TimeDesk Africa

Bunabumali, TimeDesk & Naiade, here's how it all came together.

By Ben Koot, initiator of TimeDesk

How a lease of a solar energy system results in building a state of the art community center in Bunabumali, Eastern Uganda

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Don’t listen to naysayers, but follow you heart and just keep going…
Watch your timing.

Budget: when we started: 0

Investment in small donations: €.4000.00 in 2 years

Total costs, including bankingcharges, bribes, transport & travel cost: €. 2000,00, money that could have deployed directly if we would have had the proper infrastructure to work together (over 800 friends Norman has runded up on-line)

The proper infrastructure is the realisation of on idea Ben had from the start, the creation of a Bottlenck Fund, that fills in all the micro gaps exisiting infrastructure keep creating with each new invention or introduction of new services.

Althoug I call it a fund, it in eefect an alternative micro finance system, not onlly focussing on transfering money, but facilitating, barter, knowledge exchange and himan creativity into a new kind of economic model. When finished it will be the bridge between Aid and economic development.

Milestones:

November 2006: Ben meets Evert Groeneveld from Cleanwaternow, when he just started working for an on-line development aid initiative. That’s when I learned about Naiade, the potential impact if NGO’s and governements could be madeaware tNaiade is one of the few sustainable solutions to provide the BOB market with clean drinking water.

May 2007 : Ben & Norman decide to set an example and start a journey of discovery how to reach a goal everybody said was impossible. We left the development initiative where we met up on-line and started our own social platform, together with a small group of other disappointed African enterpreneurs. This led to this great article written by Amedu Monday, the Hatman of Africa. Amedu gives a great account of the style of conversation and the impact my our statregic termite approach seemd to have, something I was unaware of in those days

Apart form working on Venue Africa, I spend a great deal of time looking into the problems longterm unemployed people in Holland face when they try to escape the iron fist of social security. As bizar system that prevents people form solving their own problems. If I wanted to turn venu Africa into a success the folks in Africa deserved, I had to fight myself out of social security trap first. Thats why I I had to stop the African adventure for almost 5 months.

I had no more cash, no job and no means to support the internet platform I had crated using open source software. One by one the new found African friends went their own way, and all of a sudden io disappeard all together. One simple email to Norman telling him I would be back was the last I could do.

Norman will tell you his end of the story of how he kept going.

Five months later I had found myself a small job, was no longer limmited by the frustrated social security mess and had my freedom. Rebuilding the old platform was no longer an option so I started looking for a less complicated approach. That turned out to be tumblr.com. Bunabumali Chronicle was born

xxxxxx Corry Richardson visits Bunabumali

xxxxxx Sienna Antsis visits Bunabumali.

xxxxxx Anja Tved visits Bunabumali

xxxxxx ….. visits

xxxxxx …… visists

xxxxxxx ….. Norman gets a Canon Eos camera

xxxxxxx ….. Norman get’s his PDA so can get online in Bunabumali

xxxxxxx ….. Bunabummali Chicken start their own weblog, resulting in an expansion of the flock and a little later the arrival of the goats.

October 2009. Norman starts laying the foundadations of Buna Bakery

December 2008 Xmas party

January 2009. naiades shipped out to Entebbe Airport

March 2009 Naiade installed