Takamoto Biogas Newsletter October 29, 2011

Newsletter from founder: Kyle Schutter.

For those of you recently coming to the blog, this will be a nice overview of where the company started and where we are going. Perhaps the biggest news; we have entered a business plan competition with the William James Foundation and as a part of that competition have created a profile on Launcht to raise funds for the next developments for Takamoto Biogas: http://wjf.launcht.com/participant/detail/35 for more info on that.

Takamoto Biogas Newsletter October 29, 2011

Dear Friends,

Last time I sent a newsletter to y’all it was December and I was in Uganda, playing in sewers.  So much has happened since then that I feel I need to update you. For instance, instead of playing in sewers I am now playing with cow dung. Obviously, this is a HUGE step for me. And with any luck, I will get a message back from you to hear what you have been up to this long time!

For those who did not receive my last email, since graduation in May 2010 I have been performing research on biogas and waste management first in the US, then the UK, then Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda, looking for the right place to start a waste management and biogas company. From Uganda I went to Kenya, planning to spend two weeks before heading to Nigeria. But what I saw here really impressed me. And two weeks turned into… well, don’t be surprised if I invite you to my Kenyan wedding in a couple of years.

The view from my “office”

I hope you enjoy the stories below. They say Sharing is Caring so I just want to show how much I Care about you Plus we are crowd sourcing funds for a new branch of the company, see here. So I want to ask for you to share this information with others who would be interested in hearing our stories, promoting our company and supporting our efforts to bring more biogas to more people, protect our environment and improve the overall livelihood of our clients.

When I first arrived in Kenya, I got on the bus leaving from the airport and told the guy next to me “I have never been to Nairobi before and have no idea where I am staying.” Then he showed me around the city for 30 minutes, took me to the book store to buy a travel guide, showed me where to stay and gave me a few business contacts. That is the hospitality of Kenyans. It is really wonderful. I stayed in a cheap hotel for the first few nights, but after that stayed for the first six weeks with the friend of a friend of a friend from Brown University. I didn’t know them at all but was adopted into the family, went to visit their country home, attended my host brother’s wedding, regularly debated with my host brother on our differing views of evolution and then when I felt I had mooched off them long enough and said I would be leaving, my host family tried to convince me to stay. In the US you can stay too long, but in Kenya you can stay too short.

Here is the short answer of why I decided to settle in Kenya:

1.) The banking system is quite amazing. Maybe you have heard of that new fangled technology where a person can store money on his or her cell phone as if it were a bank account and then send the money to anyone else’s cell phone. Or maybe you haven’t heard of it because in the US we can’t even do that yet. Well, that service started in Kenya and is called MPESA. It is a huge help for paying my employees instantaneously even if they do not have traditional bank accounts and live hours away.

2.) Kenya is a lively place. Lots of music and music shows and outdoor music venues, traditional music, african fusion, american music, congolese music, everything! My favorite event is “Blankets and Wine” where you bring blankets and wine and watch the best musicians of Africa. For those of you from Brown, think Spring Weekend, except it happens every month and you don’t have to hide the alcohol in your sock. On a related note, see a friends article about the four P’s of Nairobi on why young social entrepreneurs flock to Kenya.

3.) Compared to other places in Africa that I have been to, it is really fast-paced—the service, the busses and unfortunately the thieves are a lot faster. I’ve been robbed three times justifying this city’s nickname, “Nairobbery”.

4.) Kenya has next to no natural resources. But on the flip side it means new energies such as biogas can be economically viable. The biogas sector here is really growing. More on that later.

5.) As always in Africa, people are exceedingly friendly. And because of the high level of English fluency, when people give me directions they are usually accurate (as compared to Ghana where I took the best two out of three answers).

After staying with a host family I decided to move to an apartment on the edge of Kibera, which many studies claim is the largest slum in Africa. As people get more money in Kenya they put up walls and fences and pretty soon you never see your neighbors at all. Kibera has none of that and honestly is quite a safe place to live as far as slums go. From what I can tell, the vigilante groups/gangs in Kibera are quite strong and violence would be bad for business. I have yet to see a traditional law enforcement officer in Kibera. At first I thought my apartment in Kibera would be a great place to have an office, a place for customers to visit and at the same time see some of the waste management issues I wanted to address.

Dandora dumpsite with scavengers pulling valuable wastes from a trash truck. Blog post.

Around the same time I registered a company under the name Takamoto Biogas Limited. I felt very clever about the name as it was a combination of 1.) my love for the sound of Japanese last names, 2.) meant “want fire” in swahili and 3.) had the double meaning in swahili slang meaning “fire from waste”.

Registering the company was not as hard as I thought it would be. Kenyans have told me that only five or ten years ago, just to get in the front door of a government building would require a bribe, but I wasn’t asked for a bribe anywhere in the process. Being a biogas contractor even helped the process. When I applied for a short term work permit the official at the counter sounded very appathetic as I imagine working in a Kenyan government job can do to the best of people. But when I explained that I wanted the work permit to build biogas systems, he became very excited, insisted that I come to his village to do a feasibility study to determine how much it would cost for a biogas system and even gave me his personal phone number which was later invaluable in determining why my application was being delayed.

Being in Kibera and seeing all the garbage everywhere made me think of all the opportunity rotting in the dumpsites. Based on rough calculations, I figured that all of the buses in Nairobi could run on biogas. Now, wouldn’t that be fantastic!? But I guess theory and application can be quite different. There are a lot of politics around waste management in Nairobi. I heard that the Nairobi International Airport wanted to divert its waste from the dumpsite and turn it into compost and plastic scrap. The leaders of the gangs controlling the dumpsite told the airport officials “you will divert the waste over our dead bodies.” Now I just heard that but I also believe it. When I once went to the dumpsite to buy scrap and I was about to leave the way I came in, the scavenger who sold me the scrap said “follow me out the back way. Otherwise my boss is going to want a cut.” The scavengers are at the dumpsite illegally so I imagine his “boss” is there illegally too. There is a hierarchy even at the dumpsite.

When I first arrived in Africa, small scale biogas wasn’t my original idea, but around March I began to think more about it. With all the trouble with gangs, the government, permits, financial capital, etc. I started thinking “start small”. Now a thousand people could have told me this when I planned to redesign the sewage infrastructure of Nigeria, A country well known for suffering from corruption. And people probably did try to tell me that, but I definitely wasn’t listening then. But now with some experience in Africa and realizing how little I actually knew, I thought small scale biogas was a good place to start.

So we started building small scale biogas. Which turns out to be a lot easier and a lot more fun.

Excavating to build a biogas tank.

I say fun because our clients are THE BEST. Our clients live in rural areas that can often only be accessed by riding motorcycles through gorgeous scenery. They love having visitors and always find time in their busy lives to show you around and tell stories about how they used to walk three days to Nairobi or how they had to shoo elephants out of their gardens. And if you don’t stay for tea and lunch our clients will be offended. Let me know the next time you are in Kenya so I can bring you to meet some of our clients. Working with them is the best part of the job.

A biogas system with a nearly completed dome.

So what is biogas? It is very similar to natural gas. Biogas can be produced by anything that rots such as vegetable waste, farm waste, cow dung, pig dung and even human waste. We build a tank to hold the waste and collect the gas that is piped to our clients’ houses. Interestingly (to me), while few Americans know about biogas, nearly all Kenyans have heard of biogas before, have seen it on TV and want one built if only they knew who could construct one for them—which is where we come in.

Plastering the outside of a biogas digester. Gotta make it air-tight!

The magic that people can’t believe is that the dung from their cows which often goes to waste can produce fire. Really, some people think it is some kind of magic. The biogas can be used for cooking (just like a natural gas stove), lighting (see below), generating electricity, pumping water, running engines to chop animal fodder and heating water for showers. For our clients it is luxury. They say they really don’t know how they lived before they had biogas. It saves so much time, money and energy.

Field Manager Joseph Installs a Biogas Lamp. Blog Post

The biogas accessories (stove, lamp, generator, etc) are some of the most important parts of the biogas system. Without them, biogas is just a gas. With them; power. For now we are importing these accessories from China, but we are starting to develop biogas accessories made in Kenya.  It would create jobs here and help build the manufacturing capacity of Kenya. Making biogas accessories in Kenya will substantially reduce costs for our clients and bring biogas to more homes than would be possible otherwise.

Developing a Made In Kenya Biogas Lamp. The first of its kind! From Left: Graham, a grade school friend and Operations Director; John, metal workshop owner; me; Collins, executive assistant and Swahili tutor.

Now we are raising $8,000 through Launcht and the William James Foundation business plan competition to design, test and distribute the first batch of Made In Kenya biogas lamps and stoves. If you are interested in donating or know anyone who is interested in donating please share this link with them:

http://wjf.launcht.com/participant/detail/35

Every little bit counts. So if you have $20 or $50 dollars burning a hole in your pocket we could find a really good use for it. Thank you in advance for your support. Also, thank you for reading my stories, I hope you have enjoyed them and will pass them on to someone else.

Kyle Schutter
Managing Director of Takamoto Biogas Ltd.
Nairobi, Kenya

www.takamotobiogas.com

Takamoto Biogas on Facebook 

Fund Raising Link

A few more stories:

On a side project for a company called Sanergy, started by MIT business school grads, we built a few toilets. I had everything planned perfectly. I found the best workmen to do the work, sourced the materials, bargained hard for the best price. Then when it came time to transport the toilets from one part of the slum to another we discovered that the toilets were too big to pass through the narrow alleys of the slum. It was just about the stupidest mistake I could have made. One of those mistakes where you have to laugh. And take a photo. Luckily people are very resourceful. And we boosted the toilets over a tin roof.

Transporting Toilet. Blog Post

Girl Skating in Kibera Plaza. I brought a skateboard with me after going to the US for my sister’s graduation. The skateboard was a huge hit. I think all the kids were able to comfortably ride on the skateboard within a week. When I eventually moved out of the apartment building, the kids said “goodbye” to the skateboard.

Graham and I decided we should know where our food comes from. After Kenyan friends looked at us in astonishment that we had never slaughtered a goat before, much less a chicken, we bought two live chickens and slaughtered them on the back patio. Two hours later we had BBQ Chicken. Yum!