Planting fish bones
I have always told my childhood story of how my elder brother made me plant bones of fish when I asked him where fish came from. I guess I was a very curious kid and practical too. I watered my fish garden every morning and evening for over a month hoping the bones would grow into fish!
In 2014 when I asked my bosses if we could develop a solution for water purification for large and marginalized communities like refugee camps and hard to reach rural Uganda they told me it did not make economic sense. Having grown in poverty under the care of a single mother and changed my career because of typhoid, I did not feel comfortable selling high end water filters to rich families in Kampala city. But what business will thrive in a refugee camp? There is a reason why every signpost in these camps is of an international charity organization! To do business here does not make economic sense or to say it in another way, is like planting a garden of fish bones, you will water it morning and evening for over a month and will not find fish, but watering bones I have done before!
One of the water sources from which refugees in Kyaka II refugee settlement in Western Uganda fetch water
I took a leap in June 2015 when I joined the Social Innovation Academy. I had applied to work as an accountant. When I arrived at the Academy on my first day as an accountant I presented to the team there a water solution I had in mind. This was my reason for joining this community and yet everyone saw me as an accountant. The social Innovation Academy is irresistibly intriguing and being the curious guy I am, I created a few solutions that are still thriving, some of them have surpassed Tusafishe in impact. I identified one of the scholars whom I started offloading my accounting tasks on bit by bit till when she was ready and took over all my roles. This was a deliberate move to get more time to concentrate on my creation.
Mid 2016 I Identified a few people whom I knew would help to bring this dream to fruition, at this time of course fruition meant creating the solution. In June 2017 we registered a company limited by guarantee and had our first prototype by November. I took short courses that helped me to work as a coach and character development trainer at the academy roles I knew would get me more time for Tusafishe than accounting would; in this way I would continue to have an income at the end of every month to help with my bills and to nurture the young Tusafishe
This is Tusafishe’s first Office built from plastic bottles collected from a landfill in Kampala
In Uganda doing the kind of work we do, you have two main problems, the first is the mindset then second poverty, unfortunately the earlier also has a direct impact on the latter. The tradition in Uganda is to boil water for drinking using firewood or charcoal, either way trees have to be cut to get the fuel. This problem is made worse by people like doctors in Ugandan hospitals who instead of asking their patients to drink safe water , they ask them to drink boiled water, this in some way has made the population believe that safe water only means boiled water. As a matter of fact in many communities where we have worked, after installation of the purification systems we are asked whether the water drawn from these systems should be boiled. In one orphanage where we installed our second system the Nun who was in charge stopped the children from drinking the water straight from the system.
We knew that our work would extend beyond just installation of the purification systems to include awareness campaigns, we tell the communities we work with the damage they have on the environment through boiling of water and ask them to replace all the trees they cut in the past when they boiled water. They provide land and together with them we plant trees, we train them on how to take care of the trees and leave them in charge of the trees.
Arise youth Academy scholars pose with tree seedlings before going for tree planting in Kyaka II refugee settlement
The second problem is poverty; we install purification systems in the remotest of places, in refugee camps. These communities hardly have a source of income. This thing doesn’t make any economic sense but the need is immense. Apart from water engineering we have grown ourselves into business incubators and coaches for these communities. Of course we have had friends join us ever since to help us where it is hard and this is an important part of our work.
In my journey so far I have learnt that if you decide to water fish bones, do not give up they may end up into the nutrients the soil needs to provide more than fish!