Twins and their stylish furniture

ROMA – They have set Maseru on fire. The gifted twins make elegant furniture. It is the kind that sets your home apart from the rest.

“You won’t believe it,” they said “but after being unable to get space both at the LOIC or Fokothi, we self-taught,” said the highly enthusiastic former students of the National University of Lesotho (NUL).

LOIC is the Lesotho Opportunities Industrialisation Centre while Fokothi is the nickname for the Lerotholi Polytechnic. Here is the story of ’Mampiti Thamae (nee Lerato Tšoeute) and ’Matlotlang Morejele (nee Thato Tšoeute).

They are creating jobs because, at the moment, their workshop has eight staff members, including themselves. More will be hired as the business grows.

Sit down with these two ladies and you will be forgiven for thinking you were talking to one person. Not only do they think alike, they also look alike. They are identical twins.

It looks like fate has made it that nothing separates them — even work. Here is why.

“At a young age, we spent most of our time with our mom,” they said.

The mother just loved producing crops. But there is something she taught them.

“She taught us that nothing is free — from a very young age.”

Yes, nothing for “mahala.”

How?

“We were not the kind that got given pocket money. What for? We only got money if we did something worth being paid for.”

For instance, “if we grew and took care of the crops, we got paid”.

“If we collected cow dung when we were from school, to be used as manure, we got paid.”

Not only that.

They were even paid for getting good grades at primary school. Only and only if they did something worth being paid for would they receive handsomely.

The kind of upbringing, strange as it was, made them understand one thing — that nothing is free in this world.

Fast-forward to high school and they were both into drawing and selling some of the drawings they made.

Once they were done with high school, they landed in the textile factories. For them, it was one of the most important experiences since it taught them one or two lessons about production.

Production, they said, is about having and meeting targets.

“We always encourage our workers to work with this in mind.”

Then they entered the NUL. Here they sold like crazy to students.

“We sold everything from peanuts to stock sweets and airtime.”

Surprisingly, during holidays, they did not rest. They went back to the textile factories to work.

“Because of how we performed, our manager at the factory really liked us, so we made a deal that every time we were out of school, she would absorb us and she did.”

Did they not think that they had outgrown that kind of work now that they were university students?

“Nope!” they said.

“We did not notice any difference from the money we got from Manpower (National Manpower Development Secretariat) and that which came from factories. They both had the same power to buy.”

Once they were done at the NUL and after going through several jobs, they got hooked on art. They started making art out of nails and strings.

“We would then sell in several flea markets around town.”

At one particular moment, they fell in love with furniture done by a particularly talented carpenter at Katlehong and they asked if they could assist in selling his products.

He agreed and his products were sold successfully. They made similar arrangements with others.

“We still recall a day when a customer had paid and the person who was supposed to make a bed for us didn’t.”

That was the turning point. Out of nowhere, one of them suggested to the other that, “maybe we could just do this thing ourselves”.

At that time, they had no experience whatsoever with carpentry — zero.

But they bought whatever equipment they could lay their hands on, sometimes losing money by buying wrong equipment and they built a bed.

With so many errors, it was not the best bed in the world.

“But it gave us so much confidence that we could build something, after all.”

Going back was no longer an option. Aware that they needed skills, one tried to enrol with LOIC only to be told that she had to wait for the next intake. She tried Fokothi and met the same fate.

Left with no other options, “we went into a very deep research on how carpentry was done”. As they made products, they tried selling but their success was very limited.

That is, until Covid-19 hit. For them Covid-19 was a blessing in disguise.

“We thought, now that people are working from home, maybe they needed desks.”

It was true, they needed desks. And they bought them.

The level of confidence went up when they saw people start buying from them and cherishing their products.

Here they are now, doing all kinds of elegant furniture and growing. They believed they could do it and they were right.

Own Correspondent