Micro Solar Field Trip

On Wednesday of my second week I went on a micro solar field trip to visit a village chief to see if his village would be an appropriate sales point for the micro solar products.

Brave and CB pitch to the Chief

The micro solar product that we are using at present takes 8 hours of sunshine to charge and then will provide 6-8 hours of power for a light bulb and a mobile phone charger. SolarAid trains up individuals or community groups as ‘entrepreneurs’. The entrepreneur then buys stock from us at a wholesale price and sells it on at a profit to them. The entrepreneurs often link up with microloan organisations in order to get a loan for their stock purchase.

After  a much longer than necessary bus trip (due to an hour’s wait in the bus station even before setting off and numerous unexplained stops en route)  we reached the village. I asked whether the building we approached was the local community centre. Turns out that it was the chief’s house! It was a large building so he was obviously quite wealthy but still let’s bear in mind that generally the rooms were all unfurnished and of course there was no electricity – hence our reason for being there. The villagers were very receptive of our pitch. I say our – it was all given by Brave (our SolarAid micro solar Field Coordinator) and C.B (one of our entrepreneurs) in the local Tonga language.

I should take a moment to explain language in Malawi. The official language is Chichewa. However this is only actually spoken in Central and Southern Malawi. In the North the language is Tumbuka but today,  100k from Mzuzu, the language changes to Tonga.  I am somewhat lacking in language skills to date. My focus will have to be on Tumbuka. Fortunately though, English is widely spoken as it is taught in all schools.

Back at the sales pitch C.B. was using a very elaborate analogy about a cart and an ox to explain how to promote use of the solar panels to other villagers (translated for me by the chief’s son). Another villager who was already using a sample of the product spoke very enthusiastically of its’ merits using some comparison to witchcraft that was frankly lost on me.

CB collects his sales money

We then moved on so that CB could collect cash receipts for sales as he is an established entrepreneur. He was using a kiosk owner in Chintheche as sales agent so that the kiosk owner could demonstrate the product and collect payments on behalf of CB and take a commission for doing so. There was a nice juxtaposition in his kiosk as he displayed the solar product right next to bottles of kerosene. One of the many benefits of solar is that it can eliminate dependency on kerosene which is hazardous to health due to the fumes and also due to the risk of fires. He also did a nice line in Manchester United pants.

Me with some happy Sunny Money customers

Man Utd - Pants

We ended up coming home in an ambulance that night but don’t worry it was just our 5^th mode of transport for the day after the bus, a taxi, a truck and minibus. As they were empty they picked up a few passengers (including us) for the final stint to Mzuzu.