Crossing To The Other Side by Victor Oladejo.

“𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒖𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒕 𝒐𝒏 𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒖𝒓𝒆, 𝒇𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒉𝒚” — 𝑨𝒓𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒕 𝑬𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒊𝒏.

Sometimes in my life , i felt i would go beneath the water, mix and never to be seen again like salt but be ever present in the water and after a while it was as if i was reaching out for things that aren’t there(things that i assume that are there). This feelings might surprise you, but i was not the only one in the labour market at the time. the universities, college and vocational schools , push countless of ‘job hunters’ like me every year into the tight and filled space of the league of who gets the job. I thought just attending school and getting the certificate is a valid ticket just enough for getting jobs but i was proved wrong after i graduated from the university where i studied banking and finance.

After a year i left school, i served the country in the Nysc , still nursing the fragile dream of working in the bank. After the service , i returned home only to be ushered into the ‘real world’. I attended several interviews but i didn’t get the job. I didn’t try to go for other jobs, it was the life behind a table and a chair that i wanted. I was so full with the dream of getting the job that i always search the internet and apply , but at the end the sweet voice of the interviewer would be: ‘ Always check your e-mail to see if you are picked’ . i would then all through the day wait for e-mail that never came. It turned out that the banks had picked those they wanted even before the interview. I was frustrated. I came a very long way to get a certificate and then jobs were scarce. I relied heavily on relatives around and as the time went by they began to complain about the burden i was creating for them. After some while i decided to press for other jobs . first it was a teaching job that offered very little. I worked there for a long time but the money wasn’t enough to feed me. I dropped the job and searched for job elsewhere but the issue i faced was either they were overstaffed or the firm was laying off their workers.

The turning point in my life came one day while i was chatting with one of my friends who had just started a business. He told me that if i wanted to solve my problem i should think and start a simple business. He gave me a book about starting a small business. I studied it very well and what i learnt was: create a business where you think an essential commodity is scarce or needed. I thought about this idea of supplying snacks to schools and shops. It was funny at first but when i contacted Bayo( my friend who gave me the book), He encouraged me to start it and suggested we should do the business together. That was how we started the plantain and potato chips business.

To be candid it wasn’t easy at first. After we bought machines for sealing the nylons and printed our labels, we employed two women to help us in the frying of the chips. We were making high sales when we sold them and it continued like that for a longtime until the price of plantain climbed higher the ladder. The money we made wasn’t enough to meet the demand of shops that had placed order and paid for goods we were planning to supply. We struggled to meet the demand but it ate into the money and we were nearly broke. We tried to get a loan but the interest was unbearable. We began to buy plantain on credit and restarted the business. We embarked on a new strategy of supplying shops in other towns and villages. It wasn’t long that our firm was too big to be limited to two staffs that we started to employ more women to help us fry the plantain and we paid the farmer that was supplying us quickly. While delivering chips for schools , Bayo was supplying shops. After two years our product of potato and plantain chips built us houses each and got us cars. We became independent and i was free of troubles.

To cross to the otherside from failure into success ,we need to realize that the various events in our life that twist , fold and toss us into fire are for a purpose with God as our ultimate guide. We need to know that big things always start small. The great fire always start with a sparkle of light. The beginning of a dream is always tough we can see this in The life of Thomas Edison after he invented the light bulb. When a reporter asked : “ how do you feel to fail 1,000 times? Edison replied “ i didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with l,000 steps”. Let us all keep our dreams alive in all it’s stages.