Microbusiness Vanity and its Wickedness

I am not good in quoting sources. I cannot remember well how the matter was framed. But in what I think I read, an economic survey conducted I do not know by who concluded that micro-businesses fail before celebrating a year. Factors were prevailing economic effects. I am here to say that there is too much wickedness in the occupation that they deserve not to grow.

Operators of small scale business start it as a by the way. It could be a result of lack of employment, need for money, keep self occupied or seasonal for the sake of it. It is carried out by both the illiterate woman at rural and the richest man in Babylon. Any fool can start a micro-business. People are lazy to plant crops, some are poor to own land, few are too busy to provide for their needs without going to a shop and all of us are being indoctrinated that our needs should be bought. 

So a struggling youth after getting some money through copy and paste free lance writing decides to start an M-pesa shop. The thing is soon bugled by a robber. He is back to square one. No savings and no insurance. Others decide to form a group and contribute some shares for a motorcycle. Before long the youth whom they had given the machine to raise income with decides to conspire a thievery story and the investment is lost in thin air. A survey after this will confirm that a good number of respondents have tried micro-business but failed due to thievery.

I have entered in small hotels started by the road to quench hunger. The walls are sack-joined, the floor is a volcano of dust and the heat in keeps the lady’s body unattractive for a sensitive nose. The foods present are oily. The customers are poor men. Utensils are wanting, a quickly rinsed plastic. It is all chaotic and messy. You won’t escape diarrhea if you purchased beans. And if you do, malnutrition awaits you.

Yesterday at the market I went for Irish potatoes. Being a promoter of such small scale business- because of my financial status- the tumbler for fifty bob measure was the smallest. She emptied the contents and down sat wrinkled ones. Ops. It is same with charcoal. A debe stands tall with huge chunks but when emptied the bottom part, reduced in volume by being hammered from outside, empties a dust of particles. 

A man calls himself a carpenter. He buys wet wood and due to its easiness quickly erects a cheap bed and chair which shall contort and deface after being bought. That table that has a long and short stand is his work. The door that used to open and freely close before and not now is his work. Cheap electronics and second grade goods are promoted by micro-sellers. Environmental degradation is their key failure.

To get profit is the intent of today’s business. You buy a 40 litre of cooking oil Container and sub-divide it using nylon papers so that one can sell at KShs 10 will give later a twenty percent profit. It is in this profit that other needs should be met- going for another container included. It is like a snake swallowing its tail.