IT IS ALWAYS IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL IT IS DONE

It was evening hours as the day was slowly turning dark and I was driving in a very high speed along Morogoro road .When I reached Magomeni Mwembe Chai, one of the front tires got burst causing the car to slow down unexpectedly. It was a five minutes experience in which I lost total control of the vehicle and looking at the back through my side mirror I saw a forty feet truck coming in a very high speed straight at our back. I tried to push the wheel on the side of the road but it was not moving and the truck was heading near to us. I completely lost hope and started to panic knowing that there could be no way to survive such a terrible accident, so I closed my eyes and remain praying. My mind was telling me that Paul this is the end of your story.

I opened my eyes for a minute looking on the sides of the road and I saw people looking at our situation like an accident scene in an action cinema. Again I looked at the back mirror and I didn’t believe what was happening with the truck driver. When the truck was almost at our back he pushed it on the right direction of the road to escape hitting our small car. He forced the truck to move to the pavements in between the two main roads. He seemed to have lost balance and control of the heavy truck and you could see how he struggled to come to balance like three or four times. At that time, everyone around mwembe chai was looking to see how the forty feet truck was turning upside down. But God is great; the truck driver who seemed very much experienced took total control of the truck and finally managed to stop the truck. I was driving my sport car Toyota Levin black metallic that I bought while in school. I was not alone inside the car. I was with a friend namely David Kafulila who is currently a member of parliament. When I looked at David and saw him looking at the truck driver as if he has seen Jesus.

The truck driver was running towards us and I got worried that he was bitter and wanted to react on us. I got out of the car looking at him but he didn’t speak a word. He looked straight at my eyes for few minutes then he said “God loves you so much”. He then went back to his truck and drove away. It was a very unusual experience.

I survived that terrible accident when I and my friend David Kafulila were supporting a political campaign of a very close friend John Mnyika who is currently a Member of Parliament for Ubungo constituency. John was one of the many friends we grew together in youth movements and someone who supported me very much when I did run for a leadership position and won at the University of Dar es Salaam. John was a very good strategist and at very young age he demonstrated superior leadership capabilities. I and many other friends decided to support John because he was humble, a down to earth person, self-less, capable and courageous enough to try. But despite our tireless efforts and energy, John didn’t win the election and lost against the incumbent Charles Keenja who was the long serving technocrat and a prominent member of the cabinet.

Five years after losing the election, Mnyika approached us again that he wanted to try again. When he was talking to us you could clearly see in his eyes that he was very much hopefully to win that election. You could see that he was ready to dare and mentally prepared to face the odds. This time around Mnyika made it. At the very young age, he was announced the winner of the 2010 parliamentary election for Ubungo constituency and the rest is history.

The Mnyika experience and many other lessons in life have taught me to dare and not to fear trying. I have come to realize that people who made history are those who dared to dream, went after their dreams and tried. All of the big names you admire today were just the ordinary people who became extraordinary just for daring to try. You may be dreaming of accomplishing something big in your life but you don’t really see it coming because you think you are nobody and that you don’t have anything to get you moving. I always meet many people who want to start their own businesses but fear of the unknown and uncertainty in the journey make them shut their dreams away. They fear to fail thus fail even before they start. I want to encourage you not to fear trying.

If you really want to achieve your life-time dream then you have to dare trying. Today in our country and around the world, there are so many inspiring stories of people who came from nothing to something by just trying. Most of them did not seem to have what it takes to be who they are today but they have proven us wrong. I remember in 1995 when the third phase President of our nation HE Benjamin William Mkapa expressed interest to run for the Presidency he was the less likely candidate within CCM. Very few people believed that Mkapa could outshine the heavy weights. But Mkapa who was not a very popular figure in Tanzanian politics by that time gave it a trial and he made it to the State house. Similarly to what happened to Barack Obama whose daring spirit and courage to try changed the history of Amer ican politics to produce the first ever black American President. Obama who was not very much known in American politics at that time was running against a very prominent figure who had a track record in American politics and experience in running the Government machinery. You can also do it. Stop for few minutes and look at the lights in your room. Thomas Edilson is the one who invented electricity we are using today to power our houses and factories. But have you read Thomas Edilson’s story? Edilson tried a thousand times before he invented electricity. Imagine what would have happened if Edilson would fear trying.

May be the potential for success is low based on your current circumstances. May be you need to gather more experience. It’s all ok but mind you that no experience is as practical as the experience you acquire while in the field. For sure you will make mistakes, you will fail sometimes, but what I guarantee you is the fact that you will not be the same person every day. You will learn and grow and know the rules of the game. But you need to jump start this process. You need to start your journey to success. You need to look at what you have and not what you don’t have. You need to dare tring and let the results take care of themselves.

One day I shared the same platform with Emelda Mwamanga, Ceo and founder of Bang Magazine. Emelda is a very successful young entrepreneur. She has a very fascinating story. Emelda is a well educated Tanzanian women grown up in a well established family. After graduating from the university in South Africa, Emelda worked for Cocacola Tanzania. She was well salaried with a very promising career. But after working for few years, Emelda decided to quit her highly paying job to try working on her dream to run her own business. She said “I was passionate about magazines and so I decided to try Bang magazine”. In her entrepreneurial journey, Emelda went through ups and down but at the end she has made it. To date Bang is one of the very prominent inspirational lifestyle magazines with a strong readership base across ages. Emelda’s vision is to publish many other brands of magazines addressing a variety of issues ranging from politics to lifestyle. “it is always impossible until it’s done”-Nelson Mandela