First Firing!

We just finished firing our first batches of test filters—over 500 filters—so it’s an exciting time for SPOUTS! With the help of Sammy, our kiln master from a Kenyan ceramic filter factory, everything went smoothly. After unloading our wares, our employees were proud to see the near-finished product. A photo-op was a must. And, of course, we can’t wait to get back to it after the Christmas break!

Our kiln master at work

To make the week even better, my dad came to visit! He tagged along at the factory and I gave him a taste of the good life—eating posho and beans for lunch every day and riding Ugandan public transit.

Posho and beans. Mmm...

It is safe to say my dad hates riding the bodas

I must say that he passed with flying colors; hiking the Appalachian Trail for a month back in August got him pretty used to a minimalistic lifestyle. Other than a flea epidemic of sorts which prompted a thorough cleaning of the puppies (and ourselves), things went off without a hitch.

 PUPdate:

The puppies are healthy (and now flea-free, we hope) and gnawing on anything and everything. Having eight puppies at my office is kind of like a dream come true for me. Eight full-grown dogs, however, would be a bit too much for us to handle. Luckily, our kiln master offered to take 5 pups back to Kenya which means we have happy homes for all the puppies! Phew! I was starting to get worried…

Jesus Beard:

Being the only white guy in town means I get some attention. Being a white guy with a beard in a country full of Christians means I have a new nickname: Jesus.

Here I am about to get my first haircut from ‘expert hair stylist’ and SPOUTS CEO Kathy Ku. I have to say, it wasn’t half bad.

The next few weeks I’ll be off exploring the touristy side of Uganda and spend Christmas with my pa: Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see mountain gorillas, Queen Elizabeth National Park for some savannah action, and a bit of white water rafting on the Nile! I can’t wait!!

Puppies!!!

John, my co-worker, barged into the office with concern written on his face. He stopped in the doorway and said, “We have a problem.” My mind was racing. Is the engine on fire again? Is Kathy covered in more fleas? Is anyone hurt? He quickly led me to the abandoned shack on our compound and flung open the door. And there they were, eight furry little “problems”. We had puppies.

             

Stray dogs are fairly common in the neighborhood, and when it rains, they don’t have many places to go. More than a few times we have had dogs roaming around the compound, so when we saw another hanging around for a couple of days, we didn’t think much of it. Little did we know that this one was pregnant. There she was in the corner, looking feeble, hungry, and covered in fresh pups. How could we not let them stay a while?

So the puppies are pretty awesome. Whenever possible, they prefer to be piled up on top of each other. I mean who doesn’t appreciate a good snuggle? These little guys just have their priorities straight. 

When they aren’t in a giant heap of cuteness, they are either fighting for the best feeding spot (there’s stiff competition for that), gnawing on each other’s ears, or exploring the new world around them.

We've starting calling the mama dog Mom. Hey Mom, how ya doing? How are the pups, Mom? Not quite a replacement for our own mothers but she does the job alright. She spends most days scouting out food for her family, but we feed her a little extra when we get the chance. I don’t know what the future holds for Mom and the pups. We can only handle a couple new SPOUTS mascots, unfortunately. We’re on full alert for potential puppy owners, however, and are hoping for the best.

Who could resist those eyes?

Between long hours spent gawking at the fuzzballs, we also make filters on the side (just kidding). In all seriousness, filter production has been fantastic at the new factory! We have a great crop of new employees and we are really hitting our stride in production. Right now, we’re still in the experimental phase of our work—we have to determine the right ratio of ingredients to get the filters just how we want them—but we can’t wait to start churning out filters for sale!

To Shave or Not to Shave…

It’s not even a question—I’ve gotta keep this beard going strong! I can’t say that there have been many positive reviews of my appearance, but when is the next time I will be able to get away with this? I figure I’ve got to take the chance while I’ve got it.

Success Road

Our time in Kumi was filled with great people and hard work. It was our starting point, our foundation, in an attempt to build our social business that fights the all-too-present waterborne diseases in Uganda. In Kumi, we were constantly reaffirmed of our mission—the demand for our filters was overwhelming. Our fledgling factory simply couldn’t keep up with demand. We needed to scale-up—and fast. It’s never easy to fly the nest, but we had outgrown our home and we had to fly. We were forced to say farewell to our friends at Kumi University and begin anew.

Kajjansi, our new location, is directly between Entebbe, the int'l airport, and Kampala

When searching for a new location, we knew proximity to raw materials, specifically clay, was our first priority. So what better place than Kajjansi?—which literally translates to “full of clay” in Luganda, the most widely spoken local language in Uganda. It doesn’t hurt that it is also only 15 kilometers (metric, I know, I’ve been brainwashed) or 9 miles from Kampala—the capital and by far the largest city here. This means now we have cheap clay, smooth roads, and access to the biggest market in Uganda. Let’s go.

Welcome to our new home!

I am not a superstitious kind of guy, so if I were to see a black cat while walking under a ladder and happen to break my arm later that day, I’d call it a coincidence. But when I noticed that our new factory was located down “Success Road”, I hoped beyond hope that I had been wrong all my life. This was indeed a good omen.

Co-founder John Kye supervising some welding work

Our lot doesn’t look like much at first. Where a chicken farm once stood, only a few vacant—excluding the mice, fleas, and cockroaches, of course—buildings remain. But we see immense potential. Our clay storage here, our kiln there, and oh, the long building on the left is perfect for an assembly line! It’s out with the old and in with the new. Out with the pests and in with the people. SPOUTS has a new home.

Filters and Facial Hair:

So happy to be using our Kumi filters here in Kajjansi. Both the beard and the factory are making good progress!

Now Now

When it rains here things shut down. Dirt roads become mud roads leaving vehicles spinning their wheels—so people wait. In Kumi, electricity inexplicably shuts off for days at a time. You buy a generator to keep the business going if you can afford it, but some can’t—so people wait. Public buses can’t make enough money unless they are crammed full of people. If a bus is empty, it won’t leave any time soon—so people wait.

'Licensed to carry 14 passengers' reads a taxi carrying 20

In country of unpredictability like Uganda, delays are going to happen, so people have gotten accustom to waiting. It’s no wonder that there is a culture of tardiness; the unexpected is always expected. After living here for a few months, I’ve come to understand this so-called ‘Ugandan time’but that doesn’t make it any easier to operate a small business with a built-in delay. Sometimes we need things done now—or should I say ‘now now’.

These roads get real slick when it rains...

‘Now now’ has to be one of my favorite Uganda-isms. Let me show you what I mean…

Me: “Moses (a popular Ugandan name), could you get a truckload of clay for the filters?”

Moses: “When?”

Me: “I need the clay now.”

Moses: “Now now?”

Me: “Now-nah-now-nah-now-now.” (what I want to reply because I still find the phrase ‘now now’ hilarious)

Me: “Uh huh, now now. Thanks.” (what I actually say because the above reply would be rude haha)

My next favorite Uganda-ism is ‘well done’. This phrase may seem rather ordinary but here it is quite the contrary. In Luganda (the most prominent local language), people greet others with the word ‘jebale’ which literally translates to ‘well done’ in English. Needless to say, I was deeply confused for a couple weeks wondering what exactly I had done worthy of praise, but if you want to improve your self-esteem, Uganda is the place to be—people congratulate you on sight!

Work at the factory has been going well, but big changes are coming soon at SPOUTS. I’ll tell you about it in my next entry! Get excited!

Mountain Man:

Since my dad recently completed hiking the Appalachian Trail for a month, I thought I’d reserve this week’s beard update to the mountain man himself, Steve Raseman. Congrats dad!!!

Why Am I Here?

Amidst the factoids, pretty pictures, and beard puns, it dawned on me that I have given you little to no context regarding how or why I chose to be working for a water filter manufacturer in Uganda. Why social entrepreneurship? Why water? Why Uganda? I think these are important questions for me to answer so people can understand the motivation behind my decision. First things first, I wanted to address problems and learn more about foreign aid—what works and what doesn't.

This past weekend, I had a great discussion with a nurse named Lily from KOICA (Korea’s equivalent to the Peace Corps) about the many pitfalls of foreign aid—ineffective or unsustainable programs, acquired dependence on aid, and disrupting local businesses just to name a few. Most of these problems come from a top-down approach in which a solution is applied broadly to fix a problem. For instance, HIV/AIDS is a terrible problem in Uganda and Africa, in general, and deserves the world’s attention and resources. To alleviate the problem, a Dutch non-profit built a beautiful HIV/AIDS center at Lily’s hospital in nearby Soroti. Soon after construction was finished, the Dutch gave themselves a big pat on the back for a job well done and packed their bags for the next flight back to Amsterdam. Today, that once shiny HIV/AIDS center collects dust—it serves mostly as a storage facility when it is used at all.

Dutch-built HIV/AIDS center left unused

Sadly, stories like this are all too common. Non-profits from around the world swoop in to save the day with surefire solutions—HIV/AIDS is a problem; let’s build a hospital and people won’t be sick anymore! Often interventions lack is an in-depth understanding area and local people with skin in the game. When you add these missing ingredients (easier said than done, of course), a specific, comprehensive solution can be developed in which local leaders take responsibility for the project and proper follow-up and critical evaluation can be carried out. Fortunately, the field of international development is progressing to meet these goals and radically new systems have been developed. Social entrepreneurship is one such system that has shown great promise.

Acumen, a pioneer in social ventures, aims to “help build financial sustainable organization that deliver affordable goods and services that improve the lives of the poor” and has done so successfully by helping over 100 million people and creating 60,000 jobs. (Thanks, Wikipedia) This business-charity hybrid is successful because there are built-in mechanisms that constantly test the efficacy of the enterprise. Bad business goes bankrupt. Too often there are no repercussions for bad charity. I believe that social ventures are a step in the right direction which is why I have chosen to work for one now. But that’s not the only reason I ended up here at SPOUTS of Water. Long before I had even heard the term “social entrepreneurship”, I knew that I wanted to work with water.

“No one knows the worth of water until the well runs dry.” – Benjamin Franklin

As we all know, water is essential for everyone on the planet, but as Benjamin Franklin famously observed, “No one knows the worth of water until the well runs dry.” Due to population increase and climate change, wells around the world are running dry and the world is learning exactly how much water is worth. As water resources dwindle, farmers are unable to irrigate their crops, people are forced to drink from unclean sources, and tensions surrounding water ownership rise. I knew I could not tackle all of these issues effectively, so I have decided to focus on clean water with SPOUTS. But why is clean water so important and why Uganda?

Kathy Ku, the founder of SPOUTS of Water, was inspired to address the issue of clean water when she was a medical volunteer in Uganda where 1/3 of its citizens lack access to safe drinking water. At the clinic, Kathy saw that time after time people sought medical help for preventable water-borne diseases, such as diarrheal diseases, which are responsible for about a 1/5 deaths in children around the world each year. Fed up with treating symptoms, she wanted to stop these diseases at their source. After Kathy learned about ceramic water filters and their proven efficacy and affordability, SPOUTS of Water was born.

In short, SPOUTS not only addresses the critical need for safe drinking water but its social entrepreneurship approach offers more potential for sustainable aid than traditional charity. That is why I am working here today. 

The Thinker

The only possible explanation for the profundity of this post is that my beard is finally long enough to stroke pensively. 

The next post will be fun again. I promise! Thanks for bear(d)ing with me.   

Census 2̶0̶1̶2 2̶0̶1̶3 2014

A census, as you likely already know, is when government workers fan out across the country to collect demographic data. These occur on regular intervals of 10 years—err 11—let’s make it 12 years and call it even.

The 2013 census that never was...

The Ugandan census was originally scheduled for 2012 but the funds set aside for the program magically disappeared. To really wow the people, the Amazing Vanishing Money Act happened again in 2013—I can almost hear the shouts from the street corner now: ‘Come one, come all to see you tax dollars stolen right before your eyes!’. Apparently, third time’s the charm though because the 2014 census is finally up and running. Corruption over here is on another level… What is an organization in Uganda, doing good things, and corruption-free? SPOUTS of Water, of course!

This past Monday I traveled to 7 hours to the Namayingo District to make my first delivery to ACM Ministries Water Project. It would have taken 4 hours to get there but we needed to go VERY slowly since we had a truckload of fragile filters on dirt roads with more holes than Swiss cheese. I’m telling you these roads were holier than the Pope! But I digress…

Transporting the delicate filters

ACM Ministries and their students

The filters made it there unharmed and the good people at ACM were overjoyed to see the filters come in. After purchasing the filters, ACM will sell our filters to customers at subsidized rates. It is part of our mission to make sure that the end user purchases our filter so they treat it as an investment and not a handout. Handouts do not inspire the same amount of care as a carefully planned investment does and we want these filters to last as long as possible.  

PB n’ Beard

I think this is the first time in my life that I can legitimately say that I have beard. I remember last summer trying to grow one but people had to be a few feet away to even notice there was some semblance of facial hair there haha. This next pic is a twofer: beard and homemade peanut butter.

This past weekend we made peanut butter from start to finish. It took 4 or 5 hours but now we have a liter of peanut butter! Oh and I had to make some peanut butter cookies, of course, to share our American favorites with the world.

Lots of exciting things happening over here! Please visit again soon!

Does Your Skin Allow It?

“Does your skin allow it?” Stella asked me.

“Can we work the fields? Well, we normally have machines do it, but yes we can.” I replied.

“But don’t you have slaves?” she continued.

Needless to say, I was stunned. Me? A slave-owner? Her words echoed over and over in my head. “Does your skin allow it? But don’t you have slaves?” I immediately explained to her that our country has not had slaves in a long, long time. She nodded understandingly. Deeply ashamed, I scrambled for a new topic of conversation—I didn’t have the heart to find out if she knew where our country’s slaves had come from.

With any cultural immersion, I have found, you are going to run into misunderstandings on both ends. Luckily for me, these instances, like the one with Stella, have been rather few because most Ugandans with access to a TV or radio understand American culture quite well. Our music, movies, and TV shows are well-known, and the US has a habit of making headlines in the World News section of the newspaper. Right now, I am only beginning to grasp how much influence the US has on the rest of the world. For those that are less technologically connected in a rural town like Kumi, they may not see this influence, yet it remains. Familiar brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Pampers are purchased and hand-me-down clothes from the good ol’ US of A are worn. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw a man walking down the street with a shirt that read ‘Team Edward’ as he unknowingly campaigned for a vampire heartthrob. For better or for worse, our country shapes the futures of those outside our borders.

A batch of SPOUTS filters ready for quality control tests

Hopefully, the work of SPOUTS of Water (my employer) will be an intervention for the better and not just well-intentioned. SPOUTS  is part of an ideological shift from charity to social entrepreneurship—as the old saying goes, give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime. Social entrepreneurship differs from charity because instead of simply giving it aims to empower people by creating a business that generate jobs, meets a need (in our case, clean water), and stimulate the local economy. The idea is that if there truly is a need/market, the impact will be sustainable in the long-term.

Okay, I’ve gotten far too serious in this post—way too much text not enough pictures or jokes. Can you blame me though? Did you really want a textbook graphic of slavery or a diagram of social entrepreneurship vs. charity? I didn’t think so. How about one of me about to slaughter a chicken?

Don’t worry I wasn’t going to post an action shot—that’d be gross. To be honest, I was a little nervous about the whole thing and thought I might CHICKEN out (bah dum chh) at times. I felt it was my obligation as a chicken-eater to understand the whole process from cradle to plate. I think we’re too removed from the killing aspect of meat. We’d definitely have a few more vegetarians in the US if we weren’t. 

On the whole, I’ve gotten acclimated to Uganda and have been able to zero-in on my work: making our filter production as smooth as possible so we can sell quality, inexpensive filters. More on that next time!

Last but certainly not least…

Bearded Boda

Here’s an action pic of the beard while riding a boda boda. BONUS PIC!! Here’s my Somalian friend and neighbor Rasheed on a boda boda so you know what one looks like. If you look closely you'll notice he's reppin' the Boy Scouts of America haha.

  

P.S. cherish ketchup. I miss ketchup. 

The Buganda Speak Luganda in Uganda

One misconception that I had about Uganda was that I thought the vast majority of people would speak fluent English because it is the country’s official language. Not so much. There over 40 indigenous languages spoken throughout Uganda, each associated with a tribal kingdoms that reigned before British colonization. For example, the Buganda kingdom speaks Luganda, which is one of the most widely spoken languages in Uganda. That’s enough ‘andas’ to make your head spin, I know. To make linguistic matters worse, the government is trying to introduce Swahili as an additional official language (even though the English here is so-so) in order to share a common language with the surrounding countries of Kenya, Rwanda, Berundi, and Tanzania. Ugh… enough with that. On to other things!

Due to a malfunctioning pyrometer (basically a fancy thermometer), my first attempt at firing the ceramics was a total failure. So much so that our broken pyrometer was seemingly mocking us as it displayed ‘FAIL’. Oh, how I hated that thing…

After an afternoon of learning how to fix electronics, we got the pyrometer working and were ready to put the ceramic filters in the kiln. And I have to say that once we got going we were KIL’N it! At work we are also working on providing 10 filter stations at a local primary school, serving over 1100 kids! I’m pretty happy about that. I’ll keep you posted on how that turns out!

In the past couple weeks there has been a lot of work but we’ve found time for play too… For starters, I made an appearance in a Ugandan movie that will air on a few local TV stations through one of our employees named Tina. Typecasted as usual, I played the drug lord haha.

This past weekend, we were also able to meet up with Emmie Mediate, a current Notre Dame student doing HIV/AIDS research throughout Uganda, this past weekend at a place called Sipi Falls. It was amazing!!! Truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Here’s just one of the waterfalls we got to see. Emmie and I are the tiny dots at the bottom!

Also, I’ve gotten many questions about Ebola in Uganda. The issues with Ebola are on the western side of Africa thus far and I'm on the other side of the continent. This past week there was a scare that a Ugandan traveler had Ebola, however, the man tested negative for the virus. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for any news though! Thanks to anyone who expressed concern!

Let’s Get Beard!

Last but not least, the beard is coming along well! I’m actually pleasantly surprised.

I hope things are going well stateside! 

The Mzungus Have Arrived

After a connection in Dubai (not too shabby haha) my plane finally touched down in Uganda—also known as the Pearl of Africa. Winston Churchill gave Uganda its nickname way back when and it stuck. Boy, did it stick. They were hashtagging the heck out of it when I went through customs: #HavingFunInThePearlOfAfrica, #gorillasaresocool, and my personal favorite, #HippopotamusInWaterInThePearlOfAfrica. Apparently, whoever is in charge of tourism isn’t a master of the twittersphere yet.

At the airport in Entebbe, I met up with Annie McCarthy, another recent Notre Dame grad, and we headed for a rural eastern town called Kumi. It required just about every type of transportation possible to get us there in one piece: a taxi to Kampala, a long bus ride to Mbale, a matatu (a blue and white van) to get to Kumi, and a boda boda (a motorcycle taxi—the most popular way to get around) to get us to SPOUTS. Check out the map below if you wanna follow along!

 Kumi is a wonderful place and the SPOUTS of Water factory is located on the campus of Kumi University—a school started by Korean missionaries. There is still a strong Korean teaching presence at the university; however, the administrative operations are now run solely by Ugandans.

At the factory, my job is to optimize the filter production process: decrease the frequency of failed filters, increase the number of filters made, and introduce water quality testing in factory as opposed to sending the work to an independent lab. I’ve got my work cut out for me but I’m definitely optimistic. More on that later, for now just pretty pictures of the factory and some SPOUTS employees!

So as you may have guessed from the title of the blog, “mzungu” is what they call white people here and it is basically the Ugandan equivalent to a “gringo” only in a slightly more endearing sense. One of the highlights of my day is passing children at school when they run up to the fence and yell/sing, “Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!”. They get a real kick out of seeing a white guy around so I’m glad that I can serve as some entertainment haha. 

That’s about all the content I have so far. Now, to fulfill the promise from my first post…

The Peach Fuzz Buzz:

Here I am on day 12 of the no-shave party (I gotta five day head start before I left, I think)

Puns for days:

Honestly, I haven’t been super punny this first week but I hope to improve in the future. Anywho, the neighbors have this mangy little kitten whose name is Noon (it’s Korean for snow, I think) and the other day she was clawing at one of us, so I said, “Hey Noon! Are you kitten me?” (bah bum chhh!)

Oh and here she is. Aww…

Thanks for reading!!!