Helping you pay the bills
Helen Keller once said:
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.”
What are you waiting for? Go out and try to achieve your dreams!
“While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.”
Kalahari.co.ke have the following as part of their site’s terms of use:
No person, business or web site may link to any page on this site without the prior written permission of kalahari.
What does that mean? Jameni!
Undoubtedly, Kalahari (I apparently do not have permission to link to them) is a welcome entrant into the Kenyan e-commerce scene but why the overly strict terms? Does Google and other search engines have written permission to include Kalahari in their search results?
The web is built on the idea that sites should link between each other. Can you imagine if every website clearly prohibited anyone from linking to them? The internet would become much less useful, in my humble opinion. Moreover, the number of other websites linking to your own site is a strong determinant of how well you have done your SEO.
I suppose the people behind Kalahari know what they’re doing…
I used to work at one of the so called “Big Four” accounting firms. A place described as one of the best workplaces in Kenya. True to this, the pay at this company is extremely good and the work is challenging and enjoyable. I remember once I had almost a year of first hand experience at running and managing a pharmaceutical company – the experience was…breathtaking, enjoyable and helped me learn so much. However, I did not like my job very much. In fact, I barely liked it. We worked extremely long hours, for one thing. At the end of the day, I guess, the thing I disliked the most was….taking orders. I just had different ideas about my life. I did not go through school and university so that I could spend the rest of my life doing jobs that I did not like. What kind of life would that be? So I quit last year. It has been hard, very hard, and more than once I have thought of just going to beg for my old job back. But I wholeheartedly believe that quitting was the best decision I ever made.
I still struggle, I struggle a lot but I’m generally happier now. Everything I do now, I do for me. And everything I earn, I earn for me. Your boss does not care about you the way you care about yourself, you know? You may be making millions of shillings for your company but how much do you take home every month? I feel that a lot of people work their jobs because they have to. We go to work because we have to; we have to pay the bills and feed the baby; we have to survive. I do not know if I am a lost soul but, with everything in me, I feel that life should be about more than just surviving. The average human spends a lot of his or her days on earth working. Is it really meant to be that that those days should be un-enjoyable, uncomfortable, regrettable or even contemptuous? I strongly believe that this is not how it is supposed to be.
If what I am doing with Like Chapaa and other things fails and I have to go get a job like everyone else it would hurt me greatly. My self pride would be destroyed. If I had to go and beg for my old job back, my zeal for life and self belief would be forever gone. I cannot imagine such pain. One of my friends had to do something like that recently. I cannot imagine how it is like for her. 🙁
We get a lot of emails at Like Chapaa. And way too many of them are from people who are suffering. Some of the emails we get are by people who are not even asking for something – they are just writing out of frustration or just to ‘release’. People who want a better life and believe that a better life is possible yet they do not know how to achieve it. Good people. Intelligent people. Skilled and talented people. People who do not deserve to be cornered and oppressed by life. Dear readers, it hurts me to say that there is a lot of pain and suffering in this our land of Kenya. A lot of pain and suffering in this world.
We try to help all the people who email us. We really do try. In fact, this very reason is why we set up Like Chapaa and why we started Biashara 30. But there’s only so much that we can do, you know? Sometimes I wish I had a million dollars so that I could help everyone who needs help. But I am no superman. And it pains me when I get yet another email and I know that I will not be able to offer much assistance to that particular individual. I’m happy with the progress made by Like Chapaa and Biashara 30 but the sad fact is that what we have done is just a drop in the ocean of what needs to be done.
Dear readers, how do we make our efforts more effective? There is a lot of pain and suffering in this country. We want to do everything in our power to lessen this pain. It is a big huge goal, eh? What do we do to achieve it? We need your help.
I spent the weekend with a lively group of people and we talked a lot about the state of e-commerce in Kenya (more on this in a later article). Things seem to be really really picking up – for example, Nickel Pro has built more online shops this year than the whole of 2009 (and we’re only in March). However, as fast as things seem they are moving, great huge stumbling blocks remain. There is still no reliable, convenient way to process online payments in Kenya. 🙁
One thing that we discussed at length was the state of old media (particularly newspaper companies) in Kenya. In more developed countries, newspaper industries are dying because of the Internet. Many of these companies have good and useful websites but no one has found out how to efficiently make money off news sites. This means that the newspaper companies are facing a declines in sales because less people are buying the physical newspapers – preferring to read news online yet the online news is not monetized efficiently. What a predicament, eh? The news business is in trouble!
What about Kenya, though? Well, I think that this situation will take time to be apparent in Kenya. The impact of the Internet on newspaper sales is probably minimal. But for how long? Newspaper companies should be wary – especially with the fast uptake of of the mobile web in Kenya. It won’t be long before people, en masse, start consuming news primarily through their mobile devices and PCs.
Can we do anything to speed this up?
What if you poached the leading writers from all our major newspapers? You know, akina Mutahi Ngunyi, Sunny Bindra, Chris Hart…even Oyunga Pala. Take twenty of the best and most well known writers in the country – writers with fans who never miss reading them. Pay them handsomely to work exclusively for you and set up a website that is well designed and works very well on the computer and on mobile devises. Now, everyone who wants to read their favorite writer has to come to you. Hopefully, the newspapers will not find replacements quickly enough.
The question is…..will you succeed in shaking up the industry? Will the new business make you lots of money? How will the public take it? What do you think of this idea?
A while back, I wrote about 8-4-4 robots. Specifically, I wrote this:
Do we go to school so that we can be able to get a job? Am I missing something here? Don’t we all go to school so that when we come of age we are able to build a good life for ourselves and become valuable citizens? School is important, very important. But not as important as most people think it is. The important thing is to learn all that you can and how to use it to achieve your goals and/or make a good life for yourself. As it happens, ’schooling’ is not the same as ‘education’. As Mark Twain once said, don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
I’ve been thinking about this subject ever since. Do you remember learning to factor quadrilateral equations in high school? x2 -32x +12? Or calculus? Why were you taught this? Have you ever applied it in your life or work? If you are not a scientist or engineer well, you probably forgot about all that…. But why did they spend hours drilling you on such clearly useless content? Why does school teach things that most people never use? What is the purpose of school?
I believe that, as it is right now, education systems are designed to produce employees. I remember being given assignments to write English compositions while in Form 3. The teachers did not like it if you did not write in accordance with certain moulds or styles – you did not have the freedom to write what you imagined. Why is this? At school, you were being trained to be a compliant ‘cog’, someone who could mindlessly follow instructions as opposed to seeking out innovation and surprise.
Seth Godin puts it best, “I love math. I love the idea of working with numbers, of inventing cool ideas that click. But memorizing factors of 32? It’s clearly an effort to teach you to be taught, to instruct you in compliance, to follow the curriculum.”
That’s an excerpt from Seth Godin’s book, Brainwashed : Seven Ways to Re-invent Yourself.
Years ago, when you were about four years old, the system set out to persuade you of something that isn’t true.
Not just persuade, but drill, practice, reinforce, and yes, brainwash.
The mission: to teach you that you’re average. That compliant work is the best way to a reliable living. That creating average stuff for average people, again and again, is a safe and easy way to get what you want.
Step out of line and the system would nudge (or push) you back to the center. Show signs of real creativity, originality or even genius, and well-meaning parents, teachers and authority figures would eagerly line up to get you back in line.
Our culture needed compliant workers, people who would contribute without complaint, and we set out to create as many of them as we could.
And so generations of students turned into generations of cogs, factory workers in search of a sinecure. We were brainwashed into fitting in, and then discovered that the economy wanted people who stood out instead.
When exactly were we brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a living is to have a job?
Download the book for free and learn how you can liberate yourself: [download id=”28″]
Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. Godin is author of multiple books that have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. His newest book is Linchpin.
What did you think of the book?
Are you a product of the 8-4-4 system? Well, whether you are or you are not you have probably heard about this: “8-4-4 produces robots”. Is it true? It is said that the 8-4-4 system of education has a workload so heavy that that students go through school without getting a real education; it is said that the system produces people trained to cram and follow instructions but not actually think on their own. I’m an 8-4-4 product and so I am not sure that all this is true.
If it is true, then the 8-4-4 seems to be perfect at producing … employees. Since the dawn of the industrial age, the bulk of employment opportunities were available in “factory-type” jobs. Jobs in which the employee is a faceless ‘cog’ among many. The 8-4-4, it seems, is perfect at producing cogs. However, one may argue that all education systems everywhere produce ‘cogs’.
Why do people go to school? A while ago I heard about a pair of parents who had quite the strange reaction to the wonderful news that their daughter (who was still in college) was starting a business. The parents were furious that their daughter was starting a business instead of focusing on her school work (she was in university) and promptly put an end to her entrepreneurial ways. “Finish school, get a good job and then think about starting a business,” was the advice given.
Do we go to school so that we can be able to get a job? Am I missing something here? Don’t we all go to school so that when we come of age we are able to build a good life for ourselves and become valuable citizens? School is important, very important. But not as important as most people think it is. The important thing is to learn all that you can and how to use it to achieve your goals and/or make a good life for yourself. As it happens, ‘schooling’ is not the same as ‘education’. As Mark Twain once said, don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
I’m sure you’ve all heard about the noble cause of the Kenyan government to make Kenya an offshore outsourcing destination. Companies like Kencall are, currently, the face of these noble and valuable efforts. I have been thinking about Kenya as an outsourcing hub and I still wonder, can we really make it a reality? Yes, companies like Kencall do very well but will Kenya ever be as big as countries like India when it comes to offshore outsourcing? I think not.
Last week, I was talking to some people who are interested in starting an egg (mayai) business. They want to sell eggs on a large scale. Do you know it is cheaper to import eggs from Egypt than it is to produce them locally? And that’s just one product – pick any industry in this country and you will quickly realise that producing goods locally if often several times more expensive than it is to just import them. What does this mean for us, as a country wishing to grow our producing and manufacturing industries?
You would think that imported products are cheaper, but those that are locally manufactured are of a better quality, yes? Well, this may be true in some cases but more often than not, it is not. A trip to Nairobi’s industrial area would leave you shocked at just how much of what we consume locally is outsourced – from packaging material to the whole manufacturing process. The people who outsource would like to use Kenyan alternatives but it does not make business sense to do so. Why pay more for something of a lesser quality?
What about services? We’re good at that, at least, eh? Well, not really. Undoubtedly, we have a very educated and extremely skilled workforce. But, it is still cheaper to get things done in India, or elsewhere. Case in point: Kenyan ‘technology’ firms (software producers, web design, web development, etc etc) often require to hire additional programmers, designers, etc to handle small tasks. The local labour force is very well equipped to handle these tasks. However, the local labour force is also nearly five times more expensive than offshore (often Indian) options. Who would you choose to go with?
Now, this post is not meant to bash Kenya and Kenyans. I’m a Kenyan too. 🙂
I’m just simply wondering: how can we compete with India as an outsourcing destination when we ourselves outsource to India? As a people and as a nation we have to ask ourselves: what are we doing wrong? Why is it cheaper to import sofa sets from China (and taking shipping costs into account) than it is to make the sofa set locally? Why is Kenyan stuff so expensive? Can we ever compete with economies like India or China? I do not know the answers to these questions. Do you?
What I do know is that the following are some of the things we need to address:
What do you think?
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