From Miami to the edge of Hossa National Park – Maija’s career story
I am Maija-Reetta Daly and I was raised in the village of Korpela in Suomussalmi. After high school, I went to the world through a few twists and turns in Finland, traveling there for eight years. I met my Irish husband in Australia and now we have lived for the last nine years near the Hossa National Park. We own the Camping Hossa Lumo campsite.
After high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do at all. I went to Kuopio to study sign language interpreter, but it didn’t seem like my thing. So I moved to Helsinki and started working at the cash register in a store, while also applying to universities in the tourism sector, among other fields. On a friend’s tip, I ended up at Päivölä College in Pirkanmaa for a tour guide course, which led to three seasons as a tour guide in Tenerife, Mallorca and Thailand. The travel bug started to bother me so much that I ended up quitting my job as a guide and heading to Australia on a Working Holiday visa. There I met my husband, and after two years in Australia we headed to New Zealand, where I worked as a waiter for just under a year. When the visa expired, it was time to move back to Europe, but we still didn’t really know what we wanted to do.
From Miami to Hossa
I come from an entrepreneurial family (my mother was a physiotherapist and my father was a gas station owner), so starting a business has always seemed like the only option for me. At that time, the idea of owning our own accommodation service was already starting to simmer, but we needed money and backpacking didn’t really save much. So we ended up working on luxury yachts in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and Miami for the next three years. We gained experience in super high-end service while missing our homeland. We were getting married and settling down in the industry started to become a topic of conversation. So, through twists and turns, we ended up buying a campsite known as Erä-Hossa near the then Hossa hiking area (now a national park) and moving from Miami via the center of Suomussalmi to Hossa in December 2015.
We started out as entrepreneurs without any experience. In addition, ten years away from Kainuu and the man’s move to a completely unknown environment brought its own challenges. The first years were a real learning curve. However, we have been able to create many wonderful new customer relationships and positive feedback helps us to persevere and develop our operations even further. For our part, we strive to develop the services in the Hossa area and thus maintain life here, even in this somewhat remote area.
My own working life has been quite unusual and I have never had a long career before becoming an entrepreneur. As an employee, I have always had an entrepreneurial mindset, which has helped create a better relationship with my employer. Therefore, mutual flexibility and understanding of needs have been normal in working life. Since we live in this camping area, i.e. practically at the workplace, remote working opportunities etc. do not apply to me. On the other hand, participating in meetings remotely has made life easier, as I no longer have to travel at least an hour each way to the meeting places.
For someone who is considering moving to Kainuu or working in Kainuu, I would say that it is easy to network in Kainuu due to the relatively small entrepreneurial field. It is also relatively easy to present yourself and your needs to important parties and not be drowned in a huge, faceless mass. In Kainuu, it is easy to seek the help you need and, for example, Kajaani University of Applied Sciences provides a lot of help to companies operating in the area, for example through various projects and product development.
“I think the Kainuu work culture is honest and fair.”
One of the best things about living and working in Kainuu is that the “smallness” of the community brings its own benefits. Help is easy to find and people are mostly willing to help. The surrounding nature everywhere provides a good counterbalance to entrepreneurship and working life. Kainuu has diverse and affordable hobby opportunities.
Text and photos: Maija Daly
Winter photo with sliding snowshoes: Jenni Mäkelä
Summer hiking photo: Lenny Daly