Jeremia Engelbrecht

Military; Farmer; Engineer.

I go to ten different schools. Seven Junior, three High. Happens with a hard-drinking contractor father! I am 7 when we arrived at the Old Mill Triangle, and the family is broke; we sleep on the hard cement floor and sit on cardboard boxes, we catch fish in the canals and steal mielies (maize) for food. Kind neighbours supply vegetables.

I am 11 and I am drunk. I earn the nickname 'dumpy', after the dumpy beer bottle. I am 16 and I am drunk at senior boarding school, hospitalised, and expelled. Happens with a hard-drinking father.

I join an elite military force, but first I train, running up and down the precipitous Christmas Pass with a heavy pack and brick in each hand. I jump from WW2-relic Dakotas. My country of birth is in great upheaval. The military is no more.

I get a job and run like Forest Gump (really! I have no car so run shifts, 18km a day. I run before 7am, back for 3pm; for 3pm and back 11pm; for 11pm and back 7am). I sleep in a ditch when I cannot afford rent.

I try mushroom farming. I start a business installing tennis court floodlights. With no experience to speak of, but I do it anyway. I erect 9 metre masts with twin floods. I must climb the masts in the dark to focus them. I am afraid and abort, then try again. Truth is, it is scary atop a skinny mast holding with one hand and a wrench in the other, no harness. I ask a wholesaler to explain the wiring, pretending I had 'forgotten'. I progress to an Electrical Engineering business. I get bored, sell, and start an irrigation company. I must learn this too.

I buy some land to build a house. I build from scrap. I buy an old chancery from the Dutch Embassy, dismantle it and use what I can, windows, doors, anything. I never built a house before. And it is beautiful!

My country collapses. I move countries, home, and between jobs. I live in a 'tent' through a frozen winter and 90 mile winds. And I start a steel company.

Our character and courage impacts our personal lives, relationships with partners, children and friends. Our lives, our relationships and business are a mirror that reflects who we are.

My military experience is documented in "A Handful of Hard Men" (Hannes Wessels) on Amazon.

Currently writing a book "The Narrative of a Man Employed" for release in August 2016 - a perspective of my business and working life and struggles.