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| Taken during the project |
I made a million Uganda shillings straight out of high
school in 2009. Ugx 1,000,000 ($400) may not seem like much, however the story
of how I did so certainly is. It all started in November 2008, the period
leading to my A’level final exams at Kako Senior Secondary School, Masaka.
Mr. Menya, the school cameraman was selling photographs he
had taken of students as he usually did every weekend. As he flipped through
his stack collection looking for mine, he landed on a bunch of awfully taken
student headshots. When I inquired what they were for, he responded that they
were intended for the school magazine.
Having had a brief history in photography and design, I was
upset that the headmaster could allow such terribly taken photographs to appear
in an important publication like the school’s first edition magazine. At once,I rushed to talk to my classmate Bill
who I figured knew something about the photographs since his headshot was among
the collection and besides he was the president of the writers club which was
working closely with administration to realize the magazine project that had
stalled for a year.
Bill did know something. After explaining my point of view
of why a magazine could not possibly have bad images, he posed the question, “why
don’t we make the magazine?”
His idea was so big that it knocked the wind out of me and
for about a minute there was complete silence. His idea sounded like a very
good one but it possibly could have been a bad one as well. We discussed it
more that night in Abraham’s private dorm room which he had shared with him.
Our conversation went well into the night. Walking back to my dormitory, I was
so excited about the idea even though it seemed less likely that the school
would go for it.
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| L-R Rwakatungu Bill the media guy, Patrick Seruyange the money guy and Kanuma Abraham the muscle |
The following day Bill convinced Abraham, who was a student
body chairman to join us for our meeting with the headmaster, Mr. Wamala, to
put forth our interest in taking over the school magazine project. Maureen, a
classmate who was the deputy president of the writers club and a straight A
student, joined us. She made us look like we meant business.
After waiting in the secretary’s cranked office, which acted
as a waiting room, we were called in.
Bill being the extrovert he is immediately got down to business, announcing our
agenda, as the headmaster listened on. He then posed the question, “Why you?”
Immediately jumping into the conversation, I explained why
it was important to me as an individual to have a well-produced magazine by
what was soon to be my alumni matter, enlisting Bill’s publishing history to
complement my photography skills. Mr. Wamala was not convinced but Abraham
persuaded him to give us a chance. He then asked us to write a proposal which
he was going to evaluate amongst other staff member concerned with the project.
I was actually surprised that he was willing to even
consider the idea, given the fact that what we were about to do sounded like a
lot of hot air. We had never actually
produced a magazine and didn't have a proven professional work record to
back-up any of our claims.
While we thought through the proposal, it occurred to me
that, though writing an air tight application would increase our odds of
getting the contract, we needed to start acting immediately to demonstrate our
focus and ability to get things done. As luck would have it, the school had
just purchased a new school bus, an achievement that was attributed to
Mr.Wamala who had been headmaster for less than a year. More importantly the
handover ceremony was coming up in a few days. The headmaster had struck me as
a man who cared about his image, which presented an opportunity to show off my
photography skills.
I dashed to the phone booth to call Sadik, a good friend who
had finished the year before. He had decided not continue to University and
opted to stay in Masaka to help his Dad in his profitable hardware business. I
requested him to lend me his digital camera to photograph the bus handover event,
explaining that I had received an opportunity to design the school’s magazine,
going further to explain how doing a good job on the project was the first step
towards realizing “Ky-ika concepts,” the media company we dreamed of starting.He
was hooked and he brought the camera the very next day.
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| Ivan and I shared a deep appreciation for art and All star converse shoes |
But perhaps the most important thing that Sadik did for me that day,
was convincing Ivan who became our design artist for the project. He had been
hesitant to join forces with Bill and me because he purely had no interest in
under taking a school related activity. However Sadik was able to sway him into
joining us by explaining its importance to “Ky-ika concepts” to which Ivan was
going to be a member of.
The handover ceremony was as big and pompous as anyone could
imagine and I captured it in its full glory. At the end of it, I rushed to Mr.
Wamala’s office to show him the pictures I had taken. He was impressed by the
quality and my sheer will to follow through with my plans. I could tell we were
winning him over.
By mid-December 2008, we were all through with our final
exams and were heading home for our long vacation. We dropped our proposal over
and went our separate ways, promising to link up in the holidays if the school okayed
the project.
Late February 2009, I received a unexpected call from Mr.
Cramer, the teacher who was overall head of the project. He was asking me how
soon I could be in Masaka to discuss the details of the assignment.
The following day, I was meeting with nearly the whole staff
body to discuss how we were going to execute the design process. It was an
intimidating moment addressing a staff body comprising of some teachers who
held me in low regard due to the disciplinary rap sheet during in my student
days. In the end it was agreed that my team and I were to come work from
school.
After the meeting I walked to the Kako trading center which
is a quarter mile away to find an available house to rent that my team and I could
live in for the period we were going to work on the magazine. The only
available house was an old depleted two roomed house. I made a deposit from the
two hundred thousand I had received in advance and headed back to Kampala to plot
our return.
As the day for travel drew closer, I started having doubts in
the ability of myself and the team to deliver a high quality magazine as we had
imagined and promised. The headmaster had taking a big bet letting rookies with
no portfolio design the first edition of the magazine. There was a lot of
pressure but my Dad just encouraged me to do my best. His advice seemed to
help.
When we arrived, the gloomy house I had rented did not
inspire the confidence of my colleagues and it took a lot of persuasion to get
them to accept the living conditions. We used the first room at the entrance as
a kitchen and slept in the next on bunker beds. It was not the ideal accommodation
but we made due.
Early the following morning, all dressed in black, we
invaded the school to start work. We were given a room on the main building
complex to use as our office and one of the teachers who really hated my guts
was assigned the duty of ensuring our morning tea was brought on time. Watching
karma at work truly is amusing.
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| We worked our butts off to produce the magazine |
We immediately started setting up. Collectively we had a
projector, two digital cameras, a high resolution color printer, scanner, modem
with wireless internet (the school didn’t even have a connection) three laptops
and surround speakers. We were out to make an impression.
But behind the impressive tech facade, our false confidence and larger than life verbal
assurances, we had no idea what on earth we were doing. So we got to working to
figure it out.Bill was in charge of editorial and lay out, Ivan was the graphics Illustrator and I was the photographer, layout designer and
project leader.
Soon, the magazine project became the center of our existence.
We lived, breathed, ate and dreamed the project. Initially when we started, we
were motivated by the need and the desire to prove a point to the school that
we were exceptional student-alumni. However going through the process of spending
dozens of uninterrupted hours at an end to brain storm, write, edit, sketch, design, illustrate, photograph, caption and
lay into InDesign, one single page, broke us but also made us. Each step taken
forward was refreshingly liberating but also frighteningly intimidating.
As we worked away, we were becoming increasingly aware of
the fact that in every decision we took, we were by action accepting
responsibility. Initially our outlook of the deal was; do a good enough job to
make the students and school administration happy, so that we could get paid. It
seemed like a simple enough plan but the one thing, however, that none of us
could have accounted for was falling in love with what we were doing that led
us to unlock our own individual potentials. And soon, we began to aspire and
expect nothing less than the best from each other.
Slowly and carefully we started to produce page after page
and soon we had 20 pages, half way. Up until that point we had worked for two
weeks and neither the headmaster nor anyone else for that matter had a clue of
what we were doing.
I created a PDF file and sent it to Bill and Ivan to proof
read. Once they were satisfied with the content, we printed a color copy with
the water marking, draft. I had worn a full suit that day for my afternoon meeting
with the headmaster that had been scheduled for review and status. When we commenced
work, we negotiated with Mr. Wamala to grant us complete creative control and
working space for two weeks so that we could have the space and time to come up
with a concept that we had promised. Being the micro-manager he was, he reluctantly
accepted with the provision that we produced a draft copy within two weeks
which would be the basis for discussion for the continuity of the project.
After the last page was out of the printer, Bill arranged
and stapled the draft copy. Everything was riding on this. As I approached the
administration building, I realized that everything we had said, done and worked
on had come down to that decisive moment.
As soon as I walked in, Mr. Wamala jumped out of his chair
in delight to greet me and said, “I can’t wait to see what you have to show
me.” Without further hesitation, I handed him the well printed copy which he immediately
snatched out of my hand. I took a seat in the sofa across from him, quietly
observing his facial expressions with the faint hope of deciphering his
thoughts. The room grew quiet as he flipped through the pages, occasionally
lowering his face to steal a glance at me from under his reading glasses. When
he was done, he put it down, took off the glasses, sat back in his swivel chair,
looked thoughtfully at me, and then said, “Bravo. Continue with the work. Go to
the bursar to collect your additional two hundred thousand for upkeep. The
project continues.” I was so excited but didn't show it, suppressing my
emotions so that I could maintain my composure.
When I got back to the office, Bill and Ivan were quietly
working away, waiting for the verdict. I couldn't hold the excitement in any
longer, “we are not going home yet,” I shouted.We had proved what we had set
out to, which immediately gave each of us an insane level of unwarranted self
confidence in each of our abilities.
Later that night as we talked right before bedtime like we
always did, Bill floated the idea of traveling to Kabaale to his home where we
would have an office to complete the project, since it was costing us a good
amount to live and work in Masaka. Ivan needed a break from school and we had
all earned the right to a rest. We decided to travel the following morning.
Early the next morning we said our farewells to our neighbors
in the community who we had known for two weeks. Kalo (village) mates as we
referred to them.The land lady was especially excited at seeing she had made a
months’ worth of salary for half the time. I briefly left Bill and Ivan at the center
as I dashed to school to wrap up a few administrative details and to also say
my good byes to my younger friends, many of whom saw a mentor image in me. The
tide for growth was blowing in a different direction and I was ready to set off
for another adventure. I had a feeling that it was the last time I was ever
going to feel welcome at Kako, knowing that in future I would be a guest.
Many of my friends, whom I had photographed while on the
project, eagerly asked me when the magazine was going to be out so they could have
a look at it themselves. I did not say.
For a brief moment I was sad that I was finally leaving the place that I
had come to know as my fortress. Kako offered me the two most peaceful and
wholesome years of my young life.
Quickly flashing back to May 2007 when I first
arrived for my senior five, I could see I had made the right decision
transferring from a private school in Kampala after only a term, because Kako
offered me much more
than just an education. At that moment I was filled with nothing but
contentment and gratitude for the warm experience the community had shared with
me while I was still a student and during the project.
I hurried to catch up with Bill and Ivan who were excited
about our road trip. As we waited for a bus bound for Kabaale from Masaka town,
we were spotted by Bill’s friend who was driving a minivan and heading in our
very destination. It was an assurance that we were heading in the right
direction. It was the first time I was away from home and making such big
decisions on my own. Even if the project had ended that every day, I would have
still been very grateful for the life lessons I learned in the two weeks we lived
in Masaka.
When we got to Kabaale, we briefly forgot about the work for
a few days as we took time to explore the town Ivan and I had never been to. I
soon received a call from a friend from Seroma Christian high school who wanted
me to join them in Kabaale to record their journey on camera and produce a
documentary at the end. When I told him I was already there, he couldn’t wait.
I got the team to work together to produce the documentary which earned us
extra spending cash. I had found my own little slice of paradise there.
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| A selfie with Kuteesa Cornelius and I in Kabaale. We studied O'level together from Seroma |
Just as I had started
getting comfortable, I received a call from home informing me that my uncle’s
wedding was in a few days and since I had pledged to shoot the event, I was
needed immediately back. I had to cut my vacation short, leaving Ivan behind
with Bill. We had barely designed a page for the magazine since leaving Kako
but I agreed to design the rest on my own from Kampala. As I left, I wondered
if the three of us would ever get another chance to work again like we had just
done and most importantly if starting a company was in the cards for us.
After the wedding which was in May 2009, I got back to
serious work to beat the July deadline. It was not the same without the two and
the first two days were difficult, however I soon found my energy again and
before I knew it, my room was littered with paper, mostly of articles and
printed pages, a sign of progress and stress. After a good number of journey’sbetween
Kampala and Masaka, I finally received the approval to go into printing in mid-July.
The headmaster connected me with the publisher who in turn
sent me all over Nasser road, a famous place down town Kampala where all the
printing action happens, to align all the necessary requirements for going into
print which opened my eyes to key insights of the print industry that I never
knew existed.
But it wasn’t all as rainbows and butterflies’. The days
leading up to publishing were so difficult to the extent that on one of the
days I walked from Nasser road to Kabalagala which is approximately 3 miles
away because I had spent the money I had on paper. My social life was also put in
the balance since the project had taken center stage in my life at the expense
of those close to me. I expected my family and friends to understand however
there is only so far I could stretch it and clearly I was burning the candle from
both ends but none of it seemed to matter then. I was insanely driven to see
the project completed that I barely ate or slept that whole week leading to the
publication.
And then the moment came when I held the first copy in my
hand, straight from the printer. As I flipped through the pages, I was overcome
by happiness. It had had surpassed our expectation and everything we had been
through during the project started to make rational sense. What mattered stuck
with me like glue and what didn’t vanished into thin air.
11 PM that day, Timothy my friend help me load the two boxes
that contained the copies onto the bus I was boarding to Masaka. I arrived at
Kako at 2 AM and couldn’t sleep till morning when I handed over the magazine to
the headmaster who in turn handed me a cheque of six hundred thousand
(600,000/=) as reward for the three of us. Having received a total of four
hundred thousand prior, the grand total was a Million shillings!
It has been six years since I sat my A’level finals or made my
first million shillings. I am now a C.E.O of a startup, Xibra Digital which
develops mobile applications for an Afrique-centric market. When I look back, I
can now saywith more clarity that my decision to be an entrepreneur was inspired
by the magazine project, whose experience has been invariable in my life and
career. I learnt that the most vital ingredient for success of any venture lies
in the synergy of the team. Which is
why, as a leader, it is extremely important for me to work with people who
above all else are passionate, persistent and won’tlet anything standing in
their way of pursuing excellence, least of all themselves.Success is nothing
but consistent persistence.
It has not been an easy journey to get here, where I can say
with more certainty that I know what I am doing and know what I want to do with
my life, but for what it’s worth, the journey will always be the reward.
Starting is the most important thing and with time, determination and the right
people around you, the pieces of the puzzle will fall in place, much faster and
effortlessly than you could imagine.
Have the courage to start something, the persistence to see
it through and a level head to pick yourself up and have another go at it.
