A skill is a knowledge acquired to apply a specific task. This knowledge can not be only personal but also supporting and mentoring the community. These can be in various sectors as industries, agriculture, food preparing and other more.
The reason is as human grow more knowledge should be acquired as a way not only to ensure some survival ways but also to provide that particular experience to the following generations. I made it a goal since my childhood and started learning some few skills which could help me in the future. I learnt how to make soap, honey and doing some agricultural projects among them.
I will try to illustrate some of my best and worse experiences about some of my business skills learnt.
1 . Soap Making:
I personally did study chemistry but never really got involved in a soap making process. As I joined my first year, I thought of learning some few stuff from it. I didn’t have much and then started with the little I had . I went in an industrial cottage which used to train people how to make bar soaps and liquid soaps. The process was good but the problem I got learn the process but couldn’t do it alone for some few moment. I did made some challenges nixing some chemical products manually just using gloves and then mingling. I could mix products as soda ash, palm canol, palm oil sometimes putting them in a digital scale and exactly bringing on the exact quantity and then pouring on some perfume and sodium. At first, I and my friend who was supporting me we’re really burnt since we didn’t know how to be fully protecting against those chemicals.
It takes long and energy for the soap to be fine as that
My biggest mistake was that I actually wanted to sell them but my soaps were manually made. So, I could sell them to some few friends, give as a gifts and getting some guys to help me move with them as I could move to. At the end of the day I couldn’t continue since it’s needed really work for hours and then having a poor quality product but couldn’t have the materials. I had bought the manual equipment at 250 thousands Uganda shillings ( 70$) but couldn’t help me for sells since it was just good for home made. The real one was for almost 1000$ but I didn’t have any finance and decided to shift as my dreams were not accomplished.
Modern bee hive
2. Honey processing (Bee Hive)
So I shifted for honey process. Business always runs in my blood and I couldn’t leave some training opportunity passing by my eyes without grabbing them. I could to take my transport, learning how to make the bee hives, the duration, the placement and ways of harvesting. I did the training and started my dream of having a bee hive. I looked for a place where I could find some bees and got the place and then the only problem was money. Since I couldn’t make my dreams a reality and the bee hives we’re for 10 at approximately 1000$ and my heart could just start bumping. I had the desire but couldn’t make it.
Traditional bee hive
I did feel bad and thought of bringing some similar. So, I consulted on the traditional way of making a bee hive, and then extracting them. This was chop and I had to sacrifice some of my pocket money. I had the burning desire and I felt like I can progress from the traditional one to modern one. My only mistake is that I got real assurance from a friend and he affirmed me that the traditional hive does really work. So, I had to release my small money expecting a very good bee hive.
The image was just funny and couldn’t work at all, not because the traditional hive never used to work but just a friend disappointed me by collecting some woods and then assembling them totally different from the traditional one. This discouraged me and I felt like I should do something I have experience with.So, I chose to move in Agriculture.
3. Agriculture
Agriculture was just amazing and I got to learn very many things from it. I felt like assigning to myself some difficult tasks. I started planting tomatoes and cabbages than doing the easiest task as planting maizes or beans. My experience with the cabbages was great and surprising. I got to learn that actually we should make first a nursery bed and then treat the bed well and then looking for the best seed and chemicals to spray. At first I went to the market to buy the seeds. The seeds price sackets were really different.
Small and unhealthy cabbages due to the quality of the seeds
So, still each shop keeper could market his products. At the end of the discussion I then decided to buy the cheap ones since I thought the sellers were exciding the price. At the end of the day, the seeds were not productive and most of them couldn’t reach the four weeks requirements in the bed. The cabbages made out of them never had the normal weight, too small and not even tasty (I had sparayed and added some stuff to boost it).