The Feeding of the Five Thousand

It was a cold, windy day, and the crowds were gathering in their numbers to come and listen to the king.

I stood on the other side of the giant walls which surrounded the gathering and I could hear the screams and shouts as the king made his appearance.  I was not there to listen to the king, but to try and earn some extra cash from those who were.

This was my first attempt at becoming an entrepreneur and I had dragged my third eldest sister along to come and assist me in this venture.  We had arrived early that morning after I had dropped off my daughter with my second eldest sister who was to baby-sit her.  I was very excited about doing this and was expecting business to thrive.

I was going to try and sell a thousand rolls and because I thought it was a great opportunity I shared my idea with a colleague/friend who then decided she needed to also take advantage of the opportunity.  I never thought about competition as I believed there was enough to go round.

When I look back on that day, there I was under my little make-shift structure which looked a bit like the stable that Jesus was born in next to my ex-colleague's caravan which could have been the hotel that Mary and Joseph were turned away from.  She was making her sales and I must have sold all of 100 rolls only.

At the end of the night I packed up and stayed over at my sister's place and the next morning I woke up with the idea of giving away the remaining rolls. So instead of going to church that morning I got up, left some rolls and sausage with my sister and then drove down the road on a mission to give away the rolls.

I started out at the Haven for Street children, then on to the garage for petrol. Speaking to the petrol attendant I mentioned to him that I had some rolls to give away and he said that across the road was a church and if I liked he would help me take some over to them.  So we did that. I also gave two boxes of rolls to one of the other petrol attendants who said he ran a house shop in the location he lived.

Soon I had very few rolls left and decided it was time to go and fetch my daughter and head home.  Before leaving my sister the "baby-sitter" I gave her the last of the rolls.

As I was driving home I burst out laughing as it suddenly dawned on me that after giving all the rolls way it now meant that I had to stop at the shop to buy bread as I had not thought to keep a few rolls for myself.

When I got home I called my sister who had helped me to tell her the funny side of giving away the rolls.  This was just too hilarious.

The next day my sister called me just to say "Now all you needed were the two fish".  It did not register at first (normal behavior as I am slightly delayed). But when it did, I just smiled to myself.

Anyway that was my attempt at trying to make some money on 4 October 1997 at the king of pop's concert in Cape Town.  Michael Jackson had you made it out here again, I'm sure I would have done better.

Lessons learned from this:

Be careful who you share your ideas with. 

Don't give up because something never worked the first time. Learn from it and do it differently.