Joshua's story

Believe it or not, when I'm not kidnapping children or baking banana bread, there's actually quite a lot of hard work that goes on out here. My specific mission is to work with five local entrepreneurs to launch or grow their businesses.

Let me paint a picture of our first meeting with Joshua. My team mates  (both male, one from Nairobi, the other from Salisbury) and I were sat on a low table and a plastic chair inside his General shop. The little building, made of wood, had been boldly painted blue. There were no windows, save for a hatch that customers could peer through to order their wares. This hatch had a metal gause over it for security purposes. Shelves lined the shop but they were largely bare as there were not enough funds to fill them. Those shelves that were stocked supported everyday household items like flour, soap and tea. We could see that the shop could play a very useful role in supplying locals with essential items without requiring them to walk to town. Joshua himself spoke good English, was aged around 30, married, with 3 adorable children. Also, when he wasn't running the shop he was a night watchman at a local savings collective, which caused me always to wonder when he found time to sleep.

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that Joshua already kept financial records. In a big book, a keen pencil showed logs of money coming in and money going out. Although Joshua had diligently recorded both of these, he hadn't ever added up the two columns. Unfortunately, when we did, we found that the shop was running at a loss. This was a shock to us all, especially Joshua. We had to come up with a plan of action and fast, before any more money could disappear.

The key to finding a solution was to look closely at the recorded sales. The fastest sellers appeared to be snacks like Mandazis and sweets. Let me quickly introduce mandazis for the British readers, they're like deep fried bread dough often eaten for breakfast; If you imagine a triangular doughnut without the sugar coating you'd be about right. Joshua was buying 6 mandazis for 50/= and selling them at 10/= each. We reasoned that the first thing we could do to cut costs would be to make them ourselves. As luck would have it, mandazi making is one of the skills Joshua already happened to have, it was as though fate had divined this course of action for us.

The next day I was up at 5am, ready for an incredibly early start. The mandazis had to be cooked early in order to catch the breakfast-time market which would begin at 6am. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't light yet and no unescorted young lady wonders around town after dark, so I waited impatiently for the sun to rise before trotting  across town to meet my team in Joshua's shop. There in the middle of the shop floor was a little stove (called a 'jiko') full of boiling oil and Joshua was preparing to deep fry his mandazis in it. He would drop in flat slices of pastry and within a few minutes they would puff up and rise, it was like seeing a cake bake in fast forward. The three of us volunteers watched like vultures, entranced by the smell of cooking dough and eager for our first taste of the new product. It did not disappoint, indeed collectively we were so pleased with the taste that there were very few mandazis left for regular customers.

The following day we returned, having resolved to eat no more than two each, ready to support Joshua once more in his early start. We were very impressed to see that even in 24 hours Joshua's skills had improved. The mandazis we had praised so highly yesterday looked sadly flat compared to the well risen batch we had produced today. This trajectory for improvement continued. Joshua was always tweaking the recipe to get a better texture, taste, colour or smell. He became very popular locally and was soon doing deliveries at his other place of work.

I'd like to say this was all plain sailing, but it wasn't. Improving the recipe comes at a cost, and no customer would be prepared to pay extra for a higher quality mandazi. Everyone knows that they cost 10/= each, that's just the way it is. Joshua wasn't particularly interested in his profit margins, he was much more concerned by the number of sales made. I felt like we were always in danger of spending more on ingredients than we made from sales, making the transition from a profitable business to one that runs at a loss. Joshua wasn't in the habit of telling me when he had changed the recipe, unless something had gone wrong and affected his sales, so I always worried that we wouldn't know if the balance tipped.

Compared to Kenya, the UK may be described as 'hyper-communicative' especially in a business setting. So I'd like to highlight that Joshua wasn't unusual in not keeping us abreast of every change he made. In fact, compared to many, he was very good at keeping us informed.

The spin off of not knowing when the recipe changed was that we couldn't spot problems coming. One day Joshua decided to make his dough the night before so that he could have a lie in the following day. As the milk in his dough curdled it created a sort of sour dough effect when cooked. I loved it, Joshua wasn't so sure and I'm not convinced the customers could tell. Less successful was the time he decided to substitute water for milk and the whole batch failed to rise. He was so ashamed of the flat tasteless mandazis that he didn't take the usual delivery to the neighbouring town and left for his evening job with a quick text to tell me that 80% of the day's batch hadn't sold. The team was busy with another entrepreneur in the market at the time, but we rushed over as soon as we could, met Joshua's wife and proceeded to stand at the roadside (where there was higher footfall) and sell the mandazis there. This was one of the few times when my white skin was a real asset as it attracted a good deal of attention and worked to promote our wares for us with one person even remarking that "it must be good if a white person is selling it". In this way we managed to weather the storm that setting up a new business can bring.

Near the end of our time there, we got the opportunity to pitch for a loan at 0% interest. This is something quite unusual in a country where banks would offer a businessman of Joshua's age and experience a loan at closer to 25%. While I was very nervous about the pitch (for all my entrepreneurs) Joshua did well. Armed with a thick wedge of paperwork that we had prepared, he went into the dragon's den style panel with a well deserved level of confidence and secured 16,000/= to spend on his shop. The money is going to be used to buy ingredients in bulk (which is cheaper than going into a supermarket), a bicycle (to do more deliveries) and a new stove (to cook more at once).

The bicycle was secured before we left. It's sky blue and the children love it. They think it's a motorbike and love to ride behind their daddy. The sight of them was enough to bring a lump to my throat. It's been a stressful, laborious journey but in that moment it was so obviously worth it.

A couple of days after I got back to the UK, I received a message from Joshua and as well as all the normal chat were details of the cost per mandazi and the profit per mandazi that he had calculated. We got there in the end!