of Kenya Airways, establishing a college in one of Nairobi’s most run-down and dangerous areas, finding a safe home, trusting friends, finding a husband, becoming a mother. In the end Jennifer would achieve professional fulfilment.
The unpicking years taught her lessons about: trust, tenacity, friendship, being true to yourself and awakened her to societal inequalities of her inherited white privilege. She discovered that people, no matter what colour or creed, have many connecting threads. The memoir is entertainingly exposing, richly charged, informative, thought provoking and written with courage and honesty. A story told with wry humour and self-deprecation, making you laugh one minute and gasp the next.

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