The sad story of Gikara - part 2

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When I met Gikara, a time he wanted to share some insights with me, after many of his attempts to reach Wamakothi, who by this time had blocked him, he told me something startling.

Wamigunda and Wamakothi were not the only ones who overnight had changed and developed a hostile attitude towards him, but some of his other known friends. Each time he reached out for help, some immediately began to give him unsolicited investment advice he never asked for. How do you tell a hungry man to invest in a food business with zero capital injection and stock to start with in order to fend for himself? In some instances, he'd tell them to cut their crap and answer either yes or no to his request, not make him look like a pitiable beggar that first had to be humiliated before given that soft loan he was looking for.

He told me a truth many don't know. Not everyone is cut for business. Not everyone is cut for employment. He had tried business as a side hustle while still employed and all failed. Not through poor mismanagement, but the reality employment provided systems for career growth compared to business, creating two different contrasts. When that entrepreneur thrives in business, that employee thrives in employment elsewhere. And both gets satisfaction at the end of the day in their respective field of endeavour.

Even what seems like a less capital intensive venture like chicken rearing is simply said than done. His experience with chicken was when nearly all his flock was decimated by a virus, and thieves swept away his few remaining birds. A cow he reared in his rural home died of foot and mouth disease, not because he failed to have it vaccinated, because an outbreak left the village counting cow carcasses more than their remaining herds. 

That employment has own downsides is not in contention, so does business. Business may give you room for innovation than employment where you may follow a rigid work schedule in the latter, with targets to meet. Business makes you flexible, but in employment you're like a programmed robot on clockwork mode depending on levers pulled or buttons pressed.

The sad part. When everyone began erasing him from their social circles, or avoiding him like plague, that's when he realized one's worth ends when financial problems begin. Even if he reached out just because he needed that fare to go and check the availability of that job promised, all he would get were the unsolicited investment lectures, and when he asked those self-claimed financial experts if they made a breakthrough using the very formulas they were advancing, and several of them were in employment, they'd walk out of him, one by one, and block him.

And this is not a TBT story!



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