Wealth & Honour

When I was leaving Starehe Institute in April 2007, I became intensely ambitious. I wanted to start a business and grow rich while still a young man. At that time, I remember engaging Evans Ogari, a bright schoolmate of mine at Starehe, in a conversation on how businesses are founded.

During the April 2007 holiday that followed after I left Starehe, I began to mentally note the names of car manufacturers. I got to know the logos of BMW, Toyota, Volkswagen and other vehicle-making companies. Given how ambitious I was, I must have been thinking that I would own a car by one of those companies in a few years time.

While walking on the streets of Nairobi during that same April holiday, I started to envy people meeting on tables of aristocratic restaurants along the streets. That envy led me to dream that I would also join the league of businessmen meeting in such restaurants. And I shared that dream with my senior brothers Joe and Paddy on one night that April as we were having a lively discussion here at home.

Also during that April holiday, I read a few books on how to get rich. One of them was about how its author became a dollar millionaire by the age of 26. Unfortunately, I have long since forgotten the title of that book as well as the name of its author. The other book I recall reading during that holiday was Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich which added fuel to the flames of my ambition to be a rich man.

Fuelled by that ambition, I soon began to harbour in my mind an idea of founding a company that would operate a chain of cyber cafes in cities and towns in Kenya, much in the same way some companies run a chain of supermarkets. And to make the cyber cafes operated by my company a cut above the rest, I envisioned the company offering refreshments in its cyber cafes as well as tutorials on how to use computers effectively. It was an idea that I perceived would make me rich. And the name I christened the company I intended to found was Mtandao Super-cyber.

I went ahead to write a business plan for the Mtandao Super-cyber company that I intended to found. Actually, I didn't write the business plan; I just plagiarized it from an example given in a certain website that I came across on the internet. A classmate of mine at Starehe Institute called Stephen Mutevu complimented me for the well-written business plan. Little did he know that it was a product of plagiarism.

After intelligently plagiarizing the business plan to make it appear my own work, I emailed several prominent people in Kenya and shared my idea with them in the hope that they would contribute the start-up capital. The prominent people I contacted were businessmen Chris Kirubi and Manu Chandaria as well as Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, the then Kenya's Trade Minister. All of them didn't bother to reply to my email but Manu Chandaria was kind enough to forward my email to one Mr. Kevit Detsei who invited me to his office in Nairobi to discuss my idea.

The evening before the day I was to meet Mr. Detsei, I felt very happy and confident about my idea. And I became even more enthusiastic when I read that same evening a motivational book that encouraged me to act on my ideas.

But alas! Come the following morning, my moods changed as I headed to Mr. Detsei's office. I grew dull and confused. By the time I was meeting Mr. Detsei, I was a complete wretch.

Well, I tried to sell my idea to Mr. Detsei by pointing out to him how the printing press revolutionized the world and saying computers were having the same effect, so my company was destined to be a big hit. But probably because I was confused, Mr. Detsei listened to me for a few minutes and then called an employee in his company named Rocky Mbithi to deal with me. (Rocky Mbithi was a classmate of mine in high school and I hadn't known he was an employee in Mr. Detsei's company till Mr. Detsei called him to deal with me. That was a surprise for me.)

Those frustrations of prominent people not responding to my emails and of Mr. Detsei not listening to me made me give up on my idea. And when I matriculated at the university in JKUAT the following month, the challenges I underwent through killed my ambitious spirit. Challenges such as of being told how confused I was, of having poor social skills, of having trouble understanding engineering concepts that we were being taught at the university and of being forcefully admitted to hospital after going astray. Those challenges killed my ambitious spirit for shizzle. To this day, more than a decade later, I have never grown rich enough to afford a car.

Today, I have resolved to resurrect in me that ambitious spirit that I once had of growing rich. This time, I want to gain not only wealth but also honour like King David, my hero in the Bible. And now that I understand life better, I will just continue developing my talents while praying for breakthroughs. Hopefully when I die, it will be said of me, as it was said of King David, that Thuita "died at a good old age, having enjoyed long life, wealth and honour". Adieu!

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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed this story about wealth and honour, you might also enjoy another I wrote sometimes back on "What I Didn't Understand at the University". Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.