For the weekend of the 18th and 19th we had a meeting with SWAP (Safe Water and AIDS Project) in Kisumu. SWAP has been running a pilot study of ceramic water filters in the Nyanza region. We also decided to use this opportunity to see a new part of the country. Kisumu is a nice city settled on the edge of Lake Victoria, it’s more humid, and apparently it rains a lot, but the weather was cooperative until we were leaving.
After our meeting with SWAP we settled in and decided to enjoy ourselves and have a bit of a team building weekend. We started with a session of “toastmasters” as organized by Abdullah, to help work on public speaking skills, which was fun and funny to see how everyone reacted. I haven’t had as much public speaking experience so I found it quite interesting and good practice.
That night we decided to go out to the town. It was actually deemed to be my birthday, because most people had not been there for my actual birthday. We went out for supper and I got the Gladiator DVD. A week later we were to stay up until 3am to watch the end of the DVD only to find the climax of the movie was not on the disc. After dinner we went to a nearby club and danced for some time.
The next morning we got up relatively early to go to Tilapia Beach a restaurant on Lake Victoria. From there we went on a boat ride on the lake. It was pretty ridiculous because the boat could easily be described as “dilapidated” or “not-water-worthy.” It constantly took on water which the guy driving the boat would constantly be bailing, and if he started talking a lot he would forget to bail and our feet would get wet. Just before we got to the dock the seat I was sitting on broke. But despite, or due to, this, it was actually really fun. We saw hippos, they were in the water, so there wasn’t too much to see, but they were still hippos, and the lake had other sights as well. After the boat ride we had tilapia from the lake, it was very good fish.
After we were done with the lake, we wandered over to the market and spent some time there. It was interesting to hear everyone, they all had the same merchandise and same sales pitch. When we were done with the market we got ready to go home, but we had to wait for a couple of hours because our matatu was late, so we went home in the dark and the rain, which was a little scary, but we made it.
With the excitement of Kisumu behind us we readjusted our focus to Kitale. We launched our first big promotion on Wednesday at Suam supermarket. What was originally intended to be a one day event turned into three days we’ll call Suam days. On these days we brought our Kenyan salespeople to pitch our product infront of one of the big Kitale supermarkets known as Suams Supermarket. The response was very good. Everyone from the team pitched in and sold filters. I even became a salesperson for a while. This despite my aversion to salespeople. We managed to sell 25 filters each day that we set up and now when I walk down the street people don’t just call me mzungu or (Peter) Crouch, they also called me CeraMaji.
With the success of Suam days we decided to find a place in Kitale that would agree to store our filters to make things easier for us. That place ended up being “the coffeeshop” a place on the edge of town where many NGO workers congregate. On the morning of the 29th Andre and took the first big shipment of about 50 filters to the coffeeshop. By the end of that day our new shipment of buckets had also arrived from Nairobi. Which was very important, because the sudden jump in sales created the need for more supplies, and our current stock was running low. The buckets arrived in Kitale, so we had to pay extra to get the driver to take the buckets to Kiminini. When we got there we found the truck couldn’t make it all the way down the narrow road to the factory. Andre and I were freaking out, it was getting dark and we had 1000 filters to unload from a truck and it was getting late and dark.
Our solution: Child labour. Mama Sandra helped organize many kids from the school to help us unload the filters and bring them to the factory. At some point in the process I realized I was just getting the way and I stopped to take pictures instead.
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