Voi ultra run & Adventure by Emma

By Wairimu Mbuthia 3/5/2026

Networks get you through the door. They won't carry you up 1,839 metres in a 62km ultra run.

Growing up, we had a Labour Day song. Back then it was a glorified day off from school. One of those national set pieces you participate in without quite understanding. As an adult, you realise it's one of the few days systems are made visible.

In Kenya, wages are structured under the Employment Act, enforced through wage orders, and defended loudly"Nitakupeleka kwa labour." That phrase only works where systems exist. Where there's a structure to appeal to. Where someone built the scaffolding before you arrived.

Every year at Labour Day, adjustments are announced. This year: approximately KSh 4,800 added to the minimum wage. A number that sounds modest until you ask how many households it moves. Employers, take note.

But here's the tension.

I'm a millennial. Most of my circle are consultants. Multiple projects, always moving, never quite on one payroll long enough to feel the wage order conversation. The 8-4-4 system trained us to deliver. But the market we stepped into rewards who you know just as much as what you can do.

So we leaned into networks. Referrals. Relationships. Loyalty. And it works. To a point. But we've become over-reliant on it. We mistake access for ability. We confuse being invited with being prepared. We think the WhatsApp group is the strategy.

Networks will open the door. They might even get you a seat. But they won't do the work. Because when the work starts, networks go quiet.

This weekend, that truth showed up in 62 kilometres.

Voi Ultra run. Taveta Hills. Close to 2,000m of cumulative elevation. Organised by Urban Swaras and Trek sports and Adventures hosted at Afrika Lodges. On paper? "Just a little spice." On the trail? Work. Systems. Discipline. The kind you can't borrow from someone else's LinkedIn connection.

Flag off: 4:30am. Temperature at peak: 32°C. Terrain: the kind that punishes wrong shoes the way a bad contract punishes a handshake deal.

No network runs that race for you.

My girls showed up strong. Now as tall as their mum. Gayle took on the 15km 250m elevation, building toward her first half marathon. Train hard, smile on race day. That's the system.

For me: 8 hours 30 minutes moving. And then the final 5km a steep 500m climb. The organisers called it "good views." They weren't lying. They just left out the cost of the entrance fee.

At the summit: Kilimanjaro in the distance. Tsavo stretching wide. Somewhere beyond, the Indian Ocean. Beautiful and yap, fully earned. No complimentary access. No early bird rate.

Even the geography reflects the lesson. Taita Taveta connects seamlessly to Moshi. Trade flows, movement is structured, the border isn't a wall, it's a corridor. My mother-in-law's only concern when I said I'm in Taveta? "Bring kitenge." Not every system needs a policy document.

Macadamia at KSh 150 a kilo. Coffee, food, cross-border logistics. Systems working quietly, reliably, without needing to be reminded.

Our next stop, Tsavo West National Park. The guide tell us it has over 9,000km of road network. That's not loyalty. That's design. Clearly, KWS decided the infrastructure matters more than the relationship. Maybe its time we stop overvaluing access and building capacity.

Networks will open the door. They might even get you a seat at the table, the tender, the pitch meeting. But they won't climb 550 floors on your behalf. They won't finish the proposal at midnight. They won't show up when the job is hard and the client is watching.

The work will. The system will.

If you want to scale in business, in career, in life the question isn't who you know. The question is: what have you built that runs without you? Because at some point, it's just you, the climb, and the work you put in.

Niko Kadi...and I am asking the tough question. If the network disappeared today would your work still stand?