Malembo: The Real Site of of the Second Branch

Two days ago, we received a surprise visit from the FSD Masaka site team that supervises all of the interns working for the Foundation for Sustainable Development based out of Masaka (lucky for us, they arrived shortly after our hour long tea break instead of during!). With the site team and their four wheel drive, we got the opportunity check out Malembo, a local fishing village.

On Monday we discovered that Ddimo is on the verge of closure.  The fishing village, home to 2,000 or so people, is being shut down in 3 months and individuals currently working out of there will have to relocate.  Overfishing and unsustainable practices have led to a serious depletion of available fish, and so the local government has imposed a no-fishing period.  To us, this means that Ddimo is a significantly less than ideal place to branch into.  It doesn’t seem too wise to open a business in an area where it will soon be basically illegal to earn a living. 

However, this hiccup has been a blessing in disguise.  Malembo, a fishing village that is further away, is in no such situation.  The population, and most relevantly, the population of fishermen, is smaller, although still apparently larger than Lwemodde.  The area is thriving, and has potential for growth in the near future given that there will be local fishermen looking for jobs.  On top of this, Malembo is actually off-grid.  The grid is a relatively new phenomenon in this sub-county in general; the grid only came to Lwemodde (and in fact Ddimo via Lwemodde) within the past two years, and Junior estimated that it would take another 15 years of advocacy and work before the grid might reach Malembo. 

Fishing boats on Lake Victoria

View from the roof tops of Malembo. Sea is in the background.

California-esque with that palm tree.

Random cows with large horns do patrol the streets!

At the moment, this means that all of the phone charging business belongs to a certain Alex Mukiga and his 50 amp-hour car battery.  Alex used to live in Lwemodde, and is a member of the Lwemodde youth group, but has since branched out to Malembo where he owns a video hall, a small shop that sells sodas, beers, and random bits of clothing, a phone charging shop, and what is essentially a small scale utility company.  His car battery (not deep cycle: see Julian’s post) lasts for about four days of phone charging (charging 15 phones a day for 500 shillings or so each) before he pays 3,000 shillings in transport and 1,000 shillings in charging fees to have it recharged.  At night, he turns on a generator from 7 PM until 11 PM, and for 500 shillings a day, he will install a single 12 volt light in someone’s home and use his generator to turn on their light for those four hours.  He currently has four customers for whom he provides this service, and he used to have more but they tried to siphon off more electricity than they paid for by hooking up phone chargers and other devices to the lines he ran into their homes.  For those who did this, and those who failed to pay bills on time, Alex cut them off and his customers have dwindled to these remaining four.  That’s still a 60,000 shilling income each month, and he’s the only person in town who provides this service.

The last thing Alex offers is a screening of 1-2 movies each night to people who may a humble fee to watch. He also runs this mini theater from this generator.

Julian and I imagine a million opportunities in this shop that Alex owns.  First and foremost, he already passes a portion of his profits onto the Lwemodde Youth Group as part of being a member, so the group is well prepared to work with him.  Secondly, the marginal benefit of installing a panel where there is no grid access is larger, and for a town in need of a simple utilities company (someone to power a few lights in their homes), solar power can be a safe, inexpensive and environmentally friendly option.  In fact, in considering options for dealing with people who try and steal extra power from the company, we are hoping that a simple system of master fuses will do the trick.  People wishing to gain access to power “get” their first fuse free, meaning that Alex could install their lights for free, with a fuse in his shop that is rated for the maximum ampage they can draw with those lights.  If their fuse is blown by attempting to draw more current for more electric purposes, then to re-enter the service they must pay for a new fuse.  This eliminates the complete loss of customers with electricity theft without putting a cost of regulation on Alex and others working in the shop.

Lastly, if this branch reaches the point that we’re considering installing computers and internet access, it will give a huge number of people a service that would be at least fifteen or twenty years off if reliance for power was placed on the grid.   

The way that Alex’s roof is configured as well is much preferable to the Lwemodde roof as well for solar panels.  It’s higher and has no nearby roofs tall enough to risk casting a shadow, and the roof appears from rough glances to be at a good angle for a panel on it to track the sun.  There is even a solar panel mounted on the roof already, belonging to a man who lives about 100 meters away but in a temporary shelter that can’t support a panel.