The maître d‘s phone rings every few minutes. Maybe a reservation, dinner enquiry, or just someone asking if the terrace is open.
We choose a quiet table tucked behind the reception desk at Somerset Westview Restaurant in Nairobi’s leafy Kilimani neighbourhood, but the restaurant has its own flow.
Mercy Erhiawarien, Director of International Programmes at Halcyon, a nonprofit startup accelerator, hardly notices.
She sits upright, almost intimidating at first glance, with the kind of posture that makes you instinctively straighten your own back. But the seriousness dissolves quickly. She laughs easily, often at herself, and answers questions with long pauses, not because she is searching for the right words, but because she seems determined not to waste them.
Originally published by TechCabal.