Before she reports to the boardroom for all-day meetings at Athi Water Works Development Agency, where she is the Acting Deputy Director of Bulk Water Operations, Eng. Caroline Owako, as a rule of thumb, must first hold the most important meeting of the day — the meeting with herself. Some might call it exercising or sticking to a fitness routine, but the civil engineer, now in her early forties, calls it showing up for herself. “You can’t outsource self-care. You live in your body. It’s your first home. If it breaks, where will you live?”
She has done this all her life, first as routine out of leading an active childhood and young adulthood, then as a deliberate choice informed by physiological changes happening in her life. “I have always been active. I used to play tennis in my school years, and I ran half marathons at some point in my life as well.” These precursors paved the way for her highly active life in her thirties. But it is the entry into the forties and the onset of the perimenopausal era that really gave her training and fitness regime a purpose and meaning. While her younger self trained with more focus on aerobics, she now focuses on strength training three times a week and aerobics twice a week.
