By Buziwe Nocuze
- The 45-year-old Eastern Cape woman charges R1,000 for big ceremony jobs and R500 for smaller ones, depending on the vegetables.
- She supports her child and four siblings with her earnings and calls in a friend to help on big jobs.
A 45-year-old Eastern Cape woman decided to stop sending CVs and start making money another way. She noticed that families no longer got community help chopping vegetables for ceremonies and saw a chance to turn that into a business.
She built her customer base by going directly to families preparing for ceremonies. Word spread and people from other villages started calling her too.
She charges R1,000 for big jobs and sometimes sleeps over to get the work done. At one ceremony, she chopped vegetables throughout the entire night.
“The vegetables they gave me were too much and I thought they were going to complain about the R1,000, but they also saw it was a lot of work and I slept over at their place chopping vegetables the entire night,” she said. “I also do sleepovers for customers outside my village.”
When jobs get too big to handle alone, she brings in a friend. She pays her friend R800 from a R1,000 job. Her friend also helps with smaller jobs below R1,000. She charges R500 for those, depending on how many vegetables need to be chopped.
Her biggest challenge is customers who push for lower prices but expect a lot of work.
“I have customers who like to negotiate the price but want me to do a lot of work. Chopping vegetables is not easy work, so I try to explain that to them, but sometimes I end up charging R300 for so many vegetables,” she said.
The money covers basics for her child and four siblings. She saves R200 a month and buys clothes for her child and two younger siblings.
Pictured above: A woman chopping vegetables in preparation for a ceremony.
Image source: Pexels
