Chichi (not her real name) is one of the most inspiring individuals I have come across, Chichi has got a pragmatic positivity about her, she is not merely optimistic in a dreamy manner, she’s got a plan.

On paper Chich’s highest level of education would appear to be grade nine. When she completed her grade 12, through some mistake her results were given to someone else, that is someone with the same name who had not written the final grade 12 exams, but had collected Chichi’s results as her own. She found this out when she went to collect her results she was told that there had been two people with the same name, her and somebody else and one of them hadn’t written the examination, and also that the results had already been collected by the other person. This, coupled with family issues derailed Chichi’s academic progress, but the amazing thing about her is that you would perceive her as a university graduate if you ever had the chance to meet her.
Her knowledge and her firm grasp of common sense, that is, the kind that is not so common and her self confidence, you would be forgiven to think she was the managing director of a large enterprise, and well you wouldn’t be that far off.
Chichi is a mother of three, runs her own small business as well as holds down a Job. She has been running her business for a number of years, she keeps it simple, she basically sells food items to people, she’s got her customers which she provides with food items, orders items such as fish and potatoes and goes around and delivers to her customers. On the surface it would seem that Chichi is simply a trader, but when you listen to her describe her strategies you would think twice and realize that she is not only providing her customers with goods, she is providing them with a quality service as well.
Chichi puts it like this.
“I time the month end and when people are really broke and are unable to pay for food for cash, I go around and offer them food items like potatoes and fish which I order in bulk. I time it so that it is just before they get paid, that way even though I sell them the items on credit, they soon pay me.”
She knows, for example, when the lectures at the University of Zambia get paid, and times her business around their time table, she knows that at times before they’ve been paid they might have run out of money and that is when she takes the food to them on credit and they later pay her. Over time she has come to learn that they are some people who will not honour their debt, but she has not been discouraged by the setbacks and she has come to build up a clientele of customers who pay their debts and do so on time.
When I asked her about those that don’t pay her and how she deals with them.

“I know what I am offering is good, and those that don’t pay me are the ones that lose out”
She said with a smile on her face.
She emphasizes on seizing opportunities and she has an array of stories of how she has drawn on her experiences as well as her observations and used that knowledge and skill in her enterprises. She mentioned an account of how she noticed how her sister made money off selling certain clothe items to a particular target market and she analyzed her sister’s business model and then went out bought hand bags and sold them to the same group. Chichi went on to explain how she had worked in various places within Lusaka, restaurants and the like, and at the same time running her own businesses, and how the money earned from the business went straight to funding her savings account and looking after her children.
She described her investment strategies as well as her cost saving measures, at this point you would be impressed by her story but it doesn’t end here.

Chichi, noticed a building under construction, an office/retail park and decided to go and apply for a job in one of the establishments, she applied to work in an internet café as a cashier or a general assistant, but as chance would have it the owner of the place was yet to employ a manager for the place, he therefore offered this Job instead, at that time the owner of the café had his other company (an IT company) to worry about as well as it was also moving into this new building, with so many things up in the air, it fell upon Chichi not only to be the manager of the soon to open internet café but also to be its business developer, as she was left to come up with a business plan for it, as well as design the interior as well as supervise the workers that were working on the café.

This did not happen in a single day, but it did happen over a very short time, in fact only several days, in less than two weeks, through her self confidence and desire to work hard and not shun responsibility Chichi went from a cashier applicant, to an internet café manager in the space of a few days. At this point you might be thinking that the story reads like a fairytale well not only is it a true story, this Cinderella’s carriage doesn’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight, the amazing story continues.
While working on setting up the internet café, Chichi found herself being asked to take on even more responsibility as her boss’s IT company was in much need of and administrator, after the one that was there was fired.
Chichi was not a ‘know it all’ and this is something she continuously admits, but she defines it not as a limitation but as an opportunity as she is continuously expressing her desire to learn. Despite what opportunities she might not have had or what she may not know, she has the desire and determination to seize every opportunity she has now. And as I write this she is making plans to rewrite her grade twelve and work on her education.

Posted in People Zambia in Colour
1 Comment Posted by michael