A'ita Jaffer Joel
The dream of a young man is to own a house he calls his with title in his own names. However, often times the costs associated with construction has killed these dreams before they even see the light of the morning.
As a 29 year old young man, I had a similar dream to own a home for Joadah Consult, landed on a Land for sale in Bugonga Entebbe. Bugonga is like the Nakasero of Kampala. Highly valued prime property. But the Land there was costing 300million shillings by that time in 2009 but now the same size of land goes for over 2billion in Bugonga. I had only 50m in the account. With Boldness I approached the owner of the Land and convinced him what my plans were. He loved seeing a young man with good dreams. He accepted my condition of paying him in installments for one year. I made it a point to always give him something every month. Eventually I took 18 months to complete the payment. The day he gave me the title, it was like I had arrived.
In the middle of 2010 we started the design process of the building and by Jan 2011 we organized a massive ground breaking ceremony. But We had 30m shillings to start the project. I think 5m went for the ground breaking event.
The next day we started the construction and the 25 million didnt even come out of the foundation. We went back to hunting for more money, there reached a point even when we get 10m we get the workers to put it down, even if it meant raising some few columns. Then we disappear again to hunting more. At some point we had to disappear for like 3 years, at that point we started a chicken business in the unfinished building.
We kept on doing as small work as the money would appear. In most cases we left one or two guys on site constantly and would bring like 10 bags of cement they work on it. However small the work they did was always pointing to the final finish line.
Until January 2021 when we had substantially completed the work was when we occupied the building. We in total took 10 years to finish the construction.
In terms of seeing it, 10 years looks very far, but in terms of construction it’s actually very few years. You won’t see how fast they go.
As you are pushing on with the financing, many people who have never had experience in construction will laugh at you and say all sorts of words in their drinking joints. But when you are done with the construction, believe me you will have the last laugh. But let me assure you, the same drunkards won’t allow to go down just like that. From laughing at you that see how he is struggling, once you are done they will start saying, “that one must have gone under water to get money to build”, “that building must be for Museveni” etc etc. You wonder why they don’t say Museveni was broke when you were struggling raising finances for the construction.
So young man, young lady. Start, Go Slow, Don’t Stop!!
The Climax happened in June 2021, when the Vice President of Liberia visited me to open the building officially.
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