Stella, the Affordable Boyfriend and the Nurse Who had His Back
From a Jamaican beach to a South B servant quarter: why activity, competence and human value often appear before recognition. Same Forest. Different Monkeys.
Taye Diggs posted a black-and-white photograph with four words: “28 years ago today!” He is shirtless on a Jamaican beach, holding Angela Bassett by the waist.
More than 16,000 people reacted. Five hundred commented. Another 674 shared it. Apparently, How Stella Got Her Groove Back still has unfinished business with us.
The film opened in August 1998. Bassett played Stella, a successful 40-year-old stockbroker who travels to Jamaica and falls for Winston, a man roughly half her age. Diggs was making his film debut. He was 27 when the movie came out and is now 55. Bassett turned 68 on 16 August.
The photograph sells possibility well.
The young man is temptation without a shirt.
Jamaica is warm.
Nobody is discussing credit card statements, hospital shifts or who forgot to buy electricity tokens. Winston arrives after Stella has built the career, raised the child and earned the holiday.
THE AFFORDABLE BOYFRIEND
Edwin Sifuna told a less polished love story during Nurses’ Week celebrations in Migori in May 2025. Before the microphones, Senate and familiar blue suits, he was a broke young lawyer living in a servant quarter in South B. His first love, Cynthia, was studying nursing. He recalled that she would return from demanding hospital shifts and still look after him. Before telling the story publicly, he warned her by text that she was about to be in the news.
“Don’t burn. (Usichome),” she replied.
Would Cynthia choose him today?
Not Senator Sifuna. Remove the title, salary and influence. Put the young man back in that servant quarter and hand him a dating profile. There is no photograph from the future showing what he becomes.
Cynthia had no TikTok FYP, Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram reel supplying evidence of momentum.
She made a judgement before the market supplied confirmation.
I have seen the same thing in sales. The person everybody overlooks in year one may still be rising three years later.
One salesperson I trained was easy to miss at first. She was not the monthly champion and never produced the early numbers that make managers begin speeches with, “When I joined this industry…”
Her strength was activity. She fearlessly called new prospects, followed up old leads, faced rejection and returned the next day to do it again.
The improvement appeared before the commissions did.
During one training session, I used the word mediocre. She later told me privately that she was frightened of becoming mediocre. Managers, be careful with your words; some remain with people for life. For almost three years, others still sold more. She kept calling and following up while the scoreboard offered little encouragement.
The results caught up. She moved into another product and market, established an independent agency and now receives trips, accolades and regular recognition. In my professional assessment, she sits among roughly the top five per cent of Kenya’s approximately 11,000 registered insurance agents. That is my judgement, not an official AKI or IRA ranking. Independent-agent production is also not the same thing as winning an award tied to one principal underwriter.
In 2025, 1,195 agents qualified for the Association of Kenya Insurers awards, up from 1,084 the previous year; 67 per cent were women. Recognition matters. So do the calls, appointments, follow-ups, conversion ratios and persistency that appear before it.
Rugby clubs cannot wait for finished products either. At Kabeberi Sevens, Kenya Harlequin FC reached the men’s semifinal before losing 19-21 to KCB. Mwamba and Impala were prominent in the women’s competition, while an all-female officiating group handled Division Two fixtures.
Quins now prepares to join another celebrity to mark 60 years of Christie Sevens..
Players, coaches, referees, medics and volunteers need somewhere to practise before anybody calls them valuable. On a rugby field, that development is measured over seasons. In a hospital, the window may be minutes. Nurses spend their working lives reading the signs before the result is obvious.
There are several versions. Choose carefully.
THE ICU NURSE
ICU patients may be sedated, ventilated or connected to machines delivering medication and monitoring failing organs. The nurse watches tiny changes because a small change can become a large problem very quickly. If you arrive home announcing that everything is collapsing because Arsenal lost, she will listen respectfully. She has seen collapse.
Yours is emotional and does not require intubation.
THE EMERGENCY-ROOM NURSE
The ER nurse does not know what comes through the door next: an accident victim, a child struggling to breathe, an intoxicated brawler or somebody whose headache began three weeks ago but became an emergency at 2 a.m. Triage establishes who needs immediate intervention and who can wait. She has assessed your long explanation about disappearing for four days. Your condition is stable.
You will be discharged, with no more post hospitalization visits.
THE WARD NURSE
Ward nursing lacks the drama of the emergency room. It means medication rounds, wound care, records, relatives and returning to the same patient tomorrow. Progress can be too slow to see from one shift to the next. This is Cynthia coming home after work and checking whether Sifuna had eaten. Do not confuse consistency with unlimited capacity:
professional care is not an application for an unpaid shift at home.
THE PARAMEDIC—NOT A NURSE, (as I was harshly advised many years ago)
Paramedics work where trouble begins: roadsides, homes, sports grounds and public events. They assess, stabilise and transport patients towards definitive care. Depending on certification and protocols, they may manage airways, establish intravenous access and administer emergency medication before a doctor is present. While the family WhatsApp group is still debating hospitals, the paramedic has assessed the scene, called ahead and started moving.
The jokes work because these roles demand competence before certainty. I once watched that competence tested when emergency workers became the casualties.
Many years ago, I was privileged to head what was then the largest emergency medical service in East Africa. A team was returning after covering an event in the Mount Kenya region, before the present Thika Road was completed. Their ambulance veered off the road and overturned. Six emergency professionals were inside.
One died. Five survived; three were seriously injured.
Trained people assessed the injuries, identified competing providers with suitable ambulances, found hospitals with the required capacity and coordinated theatre arrangements. Competitors that fought for the same contracts sent resources to rescue colleagues from another operator.
I was mainly present for moral support while the Emergency operations team organised the technical response.
There was no motivational speech for the sixth family.
Kenya continues to produce skilled health workers in large numbers. KMTC’s 94th graduation released 22,776 health professionals in 2026; they were not all nurses. Yet our employment market does not absorb everyone as quickly as they qualify.
By April 2024, 280 nurses had moved through the Kenya–UK programme and another 200 awaited placement. Approximately 800 Kenyan nurses reportedly leave each year. Kenya also represented 6.5 per cent of African VisaScreen applicants in the cited report, evidence of professionals preparing for the American market.
That market puts a high price on dependable care. In the United States, median assisted living cost US$6,200 a month in 2025. A private nursing-home room reached a median US$129,575 a year. Those sums buy accommodation and a whole care system, not one nurse’s salary, but they show the economic value surrounding trained care.
Angela Bassett is 68. Halle Berry turned 60 two days earlier. Taye Diggs, once the young man on the Jamaican beach, is 55. Quins is preparing to mark 60 years. The photograph looks different now: not youth preserved, but people and institutions still producing clear, continuing, unmistakable evidence that they still matter.
An exercise for Monday. Ask five team members to name the employee they call when a customer becomes difficult, a process fails or the supervisor is unavailable. Compare those names with the latest promotion, salary-adjustment and training lists. Then check one month of leading indicators: calls, appointments, follow-ups, customers retained and colleagues supported.
Choose one overlooked person and correct one omission before Friday.
Which nurse suits you: ICU, ER, ward or paramedic? Correct me in the comments and share this with the healthcare worker,or steady salesperson that immediately comes to mind.
If somebody backed you before your results arrived, that is worth a call.
Sifuna remembered Cynthia from a public stage.
The rest of us can manage a private phone call.
Save the date. #ComeAllWithin #SSS
Have a well-nursed week.
Same Forest. Different Monkeys.
Mubarikiwe. Jah bless.
No one could have said it better than Gregory….