My Journey Through Grief, Bullying & Becoming PART 2 | Legally Clueless Ep 354

·36 min·3 clips

Gashambi reveals how her boss asked her to bend for a file in a closed office, exposing sexual harassment in the legal field.

This episode is part two of host Adele Onyango's conversation with Gashambi, a Kenyan lawyer sharing her personal journey. Gashambi continues detailing her path through the legal profession, focusing on systemic challenges and personal hardships. She recounts failing five of her nine bar admission exams initially, requiring multiple retakes through 2022 and 2023. Gashambi describes navigating a legal culture she finds restrictive, where lawyers are pressured to follow traditional career paths like litigation. She pursued volunteer roles in NGOs, including work related to a femicide march, to follow her interest in humanitarian law. Gashambi shares a traumatic experience of sexual harassment by a senior during her pupillage, where a boss asked her to bend over to retrieve a file in a closed office. She details a subsequent toxic job where she was hired after a bizarre interview and started work the same day with no computer. At this job, she faced unrealistic workloads, verbal abuse from the boss and his family members, and regularly worked until 10 or 11 PM without overtime pay. She was fired via text on a Saturday while attending her cousin's funeral, after she had already decided to resign. The employer withheld her final salary despite repeated requests, which her mother framed as money not meant for her. Gashambi ultimately found fulfillment in humanitarian volunteering, which she sees as aligning with her purpose. A surprising insight is her reframing of exam failure as a divine redirection that taught her to appreciate the units she did pass. She argues that sexual harassment in Kenya's legal field is rampant but rarely discussed due to shame and power imbalances with seniors. Gashambi observes that workplace laws and statutes in Kenya exist but are often ignored or not enforced by employers. She concludes that validation should not be sought from toxic superiors who may not even understand the law themselves. The episode highlights her realization that professional purpose and fulfillment can be separate from monetary gain or traditional success. The tone is deeply personal and confessional, with Gashambi narrating her story vulnerably and emotionally. The style is a structured interview, with Adele providing a supportive space for the detailed narrative. This episode would resonate with law students, early-career professionals, or anyone grappling with toxic work environments and career self-doubt. Listeners seeking stories of resilience and navigating institutional abuse may find it compelling. Those uncomfortable with detailed accounts of workplace harassment or seeking a lighthearted podcast might choose to skip it.

As heard by us

A plainspoken account of workplace harassment and the uneasy clarity that follows.

Legally Clueless tells a plainspoken story about workplace harassment and the unease that lingers after it. Adele Onyango keeps the tone conversational and close to the bone, and the strongest passages come from the small, concrete details: the office setting, the request to…

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Why you'd press play

Hear a first-person story about workplace sexual harassment, discomfort, and the instant a boundary becomes impossible to ignore.

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