Her Story
From the lecture hall to the open road.
Dr. Lucy G. Kavindah
Lecturer, Business Administration — author of the Women of Strength series.
Lucy Kavindah spent the better part of three decades in classrooms and lecture halls — first as a student earning her degree at Kenyatta University, then as an educator herself, with postgraduate study taking her from Maastricht to Birmingham to Lusaka. By most measures, she had already built the kind of career people spend a lifetime chasing: respected, credentialed, secure.
And then, somewhere past fifty, she noticed the world had quietly started speaking to her differently. Fewer invitations to lead. More suggestions to "take it easy." The unspoken assumption that her most useful years were behind her, and that whatever came next should be smaller, quieter, less ambitious.
"Despite her advanced age, Lucy rides a bike, sells bikes at cheaper prices to promote access — and now advocates for institutional bicycle mobility."
She disagreed. Loudly, at first only to herself — and then, increasingly, out loud. The rediscovery started in an unlikely place: a bicycle, bought on a whim, ridden badly at first, and then not so badly. There was something about learning to balance again, about falling and getting back up in full view of the neighbourhood, that cracked something open. If she could still learn to ride a bike at this age, what else had she quietly decided she was too old for?
That question became a habit of asking, and the habit became a book. Are We Late? — the first title in the Women of Strength series — was never meant to be a memoir. It's a working method, built from Lucy's own re-entry into ambition: how to audit the skills you already have, how to navigate family and financial pressure that shows up differently at this stage of life, and how to take the first real step, which is almost always smaller and less dramatic than the leap everyone imagines.
Today Lucy splits her time between teaching, writing, and advocating for something that started as a personal hobby and became a cause: safer, cheaper, more dignified bicycle access for ordinary Kenyans, especially women who've been told that certain forms of movement — literal and otherwise — aren't really meant for them. She still sells bikes at reduced prices to the women in her community. She still gets asked, gently, if she isn't a little old for all this. She still says no.
