My name is Fredrick Warui. I reside on the outskirts of Nakuru Town, which is 150 km from Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. Nakuru is a cosmopolitan town and hosts every tribe in Kenya .I am married and my spouse name is Diana, we have two daughters, Zippy who is 8 years and Tracy 2 years and 4 months. Zippy is in standard two. She is an intelligent girl and she loves peace and will rarely cause any trouble, she loves art. She would love to become a nurse. Tracy is good with words and I marvel at her vocabulary despite her young age she talks in full sentences. She is full of energy and she is not pushed around but wants to have her way. I spent my childhood and Primary schooling in Nyahururu town, known for its famous Thompson falls. I consider my childhood to have been happy and adventurous. In my opinion I consider life to have been simple, playing and school was the way of life. Nyahururu town had a privilege of having a cinema hall, hence an opportunity to watch movies. I also cultivated interest for reading. I cleared my Primary School in 1991 and joined High School in 1992 which I cleared in 1995.During holidays I would help in the family business and also subsistence farming. This cultivated my love for farming. On challenges, I consider life as a school. Someone once said that, “ the only difference between school and life is that, in school one is given a lesson and then a test but in life one is tested to learn a lesson. Hence one never stops learning. I have been able to contribute in educating my cousin and in bring him up since he was 2 years after my aunt passed on. He cleared Campus last year after pursuing a Business Management course. That is a goal I am proud of.

I have found it necessary to change my profile so that I can demonstrate how Zidisha Loans have assisted me. I remember receiving my first loan in the middle of the night. Some coffee farmers had requested for some advance for various farm operations involving picking and drying of coffee. I sent the whole amount to the farmers. I am now operating under a registered trade name, Taurus Farm Enterprises. My business deals with three products, namely-buying and selling dry coffee, buying and selling manual coffee hullers and general agriculture which involves selling of fertilizers for increasing coffee yields. The coffee manual business was born out of the funds that Zidisha Loans provided. Its from the need to solve the farmers problem of selling dried ripe coffee cherries that fetch poor prices. From one kg of dry coffee cherry, a farmer sells to me at between 0.35$ and o.45$ per kg which I sell at between 0.5$ and 0.6$. I get 0.5$ per kg. Once the farmer acquires a coffee huller he is able to add value to the ripe coffee cherries. The pulped coffee is then fermented , washed and then sun dried to 11% moisture content ready for milling. I buy this coffee at between 1.5$ and 2.5$ per kg and sell at 2.5$ per kg. For the manual coffee hullers my customer segment is the farmer. I buy old models, Bentall type from Brazil that performs better that the new models from china. I sell about 4 machines in a good month. One goes at 300$ and I sell at 360$, transport cost takes 10$.I make about 200$ per month. I sell about 1000 kg of coffee in a month and get a gross of 500$.My operation expenses that involves transport of the coffee, storage, meals, lodging takes 200$, leaving me with about 300$. As I support my grandma plus my family, I use my income per month as follows: Rent 50$, food 120$, Electric and water bills 10$, phone bill 21$, school fees 15$. Loans take about 5o$, I manage to save about 25$ which goes to my Sacco for investments.

The machines shown on my photo are currently undergoing some minor repairs and which I am putting up for sale. I purchased one from a farmer who installed a bigger machine when he increased acreage of his coffee trees. I have an order of two more machines from certain customers, therefore i need about 300$ to purchase one as i have not received any down payment as i do from my customers. Hence the amount i receive will assist in the purchase. I will also install a petrol engine to drive the machine, which costs 100$ plus a metallic stand on which to install the engine and the machine costing about 30$. Also labor and additional accessories will cost 30$. The customers for the machines were referred by one of the farmers whom i sold a machine. He was satisfied by the quality and performance of the machine hence my business is transferring value to all parties in the transaction. As i get 50$ from the sale of every machine, i will get an increase of 20$ from the engine driven one.