SOURCING, CLEANING AND SHIPPING OF TIGERNUTS IN LARGE QUANTITY

Hey lovelies ❤️
It's your favorite girl @debbie-ese 😍
Welcome to my blog 🤗

Despite my busy schedule I took time to carry out a task for a friend, a task that I could have easy cancelled but when I heard that I should not treat it like a random errand but as a business, I became motivated to do it. In other words, this friend of mine isn't in the country so he needed someone to help him source for bags of tigernuts and send to where it will be shipped out to him and of course he was going to pay for my services.

At first when I received his message I almost declined the offer because I thought he was just going to 'use' me considering the stress that is associated with the task. I have got some much work in my hands that are uncompleted and the deadline fast approaching, so I couldn’t engage in any business that won't pay me. I have been a victim of such situation in the past where friends will need me to do something for them that requires money and especially my time which they will not deem to pay for. It is important to get value for every seconds in the day.

These tigernuts are mostly found in large quantities in the Northern part of Nigeria. So, I did a survey in some major markets for about two days before I was directed to a major supplier who deals in tigernuts and dates. On getting to his store, I observed that there were small grains and big grains. I asked the man to enlighten me on the best one to go for and he made it clear to me that they are both good, however, the small grains are more juicy than the big ones, and also the small grains are cheaper than the big grains. We settled for the small grains at the end of the day.

Fast forward to the sourcing, the tigernuts are bagged in 100kg and he wanted about ten bags at first but he later changed his mind to four bags because of the high price. The tigernuts, according to him, will be processed into flour, that is, it will be grounded into a powdered form. This means that the nuts must be clean and free from stones, shafts and the likes. So, this takes us to the cleaning and washing stage.

After negotiation have been concluded about the quantity and price per each bags, I requested that I want each of the bags to be thoroughly cleaned. The cleaning process is divided into two stages - the seiving and separation stage - where the stones, shafts, dust, spoilt nuts and so on were sieved out using a metal seive. This process took quite some time before it was concluded. Also, I had to watch from a distance at some point due to the dust that filled the air from the blowing and seiving process.

Next, it was time to wash the tigernuts to get rid of the residual dust that didn’t leave during the seiving stage. The tigernuts were washed that they were so clean. The results speaks for itself. The color of the nuts changed as the dirt have been fully eradicated. After they were washed, the next thing that was done is to sun dry them so that the water can dry off. This is important so that during the moving from one location to another the water will not be dripping everywhere. Another reason to dry it is that if it is not adequately dried it will begin to get spoilt in the bags.

After the tigernuts were dried, they were rebagged and it was time to send them to its penultimate destination. So, I took them to an interstate bus park where I negotiated with the driver and handed over everything to him. The bags were placed in the boot of the car alongside other passengers/travelers luggages. I got a call from the receiver after about 10 hours that the package have been received. Even though there were some complaints about the state of the package on arrival - the nuts were littered all over the bus because the bag was not well sealed but it was not something that could not be controlled.

All Images attached to the posf are mine.