Life never promised entrepreneurs a fair bargain.
The musings of uncle Rwamiti.
People think old men walk slowly because their knees have grown weak.
Nonsense.
We walk slowly because the world talks too fast.
At my age, you begin noticing things younger people rush past.
Last Tuesday, while wandering through a busy trading centre, I stopped outside a hardware shop. It wasn’t the biggest in town. Nor the newest. But it had that unmistakable look of a business that had earned people’s trust over many years.
The owner, James Mulindwa, was standing outside.
Not serving customers.
Not talking on the telephone.
Just… standing.
An entrepreneur’s silence is rarely ordinary.
“My son,” I greeted him. “Business seems unusually quiet.”
He smiled politely.
“Mzee, have you heard about the new bypass road?”
I admitted that I hadn’t.
He pointed towards a distant stretch of land where surveyors were marking the ground.
“When that road opens, traffic will no longer pass here.”
For a moment neither of us spoke.
I looked at the shop.
Neatly arranged shelves.
Years of patient work.
Relationships built one customer at a time.
Nothing inside that building had suddenly become worse.
Yet everything had changed.
Not because James had made a mistake.
Not because he had become lazy.
Not because another hardware shop had beaten him.
The world had simply changed direction.
Life can be remarkably efficient at rewriting our plans.
A week later I passed by again.
This time James was moving shelves around.
“Preparing for fewer customers?” I asked.
He laughed.
“No, Mzee.”
“For more customers?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“For different customers.”
That answer stayed with me long after I left.
Not because it was clever.
Because it was the language of entrepreneurs.
You see, my children, many people believe entrepreneurs possess a secret formula for success.
Work hard.
Plan carefully.
Be honest.
Treat customers well.
Success will surely follow.
It is a comforting story.
Unfortunately…
Life has never signed that agreement.
The better product does not always win.
The harder worker does not always succeed.
The honest entrepreneur sometimes loses to the dishonest one.
The careful planner can still be defeated by illness.
Or technology.
Or a new competitor.
Or a bypass road built two kilometres away.
Life does not negotiate with merit.
It negotiates with reality.
Yet something extraordinary happens.
The following morning…
James opens the shop again.
Not because he has been promised success.
Not because the road has disappeared.
Not because the bank manager has suddenly become kinder.
He opens because hope quietly refuses to resign.
That, I have come to believe, is the true miracle of entrepreneurship.
Not profit.
Not expansion.
Not awards.
Hope.
The quiet determination to begin again, even after life has reminded you that fairness is not part of the contract.
As I continued my walk home, I remembered an old African proverb:
“When the river changes its course, the fisherman does not argue with the river. He learns where to cast his net.”
Perhaps entrepreneurs understand this better than the rest of us.
Every sunrise asks them the same question:
“Will you begin again?”
And every sunrise, thousands of them quietly answer,
“Yes.”
That is why I no longer admire entrepreneurs merely for the businesses they build.
I admire them because, more clearly than almost any other people, they reveal one of life’s deepest truths.
Life is neither fair nor predictable.
Yet human beings continue to build.
Continue to hope.
Continue to begin again.
That is a story worth telling.
Uncle Rwamiti’s Notebook
Entrepreneurship reveals, more clearly than almost any other human activity, that life is neither fair nor predictable—and yet people continue to build, hope and begin again.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of an entrepreneur is not building a business. It is refusing to let an unfair world extinguish hope.
More stories from Uncle Rwamiti exploring the untold human story of entrepreneurship can be viewed at:
Leave a Reply