Afrikaans speaking people often say "dis nie soos ek jou hier vertel nie" when they are relating some fantastic experience. While one often means to create a more vivid picture in the listener's mind by trusting him or her to imagine your story greater than you are painting it with your words, I'm using the words to fill in the gaps of this story.
When one writes with hindsight, the dreamt-of and the hoped-for had already been established, so you can simply report. This is not quite the case for me. I do not know the end of this story and these blogs are not well-calculated installments of a success story, I am also still seeing things unfold day by day. My vantage point is the difference between today and yesterday. But I would like to retrace those earlier days when possibility was like a rain-promising cloud in my heart which could easily behave like our Namibian clouds before the actual rains come.
Anybody who lives in Namibia knows about those "spaza" clouds. I don't know the origin of this word, but locally it means that clouds behave like good soccer players who can pretend that they are about to do one thing but then do something else. So there was a cloud of hope, faith whispered a promise that this idea may be realised, my cloud may actually rain. Hot day after hot day the clouds build up, cool the day, become so thick you can image you smell the rain in the distance. Oh, but our Namibian clouds build up, build up into heavy clouds and then... IT DOESN'T RAIN! And tomorrow a new cloud starts building up and you hope. When this happens you feel so cheated. Well, I do. In the same way I saw my USB cloud grow heavier and heavier, but deep inside I feared it may dissipate Namibian style. I may learn something about a tax law or any other nameless dreamkiller. Would my cloud leap forth its drops... or would I experience another hot and dry day hoping?
With a sigh of relief I can say the dream cloud began drizzling in numerous ways: the fact that I could afford to invest the money I did, after months I fell in love with the designs, the USBs arriiiiiiiiiiiived. Oh, you should have seen me when I opened that box. Disbelief, wonder, gratefulness, supersweetrainbowcoloured joy washed over me and through me in jubilating waves. It was wonderful.
Although I have not sold many of the USBs yet, I've moved so far beyond the early days when the dream was the whiff of a cloud on the horizon. "Back then" I would mail Ilana - my supplier of goods and services - asking her if she thinks the idea can work. What would she suggest I do as research, should I do this, can I do that? Poor woman; trying to sell me her services but needing to hold my hand at the same time. We got through it, Ilana.
And though it felt like my cloud may indeed have played the spaza game when I ran into the "your price is too high, you need packaging" doors, I believe in my product. These are the cutest Namibianised USBs; they will sell themselves. In this 'm confident. The physical truth for now is that there is no real rain yet, but I have learned to become patient, to understand the dynamics. Though I'm in absolutely unfamiliar territory, I can smell the rain.
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