Category: Business Daily

It’s 6:30am and I’m standing on a stretch of road where, on an ordinary morning, more than 400,000 cars rip through fourteen lanes of traffic.

Today, instead of engines roaring, a DJ deck blares music so loud the bass seems to vibrate through the asphalt.

The government is planning to hand over the modernisation of the country’s driving licence system to a private investor after years of underperformance by the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA).

This is after the NTSA missed the target for issuance of chip-based driving licences (DLs) for the second time in three years, blaming the underperformance on motorists’ growing preference for electronic (system-generated certifications) driving licences.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has cut its inflation outlook further for the next 12 months as it sees continued stability in consumer prices and the exchange rate.

The apex bank said on Wednesday that it expects the cost of living to fall steadily to reach lows of 3.7 percent in June 2026, having previously forecast inflation to fall to 4.3 percent in the same month.

Inflation dropped to 4.5 percent last month compared to 4.6 percent in October.

The expected low inflation rate will give the CBK further room to cut interest rates if it deems the move as appropriate in driving the recovery of private sector credit.

‘Our focus for inflation going forward for the 12 months up to November 2026 shows that inflation will remain below the midpoint of our target range and will not exceed the five-percent rate all the way,’ CBK Governor Dr. Kamau Thuigge said.

CBK has a mandate to keep inflation low and stable at no more than 7.5 percent but not less than 2.5 percent by deploying monetary policy tools including interest rates.

Previously in August, CBK had projected inflation to run hot, touching a high of 5.2 percent in March next year.

Core inflation or non-food/non-fuel inflation which contributes to an approximate 81 percent of the overall inflation rate is expected to anchor the slow growth in consumer prices over the next 12 months.

Non-core inflation which covers food and fuel prices is expected to rise over the next quarter on expensive vegetable prices but fall at the onset of the heavy rains season which is expected to start in April.

‘Non-core inflation especially for vegetables remains elevated for the next two to three months and then it does come down starting with the long rains around April,’ Dr Thugge added.

The November 2025 Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) Market Perceptions Survey and Agriculture Sector Survey shows that inflation expectations remain anchored within the 2.5 to 7.5 percent target range in the near term.

Respondents to the agriculture survey noted they expect improved food supply following recent harvests particularly of maize, stable pump prices and exchange rate stability to support a stable inflation rate in the near-term.

Seasonal factors associated with December festivities and higher prices for some food items especially vegetables are however expected to apply moderate upward pressure to overall inflation.

‘The November 2025 MPC Market Perceptions Survey shows that inflation expectations in the near-term remain anchored within the target range, mainly due to exchange rate stability, improved food supply, and stable global oil prices which are expected to keep local pump prices and transport inflation stable,’ CBK said.

The apex bank cut its benchmark rate for the ninth straight MPC meeting on Tuesday in a move to support the recovery of bank lending on the heels of both stable inflation and exchange rate.

Private sector credit growth hit a 19-month high in November mirroring recovery in lending on falling borrowing costs after a prolonged contraction period in the past year.

‘Growth in commercial banks’ lending to the private sector continued to improve and stood at 6.3 percent in November 2025 compared to 5.9 percent in October and a contraction of 2.9 percent in January,’ CBK said in a statement on Tuesday.

‘This mainly reflects improved demand for credit in line with the declining lending interest rates.’

CBK can cut its benchmark rate further if both inflation and exchange rate stability holds.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has opened the sale of a Sh60 billion Treasury bond, continuing its recent trend of issuing longer dated papers to lengthen the government’s domestic debt maturity profile.

In the issuance which runs until January 7, 2026, the CBK has reopened a 25-year bond that was initially brought to the market in September 2022, and a 20-year bond first sold in March 2019.

The 25-year paper, which was most recently reopened last month, has 21.8 years to maturity and a coupon or fixed interest rate of 14.18 percent, while the 20-year bond has a period to maturity of 13.2 years and a coupon of 12.87 percent.

The market has seen high liquidity in recent months, resulting in an oversubscription in the November and December auctions, and in the weekly Treasury bill auctions as well.

In the December bond whose auction was held last week, investors offered a total of Sh53.13 billion against a target of Sh40 billion, with the CBK taking up Sh47.1 billion.

The CBK had reopened a pair of 25-year and 30-year bonds that were first issued in May 2021 and February 2011 respectively in the sale.

‘We note resilient liquidity conditions in the market, signaled by the steadily strong performance rate, which has remained above 230 percent since the August primary auction,’ said analysts at AIB AXYS Africa in a note on the December bond sale.

In November, the CBK carried out two separate issuances in which it reopened a pair of 15-year bonds, a 20-year bond and a 25-year bond (the same one on sale for January 2026), which raised a combined Sh107.6 billion from bids of Sh208.75 billion. Each of the two issuances targeted Sh40 billion.

In addition to a liquid market, the CBK is also leaning on the demand for higher coupon bonds in a period of falling interest rates.

The long-term bonds that the government has been reopening in recent months carry coupons of between 12 percent and 14.2 percent, which is significantly higher compared to short-term rates of between 7.7 percent and 9.4 percent on Treasury bills.

The maturity profile of these bonds would normally appeal to buyers with a longer investment horizon such as pension funds, but retail investors have also bought in as returns from other assets such as Treasury bills, unit trusts and fixed bank deposits continue to trend lower.

The general decline in interest rates has tracked the easing actions of the CBK’s monetary policy committee, which has cut rates in its last nine meetings held since August 2024.

The Central Bank Rate (CBR) currently stands at nine percent, having been cut by 0.25 percentage points in the latest meeting on Tuesday. The CBR stood at 13 percent before the current easing cycle started in August 2024.

For investors, the lower base rate has the effect of cutting returns from fixed income investments whose pricing is linked to short term government securities.

If pain had a voice, Kahare Miano would express it through his chords. He would sing like a griot, sharing a philosophical story shaped by experiences of going through hell and back. Kahare, however, is an architect and a painter, and the language that best captures his experience is found in the spaces where colours and parallels intersect.

At his current exhibition Pirikania, Pain and Progress at One-Off Contemporary Art Gallery, Kahare lets that language take physical form. The works feel lived-in, touched by both restlessness and restraint.

Pirikania, a Turkana word meaning ‘to make an effort towards a goal’, follows his previous show at the same venue last year. Then, Kahare presented sketches from his travels and experiences across the northern frontier of Kenya. It was unabashedly colourful and warm. This new body of work bends inward. It is less travel diary, more personal excavation.

The architect and visual artist in him merge here. His lines are both technical and emotional, some precise like surveys, others trembling or abruptly broken. ‘Adversity and suffering are part of the design of this existence,’ he tells the BDLife. ‘Going through hurdles makes it an easy choice to recalibrate focus.’

In Pirikania, pain becomes tangible. It appears in those repeated erasures, in the half-finished shapes he refuses to complete neatly, in the tight, anxious clusters of pen marks. Progress shows up in the layering, each colour wash a small push forward, each line an insistence on showing up again.

Kahare speaks plainly about the ideas behind the work. ‘Every man or woman who goes through suffering has a moment to reflect. That’s where value is assigned,’ he pauses, and then adds, ‘We are designed to be a little bit defiant.’

A standout piece, Anxiety in Elwak, pulls memory into the room. Greys dominate the composition, textured like old photographs, with a thin red line running across the middle-an echo of the 1980s memories he often references, when life felt sharp-edged and stripped to essentials.

Working on Pirikania gave Kahare clarity for his next project, though he is careful not to separate his identities as architect and painter. ‘Whether the lines are technical or free, it doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘The important thing is that an outcome exists.’ In the studio, this outcome often emerges slowly: layers added, scratched out, and reworked over weeks.

The title itself, Pirikania, anchors him. Sometimes it represents purpose; other times, desperation. ‘I made it appear poetic because I didn’t want the work to be about me,’ he says.

But in the same breath he acknowledges that the word mirrors the realities many Kenyans are living through-social, political, economic pressures that make the idea of progress feel hard-won.

The exhibition reads as both wound and salve. The unfinished pieces hold as much power as the polished ones, as though he is saying that what remains unsolved is still worthy of being seen.

His slow, almost stubborn process becomes part of the message. When asked how his work has evolved over the past year, he shrugged: ‘Painfully slowly.’

Still, the slowness feels honest. It is the pace of someone pushing through, mark by mark, towards a horizon not yet fully formed.

The number of cybersecurity threats reported in Kenya has decreased to an all-time low this year after a sustained spike in malware, web, and mobile application attacks since January.

Communication Authority (CA) data shows that 842,320,667 malicious activity cases were reported between July and September, an 81.6 percent decrease from the staggering 4,586,682,277 cases reported between April and June.

The three months to March saw 2,537,428,868 cyber threats, a 201.7 percent spike from 840,921,998 threats recorded in the three months to December 2024. CA has attributed the sudden decrease to a regular update of ICT systems and critical information infrastructure across private and public institutions in the education, banking, and telecommunications sectors.

The regulator said multifactor authentication (requiring two or more verification types to confirm a user’s identity for account access) also helped tame attacks by cybercriminals.

‘This was attributed to regular updates of systems, implementation of organisational access controls, hardening the anti-virus and firewalls, patching vulnerable systems regularly, and utilising multifactor authentication and strong passwords,’ CA said in its Sector Statistics Report for the first quarter of the 2025-2026 financial year.

An official at the authority told the Business Daily they have been sending advisories to organisations to strengthen their information system security features and firewalls in the wake of the previous quarter’s alarming spike.

But despite the overall decrease in cyber threats, system vulnerabilities remain the major weaknesses that cyber attackers are exploiting countrywide. These include weaknesses in hardware, software, or processes such as unpatched software, weak passwords, poorly protected wireless access, and missing authentication.

At 776,542,757 cases, they accounted for 92 percent of all recorded incidents in the three months to September. In the previous quarter, such weaknesses made up over 97 percent of all threats, similar to the period between January and March.

Prominent threats

Other prominent cyber threats in the three months to September involved malware (31,676,444), where attackers use malicious software to infiltrate devices or gain unauthorised access, and brute-force (18,811,738). This involves using trial and error to crack passwords and login credentials.

A major driver of the improvement is the widespread integration of multi-factor authentication, which has become a standard requirement in the deployment of IT systems, says Stanley Githinji, a professor of information security at USIU-Africa.

Previously, many systems were deployed with weak or incomplete security controls, treating safeguards ‘as an afterthought.’

Also read: Cybersecurity awareness: How to secure East Africa’s digital economy against evolving threats

‘It left systems exposed both at the design and implementation stages. The integration of multiple-factor authentication has increasingly become a major requirement. and it is coming in handy,’ Dr Githinji said in an interview.

CA has previously flagged inadequate software updates, also known as system patching, and limited user awareness of phishing and other social engineering techniques among the main drivers of the sharp increase in cybersecurity incidents.

‘The persistence of such vulnerabilities is largely attributed to the rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, many of which lack comprehensive security protocols,’ the regulator said in June.

The authority also noted a growing adoption of AI-driven attacks and machine learning technologies by malicious actors.

One of Kenya’s biggest cyber incidents this year was the January data leak at the Business Registration Services (BRS), which exposed sensitive information of over two million companies registered between 1967 and 2024.

The agency did not publicly disclose the cause, but the Business Daily learned that the breach stemmed from a bug in its IT systems. Moldovan firm B2bhint accessed and published the data.

Dr Githinji warns that advances in quantum computing — the use of quantum mechanics to process information faster than regular computers — and AI are making cyberattacks easier to execute.

Firms should treat vulnerability assessments and penetration testing as continuous exercises rather than one-off projects, he says. ‘To prepare for emerging risks, organisations must pay attention to stronger data encryption.’

More than half of the candidates who sat the 2025 Kenya Junior School Education Assessment (KJSEA) demonstrated readiness to pursue courses in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics,(STEM) in Senior School, underscoring a decisive tilt toward science-oriented learning as Kenya accelerates its shift to the competence-driven system.

The performance is set to pile pressure on senior schools to reinforce laboratories and technical capacity, as the system must now absorb an unprecedented concentration of science-pursuing learners.

The KJSEA test, taken at the tail-end of grade nine, marked the final checkpoint for the pioneer junior school cohort, closing a crucial phase of the competency-based curriculum (CBC) and setting the stage for full pathway specialisation.

‘The assessment of learners at grade nine comprises 20 percent from the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment, 20 percent from the school-based assessment in grades seven and eight, and 60 percent from the summative evaluation at grade nine. This summative evaluation is the KJSEA,’ said CS Ogamba.

This year, the exam, which covers STEM, social sciences, as well as arts and sports pathways, was taken by 1.1 million learners who completed the three-year junior school phase under CBC.

Of these, 59.09 percent showed potential for the STEM learning pathway, while 46.52 percent qualified for social sciences covering history, economics, and civic studies, and 48.73 percent showed a leaning towards arts and sports, which includes creative and physical education tracks.

The assessment uses an eight-point performance scale grouped into four clusters, with the best being ‘exceeding expectations’, followed by ‘meeting expectations’, ‘approaching expectations’, and ‘below expectations’, with each cluster further divided into two to capture nuanced performance.

In the just-released results, Creative Arts and Sports as a subject delivered the strongest outcome nationwide, with 96.84 percent of learners hitting the ‘approaching expectations’ threshold and above under the ministry’s consolidated assessment report.

Agriculture, Kiswahili, and Social Studies followed, with each recording more than 92 percent of candidates achieving the designated competency levels.

Mathematics and Kenya Sign Language subjects registered the lowest proportions of learners meeting and exceeding expectations relative to the other subjects, although more than half of the candidates still met the baseline standards.

The KJSEA test combines written papers with practical projects and draft exercises to measure applied competencies, focusing on problem-solving and critical thinking, marking a shift towards integrated skills rather than routine memorisation.

Learners sit the assessment at the end of junior school after completing three years in the CBC system, following six years of primary school and two years of pre-primary education.

The Ministry said the assessment informs placement into senior schools, which have been clustered according to pathways, with all the KJSEA candidates set to be placed starting next week.

‘Learners will be placed in senior schools based on their performance and selected pathways, in line with the recommendations of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform,’ said CS Ogamba.

Senior school capacity currently stands at 2.2 million spaces across 9,540 institutions, giving the country a comfortable buffer for the full junior to senior school transition.

These schools have been formally clustered by pathway, allowing each learner to join an institution aligned with the competencies demonstrated in the KJSEA.

Placement is set to conclude by December 20, enabling Grade Ten reporting from January 12 under the ministry’s revised academic calendar.

The year is coming to an end, but the market never rests. As the season wraps up, we turn our attention to the one question every serious investor is asking: Where exactly will the money be flowing in 2026?

Macroeconomics analyst Stellar Swakei joins us to share a comprehensive, early outlook. In this episode, she will:

Explain the key macro-factors and risks that are about to redefine the investment landscape.

Share an early outlook on the most promising asset class for the new year.

Outline the non-negotiable strategies you must implement now to secure your wealth and maximise returns.

Make Money, a podcast series, hosted by Kepha Muiruri, from Business Daily Africa unravels ways to be financially savvy. Get practical tips and advice on how to increase your income, build wealth, and achieve financial freedom in Kenya. Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned investor, we’ve got something for everyone.

Safaricom has borrowed $138 million (Sh17.8 billion) from Standard Bank to fund the expansion of its subsidiary in Ethiopia.

Africa’s largest bank by assets, operating in Kenya as Stanbic, is the sole arranger and lender of the loan. Safaricom will invest the capital towards expanding digital infrastructure and services in Ethiopia.

Ritesh Doshi doesn’t talk, he whirs-like a very fast motor. Conversing with him is like standing next to a fan on full blast-a fan of words. Landing back in Nairobi from Jordan, sunburnt and restless after his stint as an international manager at HSBC, he decided the city needed a pizza delivery service. People told him it wouldn’t work. Which is precisely the wrong thing to tell Ritesh. He rang up franchises around the world; most said no, except for one obscure outfit in the US.

Naked Pizza opened in 2012. It rose, it floundered, and in 2016 he sold it to Pizza Hut. ‘I overestimated the market,’ he admits. ‘I was a gung-ho entrepreneur.’

After the sale, he retreated to a tiny café in Spring Valley, where two brothers ran the counter and their mother baked in the back. For 20 months, he’d sit there each morning with his dog, Bailey (now deceased), asking himself existential questions about who he was beyond the business. He was 35-a strangeHe liked coffee, and he liked entrepreneurship, so he ended up buying the café. Spring Valley Coffee was born. He then multiplied it to nine branches in Nairobi and, six months ago, opened one in London. They also supply world-class coffee equipment to hospitality establishments.

We met him back where it all began, in the small room where a wounded entrepreneur once sat with his dog.

How did this business idea come about?

In 2017, I was sitting at a café in New York and bought a bag of Kenyan coffee-227 grammes for $22.50 (about Sh2,900). I remember thinking, ‘that’s expensive’. Coffee auction prices are public, so I called a friend back home to check what farmers were earning that week.

It turned out the farmer was getting less than 9 percent of that price. That shook me. It meant 91 percent of the value was staying outside our market, while we’re struggling with youth unemployment. Something was clearly broken.

I came back, spoke to the owners of this café, and when they said they didn’t want an investor, I asked a different question-would they sell? They did. The focus wasn’t scale, it was taste. I also discovered this area – Spring Valley – used to be coffee estates, and even the landlord is a coffee cooperative. Everything pointed back to coffee. It was a great fit.

Did you know anything about running a coffee shop?

Not really. The vision was never to be in the café business-it was to roast coffee, add value here, and take it to the world. I’ve lived all over and had a strong global network, so that was the plan. We opened the shop with no money-literally used wood from coffee delivery pallets to build it.

And that Village Market store changed everything. Suddenly the brand was visible. Diplomats, UN staff, embassy folks found us, and it just exploded. We’ve since grown to nine branches in Nairobi and one in London. What’s interesting is that we still don’t have a sales team. Hotels and restaurants kept calling after tasting the coffee, asking if we could supply them. That’s how that side of the business took off.

What’s your mantra of doing business?

Good question, which I will answer in a different way. I get asked a lot whether I will sell this business like I did Naked Pizza. My answer is never say never, but right now, I have no intention. I love what we’re doing-growing from seven people to over 120, plus farmers and the supply chain. So many problems to solve.

My mantra is simple: listen to the market-but remember, sometimes customers don’t know what they want until you show them. I’m obsessive about quality: sourcing cups from Australia, grinders from Italy. We’re not the cheapest coffee, and we don’t want to be. Our mantra: incredible coffee, delightful hospitality.

Authenticity matters. Coffee is the product, community is the point. We didn’t plan to sell machines, but when a customer asked, we did it-at zero profit initially.

Now it’s a full division. I’ve learned not to be blinded by a plan. We’ve opened and closed stores. Some didn’t work. That’s okay. The singular focus is coffee, everything else grows from listening, risk, and learning when you get it wrong.

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do?

Selling Naked Pizza to Pizza Hut. It was my baby, and I ended up taking a lower price to make sure everyone had guaranteed employment for a year. That was hard-my identity was so tied to being ‘the Naked Pizza guy.’ I had to step back and ask myself, who am I beyond this business? That period forced a lot of reflection. I started meditating, became more spiritual, and spent about 20 months thinking deeply about who I am and what I want. It was challenging, but it shaped how I approach everything now.

What else are you as passionate about besides entrepreneurship?

I didn’t know my ‘why’ until I was 42. I’d read Simon Sinek’s Find Your Why multiple times, tried to work it out, and finally it became clear: to be a catalyst for connection and to empower transformational change. I’m passionate about running. I started in 2012- so13 years ago. I’ve run multiple half marathons, two full marathons, London two years ago, Amsterdam six weeks ago. It’s the only time in my day I’m not surrounded by anyone.

I’m also deeply passionate about dogs and animals. When we open a café, the dog bowl goes out before the coffee machine-every dog gets water first. Running marathons has also let me support causes like KSPC and Daphne Sheldrick.

What kind of breed of dog would you be?

That’s a tough one. I have a golden retriever now and used to have a Cavalier King Charles-one of only two in the country. People say dogs reflect their owners, and my wife says I’m like the golden retriever: everyone’s friend, full of energy even before my first cup of coffee, and tremendously loyal.

What have you discovered about yourself through meditation?

Since 2017-I remember it clearly, November 2017-that’s when I really started. I’m not religious, but I’ve become very spiritual. And I follow a rigid routine now. I wake up before 5am. I don’t touch my phone-my phone charges in another room. I use an old-school alarm clock with bells on it. No tech.

I start with at least 10 minutes of reading-something uplifting. I’ve read The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday every day for years. Then I’ll read something deeper-business, coffee, or just whatever I’m obsessed with at the time.

Right now, it’s ice cream and gelato. I’m still obsessed with pizza too. It began as my ’10-10-10′: 10 minutes reading, 10 meditating, 10 journaling. Now it’s more like 20-20-20, sometimes 30-30-30, especially on weekends. I write every morning. I affirm my purpose. I set my intention for the day. And I write three things I’m grateful for-every single day. Sometimes it’s big, sometimes it’s tiny.

The day after we met, I wrote that I was grateful I’d bumped into you. When I came back from London last week and it was minus one, I wrote that I was grateful it was 22 degrees in Nairobi. It’s simple. But it grounds everything.

What’s the purpose of writing?

It’s so easy for your day to just pull you in every direction. So after the gratitude, I write the three most important things I want to accomplish that day. Do I always get them done? No. Some days I get all three. Some days, like yesterday, I got none because life threw a spanner in the works. But I still set the intention.

Then I free-write. A page, sometimes two-whatever’s in my head. Because once it’s on paper, it’s no longer occupying brain space. It’s out of me.

At the end of the day, I write again about three amazing things that happened. I review the three things I wanted to do, whether I did them or not. And I always write one thing I would have done differently. Just one.

What scares you now at 44?

I’m at halftime. So what have I actually done with the first half? And what do I still want to do with the second? Because there are things I’ve always wanted to do that I haven’t touched yet.

Mortality feels closer now. We’re still young-but it’s nearer. People I went to school with have died in the last few years. And it changes the temperature of your thinking.

People always say life is short. I don’t agree. Life isn’t short. Life is finite. It will end. Yours, mine, everyone’s. That’s not pessimism-that’s just the terms and conditions.

The real question is: what are you doing inside it? So, how do I live each day fully? Some days that just means working-proper work. Other days it means not working at all. The problem is, I find it hard to switch off. My mind is always on.

You have children?

No children. It is intentional-yes. We decided quite early on. A lot of our decisions are interwoven with how we live. My wife is an impact investor and for us, the same three ideas keep showing up everywhere: people, planet, profit. They guide Spring Valley, they guide what she does, and they guide how we live. There’s one planet. There’s one human race. And for us, we chose not to have children.

A lot of people have children and still do meaningful things….

Of course they do. And there are already so many children in the world. We have plenty of nephews and nieces. There are so many children who don’t have parents. And we said to ourselves: having children is an irreversible decision. Not having them isn’t.

If in five years I wake up and feel that something is missing, we can adopt. That door never really closes. But if you have a child you can’t exactly say, ‘Sorry, this isn’t working out for me.’ There’s no reset button.

We’re also aware of the privilege it gives us. The flexibility. The freedom to push boundaries. To not be limited in certain ways. And to take risks. My risk profile is completely different because of that.

One of my closest friends in London-his appetite for risk changed overnight when he had children. I’m not saying it’s good or bad. It just changed. I can take risks.

If I lose everything, I’m not lying awake worrying about school fees. I’m not worrying about feeding someone else. If things go properly sideways. I only have to land on my own feet.

Have you always been sure that you don’t want children?

No. Not always. We actually got married very young-26. And we’d known each other forever. Since we were 16. My thinking shifted properly when some very close friends of ours had children. I absolutely adore their children.

We’re godparents to some incredible children here and in the UK. But somewhere in watching that life up close, I realised-this just isn’t ours. It’s not a popular decision. It’s not a normal decision.

And as Kenyans, there’s a very loud expectation from parents, from aunties, from the whole ecosystem: you will have children, and you will have many of them. But for us, this was the honest answer.

What have you struggled with this year now that it is ending?

We opened in London six months ago, and the hardest part has been the sheer absence of work-life balance-actually, it’s not balance, it’s work-life integration, and this year it’s been all work.

I’ve spent over 70 percent of the year abroad, constantly traveling to the UK, taken just six days off, and that kind of distance takes a toll-being away from my wife, my dog, my parents, my community.

London has meant building a new community, often alone in a flat, while trusting the team back here to run the business without me, which has meant letting go of control. It’s been a year that’s stretched me in every direction.