How one man shot his way from rustic wretchedness to financial freedom

By Michael Njuguna

This is Maina now with a modern camera

For Joseph Christopher Njiriri alias Joe Maina, the saying 'he who shoots at the moon will shoot further than the man who shoots at the bush' has come true. The 42-year-old businessman has defied the impediments that abject poverty plants across the path of progress and shot his way into the big time armed only with a small Shl50 camera he bought in 1975. He was then just a callow 19-year-old growing up in the rustic South Kinangop settlement schemes in Nyandarua district.

Two decades later, Maina was in Spain to receive a top award in recognition of his business acumen in the world of photography. The International Gold Star Award was presented by the General Director of the Business Initiative Directions, Mr J.E. Prieto.

This is how you do it ... Maina lets his children in on the trade

By that time, Maina - you may have come to know of him when he contested the Kipipiri parliamentary by-election in 1995 - had established several photographic studios in Kisii and Nakuru. He had also managed to build himself a mansion worth several million shillings in the posh Milimani neighbourhood in Nakuru town and was rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty.

Maina's swim upstream from the wretchedness of the villages to riches and fame proves how, to a determined spirit, no hurdle is insurmountable.

Award for a winner

When he was barely a toddler, Maina's parents divorced, forcing his mother to leave his native Githunguri in Kiambu district for Nyandarua district where some of her relatives lived.

Life was difficult for the lad, whose mother could hardly afford to buy him decent clothes to protect him from the chilly Kinangop climate. He was out of school most of the time because his mother could not afford the money levied for the school's building fund.

Maina recalls that on the day he was to sit for his Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) examination, he was not allowed to go to school because he had been sent away early in the term. But as fate would have it, on that day he was leading cows from their boma to the plains facing the Aberdare Ranges early in the morning.

The House that Joe Built. With business booming, Maina put up this mansion in Nakuru's Millimani neighbourhood.

A GK-registration Land Rover carrying education officials and teachers from his school came searching for him and carried him away to sit for the examination just as he was - unkempt and wearing his shabby cowherd's clothes.

Unfortunately, he was unprepared for the paper and failed the exams, but was still determined to pursue education. His mother enrolled him in Standard Six at another primary school for another shot at CPE exam in two years' time. Young Maina passed the examination and was offered a place in Nanyuki High School but alas, his mother could not afford the fees.

"The worm of poverty was going for my roots and I decided to leave the area and seek my fortune elsewhere. I did not want to drown in village poverty and misery. I had to get away," says Maina.

He packed his bags and headed for Kisii town in Nyanza province where he found a job as a shop attendant. He would be paid a commission for any item he managed to sell. Sometimes the commission would be only a fifty-cent coin, but he saved his earnings with painstaking discipline.

After establishing contact with many hawkers in the area, Maina learned that he could make a little more money by buying a few new and second hand clothes in Nairobi and selling them in Kisii. Thus he started making trips to Nairobi to buy his merchandise, which he sold at a slight profit in Kisii. As his trips became regular, owners of photographic studios in Kisii would send him to buy film, paper and chemicals from Nairobi. This way, Maina made friends with Nairobi studio people and he started nursing the idea of becoming a photographer one day...

That day came in 1975 when he met a man who sold him a Lubitel II - small box camera - for Shl50. He would carry his prized camera on his clothes hawking jaunts and take pictures of his friends, at first free of charge.

Then, when his photography skills improved, Maina began to charge for the pictures and realised that he could make more money with the camera than was doing trying to persuade reluctant strangers to buy his dusty second hand clothes.

A year later, the young Maina, still saving diligently, managed to buy another camera - a small Kodak Click III which was a bit more convenient to use. By 1997, Maina's savings from the pictures had grown to Sh40,000 and he bought another camera, this time a Seagull IV.

He used his savings to rent a small shop sandwiched between two well established studios - Jishinde Ushinde and Africa Mwanzo. Maina was determined to start a studio of his own and knew that the two studios would offer him a big challenge.

Off he went to Kisumu where he sought the advice of Sammy Ng'ang'a, a helpful studio owner who sold him a Pearl River Camera and tripod for Sh850.

The ambitious young man returned to Kisii, found a carpenter and took him all the way back to Kisumu where Ng'ang'a showed him how to build a darkroom. Back in Kisii, Maina converted the small shop into a studio and got to work. His first contact with 'big' money was when Mzee Kenyatta died and traders were looking for portraits of the new President to hang in their premises.

Maina collected his savings, travelled to Nairobi and bought as many framed portraits of the new President from city studios as he could lay his hands on. The portraits were in great demand in Kisii and traders from far and wide were snapping them up.

"I made so much money from the sales of the portraits that I bought an old car for Shl9,000," recalls Maina. Then came the order by President Moi that all government ministries increase their staff establishments by 10 per cent. The applicants for the newly created jobs were required to produce passport size photographs - another windfall for Maina.

A picture of a young Maina, just starting out in the photography business

"I would enter the darkroom at 6am and leave after dusk. At times the chemicals overwhelmed me but I struggled on. It was an opportunity to make money fast - and I did," he says.

By 1982, he had saved Sh50,000 which he used to buy a studio from another trader. He and his employees were literally working round the clock to meet their clients' orders. Maina then bought a third studio and a gift shop. With a string of shops, all acquired through honest hard sweat, the lad from Kinangop had shot his way to riches with his cameras.

It was at this time that David Wilson, then Managing Director of Kodak Kenya, visited Kisii and offered to sell colour film processing equipment to Maina for Sh800,000. Maina, who had Sh300,000 in his bank account, accepted the offer and approached the Kenya Industrial Estates for a loan of Sh500,000. By 1992 he had repaid the loan and his colour lab was serving the whole of Kisii and the neighbouring districts.

The Kodak company, in recognition of Maina's enterprising spirit in the photographic field, sponsored him on a study tour of Las Vegas in the United States. It was while in the US that Maina saw a modern one-hour colour photograph processing machine which he bought and shipped to his Magic View Studio in Kisii. He had overtaken all his competitors in the region by the time he decided to open up new studios in Nakuru.

Maina has since been to Germany and Holland where he attended courses on digital photography, graphic design and commercial advertising. He has been invited to attend the International Golden America Convention in New York next month. The convention is organised by Business Initiative Directions.

But to appreciate sunshine, one has to have been through a few rainy days, and it has not all been a bed of roses, especially during this decade of economic uncertainties. Maina was forced to sell his Milimani house at a loss to repay bank loans.

He has also sold some of his studios, but he is considering opening a new school on digital photography in order to prepare aspiring photographers to sharpen their skills using digital photography for the media and advertising industry in the new millennium.

Comments\Views about this article