Peter Maina: I was born to become a blacksmith
Peter Maina prepares charcoal used to burn metal at his workshop in Nakuru.
Peter Maina's journey is a testimony of resilience fuelled by passion, with 28 years of blacksmith experience; he knows no other job.
At his office, he had to ask the employees who were hitting, welding, and grinding metals to hold for a minute to allow the interview to continue.
Maina, a joyful man notes that he fell in love with the job while he was employed as a blacksmith in 1996.
He signed on as an apprentice and proceeded to fall in love with the work.
"I started after I saw someone doing it in Nyahururu and was intrigued. I used to be paid Sh. 30 for a day but the job taught me to perfect my skills until I began my own business. I was born to become a blacksmith," he says.
A section of Peter Maina's workshop in Nakuru.
At first, Maina joined hands with his friend and started the business as it was expensive to get the equipment required.
A few years later, he began his own business with Sh.10,000 and one employee. This business has since expanded to five employees making a profit of Sh. 2.000 a day.
But increasing sales by a factor of ten also means ten times the number of pieces of raw metal to fire, shape, and join into self-designed products.
Maina says, although the job is tiring, it provides a stable income for anyone willing to be consistent at it.
“One of the core challenges of running this kind of business is balancing the need to produce quality products, and the need to produce what is trendy. My job as the business owner is to combine these two elements into a flourishing and sustainable operation, making sure there is enough revenue to keep the lights on,” he notes.
Maina says he gets raw materials from scrap metal yards within Nakuru and beyond. He uses damaged car parts like shafts, and springs to create the materials.
"All the equipment I sell, I make at the workshop with the help of my employees. All the raw materials must go through the fire to create the desired equipment," he adds.
Some of the equipment Maina sells include jembes, sledgehammers, grilling jikos, and pans among others.
Some of the tools that Maina and his employees make displayed in his workshop.
He says there is a huge demand for the things he creates that he cannot satisfy.
“All in all, this job has helped me cater to my family's needs and support my child's education up to the tertiary level.”
Asked if he would pick up another job, Maina confidently says he would never even think about it.