Optiven Group founder and CEO George Wachiuri is a big name in the real estate sector whose journey to success is one of a kind.
The millionaire, who lost his father in 1978, was brought up in poverty in Laburra village, Nyeri county.
While he was a young boy, he escaped two deaths. In two different occasions he was attacked by a snake and was it not for quick medical attention, he would not have survived.
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Later he was attacked by a cock that almost gouged out his eyes. He spent days in hospital.
Wachiuri in his book Soaring High Like An Eagle narrates how he was sweeping their house when a puff adder attacked him.
“I heard the hissing sound of puff adder but I couldn’t locate where it emanated from. I didn’t have time to escape. The searing bite was like a needle forced through my skin” he recalls in his book "he recounts.
With help of a local who had a vehicle, he was rushed to Nyeri District Hospital, now Nyeri Provincial Hospital where he was admitted for weeks.
Surprisingly, months after he was discharged, he was back in this hospital after an encounter with a friendlier bird that almost turned him blind for kicking its ‘fiancé’.
He was cleaning dishes outside their house when he shoved away a chicken that was disturbing him. In no time the cockerel came to her defense.
“It Couldn’t understand why I had to touch his girl. Without a warning, he dashed from where he was and went for my face. I was only lucky that it was my side of the face left open to him; that fellow would have gouged my eyes,” Wachiuri narrates.
The cock was slaughtered two days later after he was discharged from hospital.
The man who once aspired to be a priest studied at University of Nairobi where he hawked onions and washed clothes at a fee for his fellow students to survive.
He established Optiven, his real estate company in 1997 but it took him 10 years to make a profit.
