Daniel had always loved fixing things. Old radios, broken fans, even worn out mobile phones,he’d open them up and somehow make them work again. But his real love was video games.
He didn’t own a game console. His parents couldn’t afford one. But he used to watch his neighbors play through their windows and dreamt of the day he’d hold a joystick in his hand.
One Saturday, he found an old, dusty joystick in a junk shop near his school. It was missing a wire and one button was broken, but it was only ₦500. He spent all the money he had and carried it home like it was gold.
That night, he took it apart on the floor of his one-room home. His mother watched him with tired eyes but didn’t say a word. She knew how much he loved machines. Daniel used parts from an old DVD player and bits from a broken torchlight to rebuild the joystick. He worked under a dim bulb until 2 a.m.
The next morning, it worked.
It wasn’t perfect, but it could move, click, and connect to his cousin’s old computer. For the first time, Daniel played a racing game using something he built with his own hands.
News spread quickly. His classmates couldn’t believe it. Soon, others came to him with broken pads, controllers, and even keyboards. He fixed them all. For a small fee.
By the end of the term, he had saved enough money to buy a used controller,and give the joystick he built to a younger boy who had never played a game before.
Daniel didn’t just fix machines. He built dreams.
Years later, he became a computer engineer. When he gave a speech at a tech event in Lagos, he held up that same old joystick and said, “This was where it started. Not with money, but with belief.”
Moral: Big things often begin with small steps. A broken joystick today can be the start of a great future,if you believe and try.