Life is hard and we all are fighting one battle or the other. True we do have occasional episodes of some good times when the stars are aligned in your favour, but it seems we are always fighting challenges and obstacles most of the time.
Some say that life is not fair and we should not expect it to be smooth. Some say that the true mark of man is how he handles and overcomes challenges that marks one as a success.
Others like the good people at www.thindifference.com say that life has gifts and challenges. Its your duty to identify your gifts and utilize each them for your benefit.
They say "Each of us has gifts. We may not recognize it right away, or some may take time to develop. Either way, we all have gifts. It could be writing, dancing, leading, lecturing, designing, inventing, thinking, business etc. In our life, we have gifts to use.
We all have challenges. Each of us has challenges. They stare at us each day. Our challenges can be procrastination, disorganization, drugs, alcohol, laziness, negativity, unhealthiness, anger, poverty, etc. In our life, we carry a challenge or two."
In the context of our third world realities, it may not be possible for opportunities to abound for one to take advantage of his gifts.
Two men who are in the lowest echelons of our society and who are my friends have earned my immense respect and admiration for overcoming challenges that would overwhelm many. Here are their stories.
Ernest is a security guard working for a multinational security firm. He plys his trade in my block of flats in Nairobi. He is the first born in his family and the burden of expectations from his family is just too heavy. He moonlights as a carwash guy, cleaning at least 8 cars in the compound when he reports for duty. Between 7 pm and midnight, he will wash the cars and earn at least a thousand shillings from each every month. That meagre amount complements his net salary earnings of seven thousands. Ernest has taken all loans possible from his salary.
Over the last two years we have talked about his desire to get out of the poverty circle. His father has a two acre shamba and with four sons, there is not much land available for farming. He once mentioned that his home is on the outskirts of a small rural town. I asked him if he consider building some four rooms for rental. Construction is not expensive in his part of the country where bricks abound. He took up the challenge and commissioned his young brother in high school to bake the bricks. His father donated some timber for curing the bricks.
In no time, the rooms were ready and the forces of demand and supply soon dictated that a lodging was preferred to the monthly lease by the locals. Although he could not afford to furnish them with beds, a mattress on the floor was earning him three hundred shilling a night. The possibility of earning over a thousand shilling a day as opposed to washing a car for thirty days to earn the same was his eureka moment. He used to call me to chat on how that was eye-opening moment.Soon he was planning to run a pub in the compound and increase the rooms.
Two years later, he is about to resign from employment to go to the village to run his pub and lodging. He is moving his family to the village in the new year. He has a chicken project planned for the wife who was jobless in Nairobi. He will lease one or two farms to grow sugarcane as well as manage a brick making enterprise to supplement his income. He says that he will be busy with the bricks, chicken and sugarcane businesses in the mornings and the pub later in the day.
As part of my encouragement and support, I donated to him two empty crates of beer and an old computer that will be refurbished to house a hard disk of 40 plus hours of music to keep his patrons entertained.
I wish Ernest all the best on his ground-breaking venture.
The other gentleman I have met and admired makes a living in a trade we called "chupa na debe" or "wadebe" in our youth. He buys old newspapers, plastics and metals from those who have more than they need. He is the original OLX though his repertoire of products is limited. Mbogo was brought up in abject poverty and was not lucky enough to get an education. His family had a small piece of land that was disputed and forced him to look for a way out.
Without education, he didn't have many choices and ended up scourging for scrap metal and paper. He soon built a network across the City and beyond into the region selling his papers as far as Kampala. I met him when I wanted to get rid of my heap of old papers and as we were measuring the same we got talking and became good friends over the last three years.
Mbogo today owns a nursery school in his adopted village employing three qualified teachers and earning some money from a business he admits he knows nothing about. He has entrusted his business to the teachers and the community supports him.
He recently invited me to his village as his boy was being initiated into manhood and I was proud of his determination to overcome the challenges he was dealt by life. He has a permanent home and thriving farm on his one acre shamba. And what a transformation- when in the city he rides an old bicycle and adorns some not so pleasant clothes. However in the village he is well dressed and groomed. When I inquire he tells me that in Nairobi, no one will sell scrap metal to a neat person, there is a mental lock we have on who should trade in old papers and scrap metal.
These two men have earned my respect by the way they have overcome adversity and make something of themselves. They have used their gifts and not dwelt on the challenges laid on their paths. Hongera.
Do we let our gifts shine through, or do we let our challenges weigh us down?
Image Courtesy-http://inspirationcafe.org/
