Earning bread with a single arm

We find him busy at his make-shift garage, changing and repairing punctured tyres.

To an able-bodied young man, this may seem an easy job, but for most people, it is hard work. Yet Mr Peter Thumbi makes it seem like child’s play — with just one arm.

A vehicle pulls in just as we are about to begin our interview.

“Thumbi, I have a puncture and I am in a hurry; how soon can you fix it?” asks the driver.

“I’ll do it right now,” he replies.

He unscrews the valve cap and attaches the nozzle to the tyre’s valve stem and presses the button to release the remaining pressure. He then loosens the lug nuts with a tyre wrench, and lifts up the car with a jack before pulling the wheel off the hub.

Mr Thumbi stations the wheel under a crowbar and single-handedly pries the tire out of the rim. By then, a small crowd has gathered to watch him.

But this 44-year-old father of four does not seem perturbed, neither does he break into a sweat nor ask for help, as he seals the puncture and inserts the wheel back to the hub before tightening the lug nuts. A few minutes later, the job is done, and the satisfied customer drives away.

He has been doing this job for six years now.

“Before this, I was a small scale farmer in Naro Moru, near Nanyuki, but then I lost my left arm and could no longer continue farming,” he says.

On that day, June 30, 2004, Thumbi was working on a hay-baler when his left arm was caught in the rolling machine. As the blades ate into his arm, Mr Thumbi screamed, drawing the attention of his wife, who ran to him and switched the baler off. He was taken to hospital, but doctors were unable to save his arm. They amputated it two inches below his shoulder.

When he walked out of hospital one-and-a-half months later, Mr Thumbi was convinced his life as a working man had come to an end.

“I thought I’d never work again. I feared I’d have to sit back and helplessly watch as my family suffered or as my wife worked to feed me.”

His final surgery was in February 2005, the same month his wife gave birth to their last born son.

After recovering, Mr Thumbi decided to move his family to Manguo Village in Nyahururu.

“We could no longer survive at the farm, and I felt that by moving closer to a bigger town, I’d find an easy job to do.”

He says that the thought of going to the streets to beg never crossed his mind.

“I have always worked with my hands to support myself and my family. There was no way I could start to beg or rely on others just because I’d lost one arm,” he says.

He started by hawking sweets at the Nyahururu Bus Stop. Two months later, he bought a trolley, which he used to sell soda. However, his soda business was not making him enough money to support his family.

“I made just Sh10 from each crate of soda, so it was not worth it,” he says.

A short distance from where Mr Thumbi stationed his soda trolley, was a man who owned a puncture repairing business. He seemed to be doing a thriving business, and so Mr Thumbi began to observe how his friend went about his job. Convinced that he could do it too, in spite of having just one arm, he began to save for a pressure machine.

“My mind was made up. I’d start a puncture repairing business.”

Eventually, he bought a modified jua kali pressure machine, and in August 2008, Mr Thumbi began to repair vehicle tires.

He opens for business at 7am and closes at 9pm, and makes about Sh500 every day, which he says is just enough to feed his family and provide for a few other basic needs. He is therefore planning to expand.

“I need a proper garage, and I also need to buy a bigger and more effective pressure machine. I use a modified pressure machine that cannot pump pressure into a truck tyre,” he says.