Modu Churi, who fled his village to escape Boko Haram last year, now earns a living by charging cellphones for displaced persons in northeast Nigeria. Jide Adeniyi-Jones for NPRhide caption
Imagine the worst has happened to your family. You've been forced to flee your home.
You eventually make it to safety. But now you're living in a camp for displaced persons.
You don't want to just depend on handouts. So how do you make a living?
That's what happened last year to 43-year-old Modu Churi, a father of seven from Mijigini village in Borno state in the northeast of Nigeria, a region blighted by violence during Boko Haram's eight-year insurgency. Now they live at Muna Customs House camp in Maiduguri, the main city in northeast Nigeria, along with more than a million and a half people uprooted by the fighting.
In his village, Churi earned a living by charging and selling phones. He needed a new source of income.
And then it clicked — he could attempt a similar startup in the camp.
He noticed that people who had lost almost everything still had their cellphones and a few smartphones.
"So I decided, OK, let me start up a little business and I thought about opening up a phone-charging point," says Churi, speaking in Hausa, the lingua franca of northern Nigeria.
He says he used his life savings of about $160 to purchase a generator and set up what has turned into a viable little enterprise. The generator is essential, because power cuts are common in Maiduguri.
Churi is a tall man who towers over his makeshift booth. He's set up shop in the stairwell of an unfinished three-story brick building that's been taken over by persons who are displaced. He displays a few handsets for sale, plus colorful accessories to attract customers.
From half a floor up, you look down on an array of mostly old-style cellphones splayed out on the dusty floor, plugged into an adapter fueled by the generator for a charge.
0 Response to "How To Succeed In Business After Fleeing For Your Life"
Post a Comment