Growing a Business: Nothing to Something in Kayanga, Tanzania

When I first met Peter Lazarus he could barely communicate in English. That was three years ago. Sunday he showed me the room in which he keeps the materials for his screen printing business. He explained how he found clients, where he got t-shirts, how he created stencils or drawings, where he did printing, and how he was hoping to expand.

My first interactions with Lazaro, some call him Laz, came during a course I taught in the summer of 2007. He quickly won over the students with a broad and enthusiastic smile, a warm personality, and a clear, compelling, and keen interest in the world and learning more about it. He practiced English with anyone willing. He took us on hikes around Kayanga. He began to speak of his interests and dreams – he wanted to have more schooling on art and design so that he could open his own sign-making and screen printing shop. Now he has.

His shop developed through a great deal of his own fortitude, the kind donations of some former Amizade students, and now the proceeds of his initial clients are helping him move forward. He visits schools, shows him the t-shirts he can make, and gets their preferred design. He then writes out the letters for the school name and draws the school crest by hand. After these things are done, he uses great care with the finest point of a utility knife to cut out stencils for the words and the crest. From these stencils he then prints the shirts. He can get some shirts six miles away in Omurushaka, but if he has a large order or wants high quality t-shirts he must do business an hour and a half away in Bukoba or sometimes across Lake Victoria (one night’s ferry ride) in Mwanza. The finished t-shirts sell for about 5000 Tanzanian shillings each, or a little more than $4.00 US.

Laz is still smiling, still working hard, and still focusing on the future. He wears the same clothes all the time, must do all of his work out of a shared room about eight feet by four feet wide, and walks daily through the poverty-riddled and dust-chocked streets of his hometown Kayanga. Lesser souls would quit, but he is soaring. His newest business initiative is directly related to his current work. He is trying to find the funding or donations to buy a laser printer and a digital camera. With these tools he’ll take orders for photos from the kids in the schools he’s working with. All students who make it to secondary school want a school photo, and he has his eye on that market.

The life expectancy here in Tanzania is scarcely more than fifty. Nearly two-thirds of people don’t have access to water in their homes (Laz doesn’t). These conditions make opportunity rare, and initiative and innovation difficult to imagine. People like Peter Lazarus triumph with the assistance of some small help and donations. People like Joseph Sekiku demonstrate the empowering quality of a good education and clear conscience. Organizations like Amizade support the good works of community organizations like FADECO and WOMEDA, and organizations like Amizade help form the relationships that promote friendships across cultures and can be deeply enabling for people like Laz.