Quit comparing your gifts, your looks, your success to someone else. Be you! You are powerful, you are anointed, you are gifted, you are beautiful. Nobody can do you like you can do you.
From a #Ugandan farmer: "It’s ironic how Ugandans will invest hundreds of millions in farm investment and then hire an equivalent of a shamba boy to run it. It beats my understanding" Agronomy is a profession. Farming is a business.
A friend of mine has been complaining that business is bad. I kept consoling her, telling her that there’s a general slowness in almost all sectors. You know how the economy has been acting lately.
This is someone who has always come through for me especially when I’m in need. If I call her stuck, she sends money without hesitation. But of late, things have been so tight she can’t even fuel her personal car properly and has been considering putting it on Uber just to survive.
Yesterday morning, as I left hospital in Bukotol I texted her and found out she was at that church in the junction praying. I waited for her and when she finished, we had a brief chat and she offered to drop me home. On the way, we stopped to top up fuel.
As she was paying, she bumped into one of her biggest clients. This is someone she believed had gone silent for over two months.
After greetings, she casually asked him why he had been so quiet. That’s when the shocker landed.
Not only had he been buying from her, but he had referred three of his friends , all bulk buyers. In fact, just the past week alone, collectively they had ordered over 200 pieces of her product.
Now, one piece goes for UGX 150,000 and she makes about UGX 30,000–45,000 profit per piece.
Do the math.
The client had proof of transactions and communication. The sales were real. The money was real.
The betrayal? Even more real.
Her stock was fully intact. CCTV showed no traffic. That’s when it became clear. Her own staff had diverted her big clients to themselves. They had even gone as far as registering a mobile money till number with a name almost identical to her business.
Meanwhile, she was out here taking loans to pay their salaries, hoping business would pick up again.
Sometimes it’s not the economy or bad luck. Sometimes… it’s the enemy within.
Audit your business. Trust, but verify. Never ignore silence in your own house.
Call your clients. Text them. Follow up. Build direct relationships.
And honestly? Even in relationships, don’t be blindly naive. Let people call you insecure if they want but know what’s happening around you. Awareness is not paranoia.
Because sometimes the problem isn’t outside.
It’s right under your roof.
Mmmmmh!
Writes Habiba Namiiro
Even if 80% of our pupils were to score aggregate four in the PLE and had 50,000 people with Master's and doctorates from top Western universities, we would still need World Bank or Chinese help.
It's not academic scores that make a country. (See my earlier tweet this morning.)