My name is Leah Mugo, I am married with 2 kids. I have gone through high school and then to College to do Secretarial and Office Management courses. I worked for a couple of years but my contract came to an end in December 2012 and I have not been able to secure another job since then. My husband has been unemployed for the last 5 years too. I have two beautiful girls aged 7 and 4 years. They are in school and they are brilliant, and I want to give them the best education so that they can become successful people in the society when they grow up and be able to help others in return. My first born want to be a Doctor and the last born want to be an actress!!! They are however both asthmatic and need constatn medical care which really eats into our pockets....... We have been trying our hands at different small businesses most of which dont take off because of lack of adequate capital and operational costs. I therefore need your assitance in starting off my business to be able to take care of our young family and educate our kids. My hobbies are polishing my nails and my girls too!, travelling(which i dont ge to do much because of lack of enough money!) and cooking.
I have been trying small scale farming and have come to enjoy and like growing of potatoes, as they are becoming the second staple food in Kenya next to maize. There is always demand for potatoes in the markets, institutions, hotels, schools and homesteads. However when it comes to selling the potatoes its usually a challenge because the middlemen swindle the farmers by over packing and buying at very low prices. I have leased one acre of land in a place called Kinangop, and from time to time I can harvest 25- 31 bags of potatoes which i sell for between kshs 1800 - 3000 depending with the season. However for the last couple of months I have not been able to farm due to lack of capital to plant them.
Revenue is normally - 25 bags x 1800 = 45,000
We live in our own house so we dont pay rent.
School fees per month is about 26,000
House expenses - food, medical, electricity , water etc is about 18,000.
I have been researching on better ways of earning more from potoatoes and I met another young man who introduced me into the business of making hand made potato crisps. I have enough space in our house /compund to enable me make the crisps from home. I have tried a few times to test the waters and people like the crisps and I know if I can be able to do large scale there is enough market for them because people will always want to eat!!! I however lack the capital to do so because whatever little money we get is to buy food daily for the family. Kindly assist me....
The rains are about to start here. I will build a good strong structure to shelter our cooking jiko and preparation area of the potato crisps as currently we do it outside our house in the open. I will buy timber-3,000, poles - 360, wiremesh -600, cement for the floor -1,800, nails - 250, hammer - 320, roofing iron sheets - 4,000 and a door - 600. Labour 2,000. Total cost of the structure is 12,930 Kes, approximately.
If it would be possible I would really appreciate if you helped me/loaned me the whole amount. I will pay it back in instalments. Thank you in advance