Money Makes Money. And That Money Make More Money.
A meditation on compounding — in money, people, and skill.
Last week I came back to Dar Es Salaam. I walked through Posta.
You know that part of town. The Askari Monument in the middle. Traffic going around it. People rushing past. Daladalas. The smell of roasted maize somewhere. The monument stands still and the city moves.
I have passed that monument a hundred times. Last week was different. I found a service road near it and stopped. I had not planned to stop. I just stopped.
I looked across the street to where the old Tanzania Posta Bank used to be. The building is something else now. They moved. They have a new name. Tanzania Commercial Bank.
Standing there, I saw the old bank. The one I walked into the first time. My father had sent me to see the branch manager. The manager was supposed to help me open my first account.
I was fourteen. Maybe fifteen.
My father had been pushing me for weeks. Fungua akaunti. Fungua akaunti. Open an account. I did not want to. I had no money. What would I put inside? But he insisted. The way fathers insist on things you do not understand.
So I went. I introduced myself. I asked for the branch manager.
He had a corner office. The window looked straight at the Askari Monument. I sat on a wooden chair. He sat on a leather one.
He made small talk. He told the teller to start the process. The teller filled in forms. I signed. The signature is bad. I would not sign it that way now. They gave me a card and a small checkbook.
That was it. I had an account.
For a few years, I used it. Pocket money. Holiday money. Whatever passed through my hands in secondary school went into that account. Then secondary school ended. I moved on.
I forgot.
I forgot completely. The card went into a drawer. The book went into a file. The account went to the back of my mind. It stayed there.
For years.
• • •
Last week, standing at Askari Monument, looking at where the bank used to be — it came back.
I went home that evening. I started digging. I opened files I had not opened in years. Old envelopes. Old papers. I found it. The card. The account number. A printed statement from the last time I touched it.
The statement said: 90,000 shillings.
Ninety thousand. The balance the day I stopped paying attention.
I sat with the paper. I thought — What happened to the account. I wonder if the money is still there. I wonder what it has become.
The next morning I went to the bank. The new bank. New name. New building. Tellers who were not working when I opened the account.
I gave them my details. They looked. They tapped. They looked again.
“I’m sorry. That account was closed many years ago. You can open another one if you like.”
I said no thank you. I turned to leave.
Then I stopped. I turned back.
“My last balance was 90,000 shillings. That was in 2008. What would it be now if the account had not been closed?”
He did not say anything. He went to his computer. He typed. He looked at me. He smiled. He took a piece of paper. He wrote something on it. He folded it. He put it in an envelope with the new bank logo. He handed it to me.
“Open it when you reach home.” He said.
I liked the drama. I kept the envelope in my bag. I left.
• • •
Initial amount: 90,000 shillings, 2008
Interest rate: 13% per year
Compounded annually
562,500 shillings
I did not know what to feel. My money had grown from 90,000 to 562,500 shillings. I had done nothing.
• • •
There is a word for what happened. Compounding.
It is a finance word. Money earns interest. The interest earns interest. Then that interest earns interest. Small at first. Then noticeable. Then ridiculous.
Einstein is supposed to have called it the eighth wonder of the world. Whether he said it or not, anyone who has watched it happen knows. There is something unfair about it.
Money that makes money makes more money.
But that is not what I want us to sit with today on Watushule.
Compounding is not just a finance idea. It is a life idea.
• • •
Compounding in relationships
Think about the people in your life who matter. The ones who pick up the phone. The ones who call you with good news, and the ones who call you with bad.
When did you meet them?
For most of us, a long time ago. Secondary school. University. First job. The small business you tried before this one. A church group. A neighbourhood.
You did not plan for them to matter. You showed up. You called when you needed nothing. You helped when it cost you something small. You remembered birthdays. You attended funerals. You sent nimekukumbuka for no reason at all.
Year by year, the relationships were compounding. You did not see it.
The friend from Form Three becomes the one who hires you fifteen years later. The cousin you helped with homework becomes the one who connects you to a client. The neighbour who shared food when you were broke becomes the godparent of your child.
The relationships you do not pull up to check on grow the deepest roots.
The way I forgot the account, most of us forget our relationships. Not in a bad way. We just live. We move. We get busy. But the ones we planted properly keep growing. Whether we look or not.
One day you walk back. The balance is something you did not expect.
• • •
Compounding in skill
Skills compound.
At nineteen you learn to write a clear email. It does not feel like much. At twenty-two you learn to listen in a meeting before you speak. It does not feel like much. At twenty-five you learn to disagree with someone without making an enemy. That one also feels small.
Put them together. Twenty years of small skills stacked on each other. The way you think. The way you read a room. The way you handle a difficult client. The way you negotiate. The way you write. The way you carry yourself when things go wrong.
That stack is what people mean when they say experience. It is not time. Time alone gives you nothing. It is small skills. Compounded.
The painful part — the people who started at eighteen are hard to catch at thirty-five. Not because they are smarter. They have more years in the bank.
Like the account.
• • •
The quiet truth
What ties the three together?
Money. Relationships. Skill. They all compound. But only under one condition.
You have to leave them alone long enough.
You plant the seed. You do not dig it up every week to check. That is the hard part. Our generation wants the receipt today. We post and check the likes in five minutes. We send the message and wait for the blue ticks. We start the business and ask why we are not rich by month three.
Compounding does not work like that.
Compounding asks you to trust time. To do the small thing today. And tomorrow. And the day after. To stop counting.
The things that compound most in your life are the things you stop checking on.
• • •
Back to the bank
From 90,000 shillings — in an account I did not touch, did not deposit into, did not remember — the money grew. More than six times what I left there.
I left the bank thinking. Imagine if I had added to it. Imagine if every month I had fed it small amounts. Imagine if I had done the same with relationships. With skills.
That is the regret. Not what compounding gave me. What it could have given me, if I had understood.
But it is not too late. That is why I am telling you the story.
Whatever you are today. Whatever age. Whatever stage. There is an account somewhere in your life that you can open today. A skill. A relationship. A habit. A small monthly deposit into something that matters.
Open it now. Forget it for a while. Let time do the work you cannot do.
• • •
My father pushed me to open that account when I did not understand why.
He was a finance expert. He was a banker. He was a man who understood, the way older people understand, that you plant things before you need them. And those things compound.
I think about that a lot now.
Build relationships that compound.
Build skills that compound.
Build money that compounds.
• • •
This is Watushule.
We think. So we become.
Until next week — kwaherini.