Below is the simplified version of the book Rich Daddy, Poor Daddy to suit our Tanzanian environment!!!
Worth reading.
Food for thought!
Some things take a long time to change.. Take the
(dis)advantages of higher education, for example. In the 1970s,
to be highly educated in Uganda was a risky business. The
military government of the day was deeply suspicious of educated
people, who were deemed dangerous. Many of those who did not
flee the country were killed.
Today, higher education is required for most jobs. That is why,
so many people are going to university to earn a degree that
will open the doors of employment.
But again, this kind of education has its disadvantages. It
tends to condemn a person to total dependence on salaried
employment, making them vulnerable to sudden destitution should
they lose their jobs.
Strangely enough, at the end of the day, when you trace the
adult lives of people at most workplaces, it is the drivers,
messengers and cleaners who do better as far as individual
financial security is concerned. After working for five years,
a tea girl will have invested more than the secretary along
with whom she was recruited. The driver will be more
financially solid than the mid-rank graduate officer. The tea
girl, you see, doesn't just earn a salary. She also supplies
mandazis to the secretaries at break time. She arrives at work
much earlier than them, to make sure her merchandise is
distributed to various agents such as junior tea girls in
nearby offices and a few street side vendors.
When the secretaries arrive, she greets them politely and asks
what they would like for their break. Since she extends credit,
many of her bosses are in her debt. They pay up as soon as they
get their salaries, because it would be beneath their dignity to
default on a tea girl's money.
Meanwhile, her younger sister, whom she brought over from the
village two years ago, is manning their stall in the market,
where they sell second-hand clothes. From among these, the
elder sister regularly selects the "first class" pieces and
sells them at higher prices to the secretaries, who do not want
to be seen in the downtown market stalls bargaining for used
garments.
Because of spending so much time with educated people, the tea
girl has decided that the child, whose birth forced her out of
school six years ago, will have the best education she can
provide. She puts the child in a good school and pushes her to
work for good grades. She will even make sacrifices to pay for
private coaching.
As for our driver, he is doing equally well. Extremely humble
and obliging before the executives, he is regarded as
indispensable. After working there for 10 years, he knows the
secrets of the top men in the organization. They therefore tend
to let him get away with small sins like those that fuel bills
that seem on the high side for the mileage covered. Unbeknown to
his bosses, he is running two or three taxicabs as well as a
small shop near his home. He has a line of one-room rental
houses and any tenant who is late with the monthly payment is
evicted ruthlessly.
His drivers and wives, who double as shop assistants, bow lower
before him than he does before his bosses at work. His
children, who are subjected to very strict discipline, will be
sent to the best schools if they are academically promising.
Otherwise, they are absorbed into the family business at an
early age. He rules over his small empire with an iron hand.
The tea girl and the driver get salaries that are much lower
than those of the secretary and the middle officer. However,
because they live close to the ground, as it were, they spend
much less and so are able to save and invest.
The young graduate, on the other hand, cannot imagine running a
soda-and-cake network in the office. So, he has no income
apart from his official salary. Yet he goes to expensive clubs
and wears trendy clothes. So, come the end of the month, he
has no money left! Whereas the driver no longer touches his
salary, relying instead on his diverse incomes to run his
home. The graduate cannot invest in the places he frequents and
the circles he moves in; he cannot build a five-star hotel..
But the driver can open kiosks and bars in his slum.
One day, both these people will have to leave their employment.
No prizes for guessing who is better prepared for life after
retirement. The privatization and downsizing of the public
service gave us many sad cases of senior officers who tried to
start businesses with their retirement packages. At their age,
it was too late to learn new tricks, and most got cleaned out
within a week, ending up as frustrated alcoholics. The stronger
ones converted their family cars into cabs, and can be seen
touting for teenage passengers outside discotheques. They live
in unfinished houses and are always quarrelling with their
growing children, who cannot cope with the fall in their
standard of living.
As the driver's and tea girl's offspring join the business
sector with ease, the former officer's sons and daughters sit
around idly talking about Western film stars and singers. Such
are the dangers of an elitist education.
Scary!!
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