Meet A Man Who Earns A Living From Connecting Singles With Potential Spouses.

When Amos Kanothi, a middle-aged man from Muruka Location, Kandara in Murang’a County completed school and moved to search for a job, things didn’t work as easily as he thought they would. It was after a long fruitless search that he thought of looking for wealth from within.

It is from his surrounding that he discovered that he was living in the midst of countless opportunities. He realised that so many young people, especially the educated ones, were toiling in urban centres looking for white collar jobs but leaving out a whole wealth of opportunities in their rural homes.

“Very many of our graduates are ‘tarmacking’ in towns and crying hoarse that the government is offering them no jobs. I was raised up through proceeds from the farm. Opportunities are all over these farms. It is the people who are failing to identify them. We need to first understand that our local areas are an important part of identifying opportunities in our communities,” said Kanothi.

  

“I'm a pretty industrious and driven person, and I have made good money here in the village even from these so called graduates. I have educated my four kids from proceeds derived from jobs people may consider odd,” he adds.

A key question that all fresh graduates face in life is finding the job of their dreams or a business opportunity that is right for them. The question that confronts anybody who is thinking of starting a new business or venture is, ‘how do you find the opportunity that’s right for you?’

“There are many sources for new venture opportunities for individuals. Clearly, when you see inefficiency in a market and you have an idea of how to correct it, and you have the resources and capability or at least the ability to bring together the resources and capability needed to correct that inefficiency, that is a very interesting business idea,” he says.

Kanothi concedes that after struggling to make ends meet for quite some time, he designed his own ways of earning a fair and honest living after profiling their local area and identifying the areas in which his people had challenges in. It is from these challenges that he discovered the potential for suitable opportunities.

He realised that very many farmers in the area had to contend with the problem of rodent in their farms. Moles were rendering farming unviable. So, Kanothi started trapping them for a fee. Eventually this became a lucrative venture that earned handsomely.

It was through interaction with the people that he also realised that so many bachelors and spinsters were single not out of choice. Majority of them lacked the courage to face people of the opposite gender, thus ending up in singlehood. It was then he decided to fill the gap by being the link between the two sides of the divide, for a fee of course.

“For the last twenty years, the job that has earned me the most is that of trapping moles and assisting people to get spouses. To successfully get one a spouse, I charge between sh.3,000 and sh.10,000, depending on the client’s ability and the spouse’s status. If I trap a mole with about six kids, I earn about sh. 2,000,” says Kanothi.

Kanothi claims to have an office and offers marriage counselling lessons in Kagundui-ni Trading Centre of Kandara Division.

He contends that he at times earn sh. 2,200 from trapping a male mole and harvesting avocados, an amount he concedes, very few people in the white collar jobs earn.

His advice to the youth? “Think outside the box!”

“Let’s not blame the government or the local leadership for lack of jobs. Opportunities are all over,” he concludes.