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| My wonderful wife |
"Side hustles" or simply
engaging in a side business besides our regular jobs is common these days. This
is normally done with the intent of increasing ones earnings as far as income
is concerned. It’s also one of the great ways of diversifying and expanding one’s
horizon as far as career and business growth is concerned. Most employees in
both the public and private sectors are running small businesses on the side in
order to supplement their salaries. Some also hope that someday when their
small businesses grow, they’ll be able to comfortably exit formal employment to
fully run their own businesses.
It’s also common for
business people to divert from time to time from their main area of business operation
so as to try a hand in another line of business.
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| Sweet potatoes |
So after some consultations,
we decided to give the “ngwashe” business a try. The most important factor was
the supplies. My wife worked out the available options as far as getting our
supplies is concerned. After a few weeks of consultations, we finally decided
that my mum would be a great source of our sweet potatoes supplies. The main obstacle
here is that my mum lives in Moi’s bridge (situated between Eldoret and Kitale
towns) yet the sweet potatoes were meant to be sold in Nairobi. Unknown to my
wife and I, this was going to bring about a huge logistical nightmare mainly
because of the distance and the expenses involved.
When we finally got my
mum to get the supplies for us, my wife sent her the amount of money needed to
buy the sweet potatoes, to pay for the labor involved and for transportation
expenses. Having done that we thought that the work would be done in like 2
days and we’ll be having our sweet potatoes in a short time ready to take them
to the market. But this was not to be because of the heavy rains that were pounding
several parts of the country at the time. This made it hard for the sweet
potatoes to be harvested since the work involves a lot of digging in order to
get them from the ground. By good luck the skies did clear for a while and the harvesting
of the sweet potatoes commenced and was completed successfully. This was
definitely a sigh of relief for us for we knew that finally, our sweet potatoes
will be on the way to Nairobi.
However, that was when
the real logistical issues now surfaced. The initial plans were to use one of
the bus companies that also operate courier services along the Nairobi-Eldoret-Kitale
route. Easy Coach Bus Company seemed to be the best option mainly because of
their organized structure (or so we thought). An “employee” of easy Coach Bus Company
in the Moi’s bridge office informed my mum that they will be able to transport
the sweet potatoes without any problem as long as we pack them in some standardized
quantity. Transport preparations were therefore being made based on the
information provided by this particular Easy Coach Bus Company “employee” at
the Moi’s Bridge office.
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| An easy coach bus |
The sweet potatoes had
to be transported using a motor bikes (boda boda) which had to make several
trips because of the quantity of sweet potatoes involved (two 100kg bags).
However upon reaching the Easy Coach offices in Moi’s Bridge town, we were
informed that Easy Coach will not be able to provide the courier services as we
had been informed. Apparently the “employee” who had said the company will
provide the courier services wasn’t present (I thought all employees of any
reliable company should be homogenous as far as the company’s services are
concerned). This was a major issue that had to be solved as soon as possible.
Finally my mum decided
to try using the services of Postal
Corporation of Kenya (how many people still use Posta anyway?). The Postal Corporation of Kenya
services turned out to be more expensive and as such we had to send more money
to cater for transportation. The Posta guys
informed us that the sweet potatoes will be transported to Nairobi overnight
and as such we’ll be able to get our luggage (sweet potatoes) the next day
early in the morning (since when were they that fast?). We however decided to
keep our hopes alive hoping that the Posta
people will keep their word.
To our surprise, early
the next morning my wife received a call from The Postal Corporation of Kenya informing her that the sweet
potatoes had arrived (this must clearly be the new face of Posta). As you can guess we were really happy that finally the
consignment had arrived. My wife then made arrangements to pick the sweet
potatoes from City Square post office
- of course she had to deal with a particular watchman with very little
knowledge on PR issues who kept on asking irrelevant questions on how sweet
potatoes were transported through the Posta’s
courier service. The long and the short of it is that my wife finally
managed to get the consignment after a long weary wait. She was also advised by
the employees there that she can have the next consignment sent straight to the
Karen Post Office branch which is
near our home. This is a clear indication to me that there have been some
improvements at The Postal Corporation
of Kenya while we have been away. And sure enough we had our second consignment
picked from the Karen Post office a
few days later courtesy of one great Posta
employee.
The distribution of the
sweet potatoes wasn’t easy but it was definitely a lesser challenging job
considering what we have been through. Everyone who had a chance to taste the
juicy sweet potatoes kept on asking for more of the same. I never knew people
would get addicted to sweet potatoes. Within a few days all the sweet potatoes
that my wife had bought were over and people kept on asking for them. This made
us realize that selling sweet potatoes in the Ngong area is great business
because of the high demand available.
We were unable to get
more sweet potatoes from Moi’s Bridge partly because of the rains that have
been causing floods in different parts of the country. However my wife is still
determined to grow the sweet potatoes business after realizing that resilience,
patience and hard work pays well. Having said that, we’ll be having our next
huge consignment of sweet potatoes coming in early next year (2012), courtesy
of my lovely wife.
