After the welcome ceremonies in Marias home village we travel to Ngaruka town, where Marias has his office, bar and campground. Marias sent out a message yesterday that we will make a presentation of something special and now we gather to start the conversation. Around 15 men are gathered and we are waiting for some women to come and attend.
The welcoming and friendliness is amazing. But it is hard to give the situation justice, as words used to describe the feelings become cliché-like.
As we wait for the women Marias start to tell about the product. The people gathered here are important people from the area, council representatives of the local authority, council leaders.
One of them is Samuel Laizer, a representative from the village government who was the one billing us 8,000 TZS each to enter the area. This fee is one way to get income to the community.
The women has now arrived and the meeting can start. Rafael starts the conversation.
-People we are now gathered, and I think we will start to explain what brings us here.
Rafael grabs the leadership sticks, raises up and starts an introduction in the Maasai language. We hear words like HiLight, HiNation, Kristina, Linda, Leif, solar…. Now 40 men and women are here under the tree listening with high attention. Rafael introduces the HiLight, demonstrating the light and the charging functionality. He also shows how the HiLight can be positioned in different ways.
After Rafael, Marias stands up and continues the introduction. Both Rafael and Marias are interrupted by questions, both by the men and the women.
I is a bit amazining sitting here under a tree in Ngaruka having a conversation around a hitech product like HiLight. We are now very interested to hear a translation of the two speeches as we don't understand anything. As the conversation gets free we only hear one question:
-When can we get this product? we all need it!
Rafael translates to us what happened
-I made an introduction of the HiLight, the story behind, what it can do, how it works, and then what we could do to get it work properly. We got some questions about how many phones we could charge. But you want light you need to balance between light and charging.
-One man asked when we can have it. We just want to know when this is possible. When we know it is available, we can pay for it and then get it.
Linda thinks…..
-Testing is made now and then we could make the order within 2-3 months. Delivery could be made in the first quarter of 2011.
Rafael concludes.
-When the product is ready to be delivered to be ready, Marias would be the one that brings the information about orders and delivery. There is also a good business here. A telephone charge in this area is about 1000 TZS which means that the HiLight could bring in 5000 TZS per day. Nomadic charging stations, that would be something!
Marias now concludes the meeting. Kristina and Linda writes down the information about the test users, and we continue to the next place, the village school of Ngaruka.
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