Kampala is the capital city of Uganda, a country that is located in East Africa. Like any city in the world, it has hordes of poor and rich people. However, this short story will illustrate to you how John (not real names), a father of four, took more miracles than fate to get his children back to school and also managed to survive a new government law on forestry.
John had migrated to the city in the mid-1980s when life in Kampala was affordable for many people. Over the years that followed, John made a living selling coal stoves. The raw material for these stoves was the rusty rails in Namuwongo, a southern suburb of the city and 5 miles from his work station. the fuel was wood from logged forests
John enjoyed his work and was able to raise a happy family. He could meet with his fellow tribesmen in the evenings at a local bar where they could discuss problems at home.
Because his business was so booming, John didn’t think to save for bad times. As fate would strike an unsuspecting lion, the government banned all charcoal stoves in a project titled “Save Our Forests.”
John was caught off guard and ill prepared. His children had reached the secondary level and he needed more funds to keep them in school. After much thought, John found an easier way to earn money; that’s fooling people.
In Kampala, intelligence is associated with well-being and wealth.
So John devised a plan to buy nice shoes, shirts, and suits just to pretend he’s an investor. He could go to the post office every day with a nice briefcase.
One Tuesday morning, a British man working for a prominent non-governmental organization (NGO) met John at the post office. Because he was smart, funny, and interesting, John exchanged contacts with this expat after convincing him that he was an investor who was broke from a bad financial deal and needed a little funding to get his business off the ground.
John and James, the expat (not their real names), would hang out on the golf course in the afternoons. This new friendship was to be the source of John’s wealth because this Englishman recommended that he do most of the local business for his NGO, such as insurance services, printing services, cleaning services, procurement services, etc. .
He formed a company John & Partners LLC after being advised by a local friend and it is in this company name that John was able to get most of the contracts.
Through a mix of ingenuity, hard work, and luck, John was able to build a business that not only grew but employed most of the former craftsmen who used to work with him as cleaners and couriers. He indirectly saved most of his fellow tribesmen from unemployment.
When the NGO went out of business in mid-2000 and expatriate James returned to London, John’s company was able to move into insurance services given the amount of capital it had built up.
Today, John’s company is one of the fastest growing insurance companies in Kampala. He sent all of his children to study at universities in Europe and America and they are the ones who run the company.
The story is a remarkable turnaround for an immigrant craftsman who tricked an expat into believing him as an investor and then cultivated a friendship that saved John from looming poverty.
