23 Jun 2013

The Orapa-Maun road stretches for kilometers without a village, fuel station or shop in site.

Tourists and other people destined for Maun or Orapa ensure that they have adequate fuel and snacks before they embark on the taxing journey.

A tyre puncture or any mishap on the road means long hours of waiting for help.

Seeing the oppurtunity, 29-year-old Phillimon Kerekisitswe opened a tyre fixing business in Mopipi and has not looked back since.

Unlike many youth around the country, the young man never desired to join the rural-urban migration.

He knows very well that moving to places like Gaborone or Francistown means joining the ever increasing unemployed queue.

 Not that he is not ambitious; rather, he wants to chart a different path of self-employment and be counted among those who stayed behind to directly contribute towards the village’s development by establishing local businesses.   

According to him, if the youth in his village were wise enough to take advantage of the strategic position of the village along such a busy highway by opening businesses, they would defeat the twin evils of poverty and unemployment which are prevalent in Boteti.

The young man’s face lights up as he lifts a tyre during his routine repairs in his makeshift workshop alongside the Orapa-Maun road from where he earns his living repairing tyres. His chosen vocation, he notes, is not child’s play as it requires one to lift tyres of all shapes and sizes every day, something anathema to the youth of today who prefer white collar jobs and shun technical vocations.

 However, he seems to be savouring every moment of his profession. Though he does not have any formal training in tyre fixing, the young lad is at peace with himself as this is the job that puts food on his table.

 He is the first to admit that repairing tyres and fixing punctures is back breaking work which requires determination if one is to succeed.

 However, he doesn’t have the luxury to choose anything else; in fact, he doesn’t have any other choice. Suddenly, the place is abuzz with clients calling into his workshop to drop or collect a tyre or two, paying a fee in the process.

 Kerekisitswe’s life is a contrast to many of the youth who roam around the village waiting for someone to give them a job.

Kediretswe says he is prepared to face life head on with limited resources. He has not received any help from anyone to establish his booming business. He relies on the little that he makes to plough back and buy the tools that he needs to effectively assist his clients. He is unperturbed by the challenges that lies ahead and is a go-getter with a never-say-die attitude. Unlike his peers, he believes that should he be granted funding by the youth department, it should be used for expansion purposes and not to start up a business.

 The road that passes through his village has become a mining field to him and he explains that his clients are happy with the kind of service he offers.

 “A lot of buses ply this route, also many tourists who want to use a shorter route to the country’s tourist destination, the Okavango Delta now frequently use the road and give me the much needed business,” he asserts. In addition, he highlights that there was a mine in Toteng and some of the vehicles were headed towards those operations passed by Mopipi for service. He is very passionate and has all the zeal needed under the current economic climate where unemployment is so rife in rural areas where there are fewer opportunities for the youth. Kerekisitswe says he started MC Tyre Service in 2008 after his junior secondary school days. His interest grew after he had visited friends in Maun.

 “I used to watch the men who fixed tyres and repaired punctures and fell in love with the job they were doing. That is when I conceptualized opening up my own place in Mopipi,” he explains. Initially he patched deflated tyres and also opened a barber shop to supplement his income which proved handy during lean days.

 From the beggining he could not afford a compressor, as such he used a manual pump when patching flat tyres. 

The business, he says is doing well and there was a time when he could make a killing especially during the road construction projects in Mopipi when his customers included some construction companies.

However, when the contractors wound up their project he had to rely on his loyal customers within the village to survive.  The young man has indeed spread his wings as his customers come from as far as Mokobaxane, Xhumo, Kedia and Toromoja.

 In addition, he says that the business has the potential to grow as some customers have been asking him to increase his services by doing wheel alignment, something which requires additional machinery which he cannot afford now.

Like any other business, his is beset by a myriad of challenges such as people who don’t want to pay after getting help and those who bring their tyres and go forever without coming back to collect them, which eats into his small space in his rented workshop.

 If there is one thing that pains this youthful businessman, it’s the fact that he works alone while many young people refuse to join him, citing heavy work load at the workshop as their main reason.

However, he has found a way of diversifying his business ventures as a way of spreading the risk and he also operates a barbershop and a car wash. He is the first to admit that it is not easy to run three businesses at a time without employees and financial assistance.

In addition, he says his busiest period is usually during month end when traffic increases along the highway and this usually yields good profit. Kerekisitswe points out that though initially he did not have a plot where he could operate, today he has one and he intends to build his workshop.

Also, he says that he is in the process of registering a company so that he can apply for the Youth Development Fund to expand his business.

 “My dream is to open branches in other villages,” he chuckles. Furthermore, he also says that he wishes to capacitate himself on his job by attending a course on fixing tyres so that he could provide quality service to his clients and also teach other youth in Mopipi.

 Though his business is struggling, the young man has something to show for it as he has built his own home and has a cattle post where he keeps goats.

His motto is that every business person should diversify their operations in different sectors to maximise profits and avoid the risks of investing in one sector.

The Orapa-Maun road is seen by the young entreprenuer as a gold mine that offers more opportunities for creating businesses that could cater for the high number of people who use the road daily. ENDS