Young man makes a fortune from trapping moles in the village farms

Kenya: Entrepreneurs have been described as individuals with unique skills: an ability to be innovative, tolerate ambiguity, and a knack for risk- taking, among others.  The entrepreneurial process is normally divided into four stages of searching, planning, organizing, and implementation, with each of these steps requiring unique skills.

  In a country where four out of every ten individuals in the workforce are unemployed, one wonders how individuals can identify opportunities when our educational system as well as our cultural paradigm favors pursuit of formal employment opportunities within established industries.  This question is more pertinent if one lives in the rural parts of the country where arguably less opportunities exist.  A friend recently confided in me a young man’s interesting entrepreneurial discourse that I wish to share.

Kiptarus completed high school a couple of years ago.  He grew up in his parent’s farm and spent his holidays and weekends helping his parents with farm work so that by the time he was in high school, he had become quite adept at most farming tasks.  He could milk, deworm, dehorn, castrate and could also assist a cow struggling to calf to have a successful delivery.  He also knew how to weed, how to trap moles, and how to mend fences.  Being responsible, he had already considered what to do the first year out of high school while waiting for his KCSE results.

In his parent’s 10 acre farm was a corner section that had been used as a cow’s night shed for as long as Kiptarus had been alive.  This section had become quite fertile, owing to the slurry that had for all those years been spread by the cows.  Kiptarus’ plan was to convince his parents to move the cow’s night shed a little further down from this section of the farm so that he could cultivate corn on the two acres.  He reasoned that this section of the farm will be ideal for his venture as its fertility will allow him to reduce the investment cost as he would not need to apply any inorganic fertilizer.  He had over the years while in high school been saving a little money out of his pocket money for investment into this project. He waited until the end of the Christmas festivities and the beginning of the New Year before floating his request to his parents.

So one evening after supper and before the traditional family prayer ritual, Kiptarus asked his parents if they could spare some minutes for him as he had something really important to share.  His parents, with confused looks on their faces, complied with his request with the hope that their son’s request/idea would not be anything oscillating close to the realm of starting his own family.  It was then that Kiptarus dropped the bombshell.

His proposal took his parents by surprise.  Their workload as well as labor costs in the farm had reduced somewhat since the day their son had completed high school and they were hoping to enjoy this temporary reprieve for a while before their son set off to college.  His dad, being a true African gentleman not to be rushed into making a decision, asked for time so that he and his wife could ventilate over the proposal for a couple of days.  After deliberating for three days, they had a counter proposal for Kiptarus.  One of the variables they had to grapple with was how to support the family with 8 acres of land when they were already struggling with ten.  Moreover, Kiptarus’ siblings were all close to being in high school, a period when every resource within families in our village must be directed towards paying the kid’s school fees.

Kiptarus’s other siblings were in various classes within the elementary school’s stages.  His sister, two years younger than him was in form two.  Another brother and sister were in the eight and seventh classes respectively while the last-born twins were in class five.  Yet the ten acre farm was the only source of livelihood for this family of eight.  If Kiptarus was to establish his enterprise by cultivating the two acres while still remaining dependent on his parents at least for his upkeep costs, the family’s source of livelihood would have to reduce to one acre per each family member.  Kiptarus parent’s counter-proposal was not a complete brick wall for this bubbly young man teeming with youth and energy though.  They would allow him to cultivate the two acres on condition that beginning the next year, he would be responsible for paying school fees for his brother who was currently in the eighth grade.  Kiptarus did not think this was a good suggestion and did not take the offer.  He, being well-mannered, politely declined the offer, arguing that the cost did not justify the investment.

It is the habit of men and older boys in my village to visit the local shopping center in the evenings after all the farm work has been completed.  This is a time to congregate in various parts of the center for idle talk often surrounding the latest developments in the village as well as in politics. So the next day, Kiptarus, after attending to the day’s farm duties, went to the shopping center.  As nightfall fell and has he was heading home, he ran into a neighbor whose homestead was in the same direction as his.  This individual was Kiptarus’ dad’s age mate and also a family friend, and the idle talk surrounding the common village themes continued as they hurried home.  The topic of discussion involved the neighbor’s frustration with losses that he was incurring in his tea farm occasioned by moles that were destroying his tea bushes at an alarming rate.  The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the village’s re-known mole trapper had become frail due to his advancing age compounded by years of excessive consumption of local brews.  The neighbor confided to Kiptarus that he had tried more modern extermination measures such as the use of potatoes laced with the most potent poison in the market without much success.  Somehow, the moles in his farm seemed immune to the poison.  This discussion dawned an idea in Kiptarus’ mind; he offered to help the neighbor trap the moles as this skill was one that he had become quite competent in over the years.  After all he had plenty of time in his hands now that he was out of school and due to the fact that his initial business plan for years had been thwarted.

Kiptarus’ neighbor enthusiastically agreed to the Kibarua proposal and agreed to even up the pay by ten bob for every mouse trapped since Kiptarus was his friend’s son.  So the next day, after milking and watering his parent’s livestock in the morning, Kiptarus, armed with a shining machete headed to the nearby woods to collect the malleable but tough to break sticks that boys in the village learn at a young age as the appropriate tools for setting mouse traps.  He then headed to the neighbor’s tea farm and set about his business.  He too was taken aback by the sheer population of moles in the farm as portrayed by the numerous mounds of dirt that the moles had extracted while making their burrows.  Kiptarus then went home for lunch after four hours of hard labor having set close to 80 traps.  He went back to examine the results of his labor three hours later and was elated while loading 64 moles that had succumbed to their injuries after being forcefully ejected from their burrows my missile-like snaps into a gurney bag.  He then headed to the neighbor’s home to fetch a wheel-barrow as he was ready to give feedback on his work performance.  The price of trapping one mole in my village is 30 bob and with the promised ten bob bonus per each trapped mouse, Kiptarus went home that night with the highest ever pay of his life.  He returned the next day to set a couple more traps and to inspect the status of the few remaining traps from the previous day.  By the end of the day, he had trapped 70 moles.  What a good two-days’ pay day for Kiptarus.

An often stated theme of entrepreneurs is that they not only identify opportunities, but that they are also shrewd at exploiting them.  Having earned a tidy sum within two days, Kiptarus reasoned that the mole menace that had given his neighbor sleepless nights and had cost him substantial revenue was probably not confined to this one neighbor’s farm.  So for the next couple of months, Kiptarus spent his evenings at the local shopping center soliciting for business while the rest of his age mates were busy engaging in idle talk.  Some of the individuals he approached told him off while bawling at him for engaging in an activity suitable for primary school drop outs and drunkards.  This did not deter this industrious young man who had seen for himself the returns from this “uncivilized” career.  Others, moved by Kiptarus’ motivation and his humility in accepting to engage in this type of trade, offered him kibaruas, and Kiptarus did not disappoint as he effectively wreaked havoc on the mole population in the villagers’ farms.  His weekly income averaged Shs15, 000 so that after five months, he had saved up enough funds that could potentially buy him a small used saloon car.

Before Ole Lenku introduced the nyumba kumi initiative, it was not the nature of parents with grown boys in our village to monitor the day to day engagements of young men after their indoctrination into adulthood.  So Kiptarus’ parents did not get wind of what their son was engaging himself in until after the fifth month when his age mate who had offered Kiptarus his first job asked the old man to extend a vote of thanks to his son for the job well done five months ago.  This somehow infuriated Kiptarus’ dad.  He could not come to terms with the fact that his son had apparently sought a kibarua from the neighbor to engage in such an uncivilized career.  Upon reaching home, Kiptarus’ father summoned his wife to share the “sad” news and to propose a pep talk for the young man after supper.  Not only did Kiptarus admit to accepting job offers from the one neighbor when confronted, but unashamedly informed his parents that he had virtually sought business from virtually all the neighbors in the village.  He further noted that he had expanded his business empire to surrounding villages and that he had work lined up for the next two weeks.  His parents, already disappointed because Kiptarus had missed the university cut-off mark by a few points, were devastated.  They blamed themselves for having let down their son by not allowing him to till the two acres that he had requested many moons ago.  So they offered to let him use the two acres as the bean-planting season was around the corner as a way of dissuading him from engaging in mole-trapping.  To their dismay, Kiptarus revealed to them that that he had realized the challenges that they were facing financially and preferred to let them continue using all the family land in supporting the family.  Further, he informed them that as a way of appreciating their support throughout his life, he was offering to pay the entire school fees for his second born sister for the entire year.  The parents, already under financial strains, could not resist the offer and for the next couple of months, they relieved Kiptarus from farm work so that he could concentrate on his trade. 

Word has it that Kiptarus admitted himself into a local polytechnic the next year to get trained as a mason, pre-paying fees for the entire three years from  his trade revenues while investing the balance in a piece of farmland.  Being handy, he reasoned that masonry would be a natural vocation for him and the networks he had established as well as business skills he had developed while engaging in his looked-down upon trade would provide him with a natural starting point upon graduation.

In their book, Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (2005) recommends identification of uncontested opportunities in marketplaces instead of competing head on with well-established industry players.  To identify this opportunities, careful review of a product or service’s value chain should be considered.  Target customers should also be identified and segregated based on their commitment to product or service.  Approaches on how to meet the needs of the less committed customer’s needs should then be brainstormed upon and then packaged in a new way by offering of similar services at a cheaper price or within shorter timeframes.  W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (2005) uses the example of Southwest Airlines strategy of using smaller planes with less luxuries and with faster turnarounds to portray this strategy.  W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (2005) refer to pursuit of untapped opportunities as a blue ocean strategy and differentiates this with the red ocean strategy of trying to compete directly with established players in an industry.  By focusing on a blue ocean strategy, companies are able to attain growth while gaining market share without having to directly compete with better resourced players. 

Kiptarus’ business venture aligns well with the blue ocean strategy.  He identified a niche market with an unfulfilled business need and where competition was low.  Further, costs of entering into this market were nonexistent.  Kiptarus’ business venture continues to captivate me!

Dr. Christopher Ketter works for the State of Minnesota