Rocky Road To Success

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

One of the greatest minds this world has seen – Albert Einstein – had this to say about the school system, its perceived flaws and inability to accommodate different types of talent. This is while many people believe that education is the main road to being successful, but it wasn’t the case with Immanuel Kanime Juju.

Almost a decade ago, Juju became a language teacher and taught at various institutions, as he had a passion and talent for langauges. This was before he ventured into entrepreneurship and started his own business.

“I registered my company called Stone Translations and Interpretation Services and then moved to the High Court where I became High Court sworn translator in 2013, of which I hold a certificate as certified translator which boosts credibility in terms of what I do. I’ve decided to venture into entrepreneurship and I am now a translation agency business owner, providing translations and interpretation services in various languages for multiple subjects across the country,” Juju said.

However, his journey wasn’t a smooth walk, but rather a rocky one, filled with many obstacles, as he explained. Born in the northern part of the country in 1984, Juju’s family moved to South Africa where he grew up in Upington, and later in Pretoria.

“My parents had three sets of twins and the first was my brother and I. We moved to South Africa after a few years, where I grew up with all my siblings in Upington and later in Pretoria. I went to school there. We then moved back to Namibia to visit family before heading for the USA, where we ended up staying,” he said.

Due to lost documents, Juju found himself starting Grade 1 at the ripe age of 15, something very strange to his peers and those in his community.

“I often faced stigma, being laughed at by other kids and even some adults. It was difficult for me to wake up the next morning and go to school, knowing what I was going to face. There wasn’t a different day. I felt like I didn’t fit in and at some point I was traumatised. Sometimes I would arrive at school and turn back right from the gate unless someone saw me and called me back.

This experience didn’t stop. After being promoted to Grade 4, passed to Grade 5, Juju still had a hard time dealing with school, as he would always be picked on. Eventually, it became too much. He dropped out.

“After I dropped out of school, it affected me very negatively because I went to the streets, where I got into all kinds of trouble. I became more involved in juvenile delinquency and felt like life was meaningless. I escaped a number of tragedies, from suicide, arrests, being shot at and stabbed. And then I became a rap musician as a way of expressing my pain,” Juju explained.

It was after all this tragedy that he was faced with an opportunity to turn his life around.

“An aunt of mine owns a language training institution (Capacity Building Initiatives) and in 2007 she was short-staffed, so she needed her other nephew to go and help out as he had a better educational background. But he didn’t want to; I guess it wasn’t his kind of thing. So I asked her if she could take me instead, but my educational background was very poor, but she decided to give me a chance. That’s where it started. I ended up being good at it,” Juju explained.

As he was working he was also learning. His two focus languages were English and Portuguese.

“Life is a teacher; for as long as you live you learn. I have just written my Grade 12,” he said.

“My advice to young people struggling with school is that education is very important for everyone; we should never forget that. But it is not everything, because besides that we are all born with natural talents and abilities to do things.

Become and achieve what you want to. When school isn’t working out, it doesn’t mean that life is over. There is so much more you can do if you just do serious introspection; you will find that you are actually capable of doing things you never thought were possible. Plus it is never too late,” he added.

Juju also encouraged those who are doing well in school to keep up with it.

“To those who are previleged enough to still be in school – my advice is to stay in school; continue doing what you are doing, but don’t limit yourself.

Sometimes what you want to become, is something that you were already born with; you just have to study towards that,” he concluded.

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