Furniture MakersAbove all are the people — so sweet and kind and alive. They are building a country from the devastation of genocide.
Everywhere the Rice MBA teams go, there are children. Last night as we drove in from the country, it was 5 p.m. when children get out of school. Dressed in blue and yellow uniforms, the children would wave to us, grinning broadly, shouting, “Masungo!” which means "White man." It is a cry of excitement and cheer. There is no derision. The children seem delighted to see us.
I followed the incubator team today.
We began with the furniture makers, a co-op where hundreds of men make furniture and coffins -- among other things -- in the narrow canyons of dressers and beds. They use crude tools -- I saw no electric saws or drills -- to make mortise joints and carved pieces. They are masters with planes and hammers and awls. Young couples buying their first piece of furniture snake their way through down the narrow aisles as workers hammer and saw and carry pieces to the street for customers.
The furniture makers are crafting a model of the Rice incubator, a simple wooden box with a simple electric circuit for standard light bulbs. Although getting a local contractor to make a prototype seems like a minor thing, for the incubator team this is a major victory, the first step in using local craftsmen to produce a product set for sale in Rwanda.
The unit should be ready Thursday. On Wednesday the incubator team will finalize the electronics and deliver the wires, bulbs, and sockets to the furniture makers. On Friday, they hope to have a working model to show hospital administrators.
Rwanda’s medical system is made of local clinics, regional hospitals, and the national King Faisal Hospital. Clinics serve as a form of triage, handling relatively minor medical and nutritional problems -- and births. Cases clinics can’t handle are forwarded to regional hospitals. And what regional hospitals can’t treat is forwarded to King Faisal Hospital.
District hospitals and local clinics appear to be markets for the diagnostic lab in a backpack, the low-cost incubator and bilirubin light, the protein powder, and the dosage metering device.
Two expectant mothers at a rural clinic in RwandaTeams have also learned that all products sold to hospitals in Rwanda must be approved by a national certification agency, a process that may take longer than the time students are in country.
Every team is hopeful. Each has found avenues for development. In the short time they are here, it is unlikely they will launch complete businesses. But some teams have already found partners, local builders, and entrepreneurs with the training and expertise to run a business.
Note: Internet bandwidth is poor. Think of thousands of computers trying to suck data through one straw. It's almost impossible to upload videos to you, but I will continue to look for better connections.
What a worthwhile project. Has anyone considered making the incubator out of recycled materials? Even heavy cardboard might work for at least part of it and it would cut down on the weight. If the incubator box can be used to hold other things as well as the lights, etc.; it could double as a shipping container.
ReplyDeleteBravo to the Jones School teams! BTW, perhaps the best account of the Rwanda genocide is Philip Gourevitch's remarkable book, "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda" (Picador, 1998). It is informative, heartbreaking, and unforgettable.
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