SURVIVING WITH SALES OF KUNU
Before the demise of her husband eight years ago, Mama Jumai was a cleaner at the airport where she was earning a paltry N7, 000.
The sudden death of her husband left her with the retheir marriage with.
At this point, it dawned on Mama Jumai that her meagre salary can no longer sustain her and the children, hence her decision to go into the production of kunu drink.
At the time she ventured into the kunu-making business, she could only boast of N4, 700, being money she got from sympathisers with which she commenced the business.
With the special way she packages the drink, coupled with ingredients which she puts into it, such as ginger and garlic with honey, her kunu has become people’s favourite at the local airport.
What actually contributed to her success is the fact that she comes from the northern part of the country where kunu is one of the local drinks consumed there.
Mama Jumai who used to hawk the drinks around in a bowl which she carries on her head, has now grown the business to the extent of running a shop where many airport users now go to relax.
An average plastic bottle of the drink sells for between N50 and N70.
Asked how she has been able to grow the business to its present enviable height, Mama Jumai attributes her success to the opportunity made available to her by the popular Lift Above Poverty Organisation (LAPO), a non-governmental and non-profit community development organisation committed to empowering the poor across the country.
According to her, at a point when she was almost contemplating closing down the business as a result of lack of funds to continue, a friend encouraged her to tap from the opportunities made available by LAPO.
The first loan which she took from the organisation was N50, 000 which she used to buy a large quantity of the ingredients required for making kunu drink.
Even though she was given a time frame within which to pay back the loan and then borrow afresh, Mama Jumai confessed that because of high patronage she enjoys, she was able to pay back the loan and even take another one.
For Mama Jumai, the existence of LAPO has brought great relief to people in hardship, especially widows.
Speaking on how she has been able to manage the loan, Mama Jumai attributed that to what she called financial discipline on her part, meaning that she avoids coveting unimportant things.
According to her, she has always ensured that whenever she takes loan from LAPO, she strictly uses it to service her kunu business. In other words, she has learnt to cut her coat to her size by not allowing herself to be tempted into buying those things women are fond of buying.
“I don’t buy ‘Aso Ebi’. I have decided to pay little or no attention to fashionable things. Above all, my children and I have since relocated from the former two bedroom flat we used to stay at Mafoluku while my husband was alive to a one room apartment,” she said.
From the profit she makes from the sale of kunu coupled with her prudent lifestyle and her ability to manage and service her loans, she is currently training her first daughter in one of the polytechnics in the south-western part of Nigeria while the second son is in the senior secondary school with the remaining two still in primary school.
Mama Jumai, who said before the death of her husband she used to see those who engaged in the sale of kunu or other petty trades as unserious, has come to realise that there is no business, no matter how small, that cannot grow; but this she said depends on the ability to manage it.
Mama Jumai is an example of those who make the best use of any opportunity available to them to turn things around for them in the face of challenges.
Today, majority of
No comments: