….and I’m not talking about marijuana either. Hurricane Ivan decimated the island’s power grid and hundreds of thousands of people are still without power. As many of the island’s inhabitants rely on cell phones to communicate, some enterprising souls have turned their cars into mobile money making machines.
The photo below shows a car charging cell phone batteries from its own car battery. The owner of the car is selling this service for $50 a charge – see sign on the windshield.
Yes, I know the sign is sort of illegible but trust me, it was $50. I received this photo from a woman I work with who has family in Jamaica. Her relative brings 4-5 of his neighbors’ cell phones to work with him everyday to charge for free – each week he charges around 20 – 25 phones. Just looking at the photo, I see that there is about $500 – $1000 sitting on that car’s hood.
No matter what the occasion or circumstance, some people will always go out of their way to help and others will find a way to make money. Oh the humanity!
One thought on “Entrepreneurship: Jamaican Style”
Some clarification on the post from the email that included the photo: A friend sent me this picture of a man with a generator in the back of a van who was selling a “full charge” for cell phones for J$50 (about US$1) after the hurricane.
So to sum it up, I incorrectly listed the price for the charge, the familial relationship of the person who took the photo and the device charging the phones. I basically went 1 for 4 but who cares? A pictures says a thousand words…