Paul Kipchumba
(Submitted for Delivery on the Occasion of
Sahara Africa Elimu Networks forum at Kahawa, Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday 20
April 2017)
I do not know what it
means to succeed or to be successful in life. At least up now I am very certain
that I still have a long way to go. But since I have been asked to make a
presentation on this, I would like to base all the discussion on the experiences
of my life.
First, I observed that
most of our people live very simple lives when they are poor, but live very
complex lives when they make money. A friend moved out of a modest estate in
Nairobi to a better place because he became a lecturer in the university. He
gave the excuse that he was moving out because his students were also living
with him and could witness him waking up in the estate every morning. He
disliked the fact that he could be of the same economic status with his
students. “It is living in denial, isn’t it? Where on earth won’t you find
students who are far much better than yourself?” I said. Equally, I observed
that most of my friends are conscious of how they dress, where they eat, where
they drink. These mannerisms are a complete distraction to a lasting success.
Just as the Russian
writer Leo Tolstoy observed in “On Labour and Luxury” that simplicity leads to
grandeur, the American transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau in
Walden Chapter 2 “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” similarly observed that
simplicity of life but elevation of purpose is the game-changer in human
affairs. This is where you find key philosophers, influential leaders in the
world. He further said that a man is rich in proportion to the number of things
that he can let alone. His firm belief that you can be rich without any damage
to your poverty is very interesting. This refers to your choice towards certain
ends, not really into wealth creation, such that those who may have amassed
wealth should not think that they are ahead. According to him the brutes
(uncivilized people) have beaten the civilized in their life of simplicity.
However, I was
interested in the meaning of simplicity and how to sustain it. What is
simplicity? Material lack is quite often interpreted to mean simplicity, that
is modesty means ensure that you live a rather limited life, devoid of luxury.
A hermit or an ascetic can sustain a life with limited material means. It is a
rather challenging postulate. I would observe that simplicity is a commitment
to certain ends and the means that can deliver them. This is quite often
achieved by discipline and self-control. For instance, if you are a nun or a
priest you have got to be disciplined towards sexual desires. If you want to
succeed in business you have got to save and innovate with discipline. If you
want to be a general in the army, you should be able to keep secrets. Laozi in
“Daodejing” observes the same: “Hence the sage is able (in the same way) to
accomplish his great achievements. It is through his not making himself great
that he can accomplish them.” Therefore, simplicity is that sense of commitment
that can be sustained by its means. It is not necessarily wearing tatters or
eating one meal a day. But you will agree with me that sensual pleasures and
material indulgence are not often compatible with the ideals of a simple life.
However, most of our people keep to a simple life when they do not have but
overindulge when they get – this is not simplicity of life and elevation of purpose,
it is simplicity of life with no purpose.
In “Of the Duty of
Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau I was impressed by the quotation
“The best thing that a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to
endeavour to carry out those schemes that he entertained when he was poor”. I
have interpreted it literally and found it in accord with my view that way. I
have had some wonderful ideas when growing up. However, it is almost an
impossible feat to implement them now because more money comes with more
luxury-trappings. Sometimes it is just hard to settle in a poor environment if
you have money in your pocket. But it does not mean that you live less if you
have little. In fact you can live a more organized life with little than with
more depending on your capacity to organize yourself. I find it a nobler
objective to transform the world in the way I used to think when young, poor.
That to me translates to “simplicity of life but elevation of purpose”
paradigm.
In addition, I should
say that the owners of Khetia Supermarket chain in Western Kenya are Asian
brothers who have demonstrated consistency of business acumen. They have been
in operation over 30 years as of early 2013. I visited two of their stores in
Bungoma and Kitale, successively between 2009 and 2012. I had an opportunity
too to meet one of the brothers in Parklands in Nairobi early 2013 over a
drink. He was really frank narrating to me of their expansion to Australia and
Tanzania and how they managed to have one of the largest go-downs in Kenya in
Kitale before our discussion entered into morals of trade. I asked him why
Kenyans haven’t demonstrated that level of industry. He said, “Ni rahisi sana!
Ukiwacha kufuata wanawake, kukunywa pombe ovyo ovyo na kucheza kamari
utaendelea kwa biashara.” He replied in Swahili that success in business comes
about if you avoid pleasures that include chasing after women/ prostitutes,
overindulgence in alcoholic drinking or engagement in gambling.
I reminded him that
even Africans who do not indulge in such pleasures have not demonstrated
industry. Of course, our cultures also stand in the way of our work edict. For
instance, a friend asked me why I should labour too much! “You just need a
small job and a cow so that your children can get milk!” he said. Also, our
level of concentration is compromised by our search for quick, simple
recognition. We do not aim at competing with the rest of the world. An Asian
can sit in his stall for a long period of time, some from 6 a.m. to past
midnight without complaining. There is an element of heightened consistency,
hard work and commitment. There is no self-importance, just as they could
manage to come from their sub-continent to Africa. Although for some of them
there are underhand tactics that are exploitative, I tend to think that their
success hinges on business values, especially shrewdness. Anyway, I was going
to say that we need to tell our generation that most businesses as they stand,
demonstrate a long-term effort, more than 30 years for most of them.
Thoreau in Walden
observed this by saying that the greatest education that young people get from
university education is the interaction they get from highly cultivated members
of the school community. Sometime back a friend asked me why some teachers
cannot write their experiences of their teaching trade even after ten years of
service. Why is it that some teachers cannot raise their eye-brows after
producing Ds (poor results) consistently? Even some teaching in the university
cannot publish even if by publishing their careers are secured. A university
graduate gets first class honours in a certain field, they go into the job
market, but after five years they cannot remember what they were taught, not
even cite some of the prominent references in the field! Some even change
careers several times in their lifetimes, failing to get deserved recognition
in any. Our priorities become misplaced at some point in our growing up. More
important, we lack consistency in our dealings.
In May 2011 in
Eldoret, Kenya, I asked a friend the late Ambassador Benjamin Edgar Kipkorir,
“Why is it that your approach to things is so mechanical?”
“You ask why! Look, at
your age I had achieved more than you have done. I had a wife and had finished
schooling. I had a piece of land too!” he replied.
“Doesn’t it mean that
even if you took off very well, you have lost all the justifications why you
should not rank among the wealthiest or among the greatly revered intellectual
sprawls?” I asked.
It is one thing to
believe that you are better off than others. It is equally another thing
altogether to be better off than them. I believe most people fall in the
former. There is nothing exceptional about them. If they go to school, they
don’t labour in intellectual rigour backed up by an element of sacrifice and
ranking among the best globally. If they go into business they would not rank
among the list of global wealthy their entire lives—they end up struggling to
justify how they have won the economic battle by buying small cars or big ones
and owning big houses, buying alcoholic drinks and growing big tummies. I
haven’t seen anything much in that kind of life. At least for me, if you mean
business you mean it. If you want to shoot, shoot. Do not keep saying ‘I will
shoot’ or ‘I was the first one to attempt to shoot’.
Then I observed before
the late Ambassador Benjamin Edgar Kipkorir that a successful life is
determined by how it ends, not how it starts, because if you were the last one
to shoot, possibly you could be the one who killed it. And that is all about
consistency.
In conclusion, in the
recent past I began by writing my diary entitle “Living a Sustainable Vision”
to cover the period between 2010 and 2049 in 8 volumes of 5-year duration each.
I began by looking at past heroic personages such as the Greek philosopher
Socrates (469-399 BC); the military general Alexander the Great (356-323 BC);
spiritual figures such as Jesus Christ of the Christian Religion, Prophet
Mohammed of the Islamic Religion, the Chinese Confucius of Confucianism, Laozi of
Daoism, the Indian Gautama Buddha of Buddhism; political figures such as the
Russian Vladimir Lenin, the British Winston Churchill, South African Nelson
Mandela; industrialists such as the American John Rockefeller, Bill Gates;
inventor-scholars such as the British Isaac Newton, the American Albert
Einstein; Philanthropists such as Henry Durant the founder of the Committee of
Red Cross, among others. I discovered from them that there are two very
important traits that make a successful life: (1) simplicity, and (2)
consistency.
