0:00

For me, that experience has never left me, that when someone asks me what Bitcoin is on a personal level, that's what comes to mind you.

0:36

Brendan, we finally got you on this side of the world. Not an easy task, but I congratulate everyone who was involved. It was a big, a big hustle. Yeah, I know you had some challenges, even on your flights at the last minute, it's it's hard to book last minute flights that are like from the African side.

1:00

Yeah, everything is scrutinized.

1:04

I had, I had the the booking company, Expedia, call me just to confirm if I was sure I was booking a last minute flight to come. So it's not easy. Yeah, no, I know it's tough. The the crew that we had coming from, from South Africa. Also, they, last minute, they, you know, wanted them to show they had proof of funds at the airport, and didn't want to let them on.

1:27

Yeah, I was actually surprised.

1:27

They were surprised because me amused. Everywhere I travel, I travel with my bank statement.

1:33

Yeah, because I've been asked several times to prove that so well, I think for a lot of them, it was their first time traveling. So it was, yeah, I remember my first time. It was not easy. So, so tell us about that, because I think your first time traveling out of Uganda, and we'll, we'll get a little more into your history. But, but you know, obviously you're from Uganda, and your first time traveling was to a Bitcoin Conference, right? Yes, I was lucky to travel to BTC Prague in June 2023, and it was my first time to get on a plane. It was my first time looking for a visa.

2:09

It was my first time flying out of the continent, flying out of Uganda. So there was a lot I had to learn, and I was on my own, and I had one month, one month notice, to get all that figured out. So it was not easy, because Herman from Bitcoin akasi had some some extra tickets, and he so there's something online. The story is, BTC Prague had, I think Herman was part of the sponsors and partners. So he had a few tickets that he had to give out.

2:43

And one way he chose to do that was ask African builders who are willing to build a circular economy to pitch on Twitter how they would do it. And because we are always screaming or scrolling on on Bitcoin Twitter, I I ran through the tweet, and I thought I could do it, because I was already building a community around the Bitcoin, around Bitcoin around the university where I had previously been. So I had my proof of work videos.

3:16

Had given SATs, using wallet of Satoshi to some people. So I used that, and I explained how I would build it around that university. My whole idea was, if we have students in the same place, but they come from different parts of the world, the the country and the world, when they learn about Bitcoin, it's very easy for them to take it back to wherever they come from. And I won. I won by vote, but not by poll. The poll was, I would say, cheated the boats can vote, but the comment section was full of people who were recommending me and pushing that I go. So Herman made that decision that I should be the one to go to BTC Prague, but they were just conference tickets. There were no plane tickets. I had to find a visa.

4:11

So by that time, I'd used geyser fund once to crowdfund for a local meetup.

4:17

Hey guys, just a brief interruption. We'll get back to the exciting show here. But I just want to really ask a favor that you guys could make sure that you're subscribed. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you are listening to this on a podcast, please take take a second and review this. You know, you don't even have to write a lengthy review or anything at all. Just click the the number of stars that you want to give us. It really helps us in the algorithms to make sure people are finding out about what's happening here. All right, back to the show. So I went to geyser. I put up the campaign. It's still there up to now. I look at it. Take brindon to BTC Prague. I asked for should have been 2000 something dollars. Uh, and I got that funded in a day, so I had no excuse. I had to go look for a visa, which is usually very hard for a first time traveler. Uh, luckily, I had a few friends who had traveled before, they guided me through that process and I got the visa. When I got the visa, it was even more scary because I'd never gotten on a plane, I'd never gone through airport security, I'd never done anything related to that. So I had one of my good friends and mentors. He sat me down up to now I have that audio we recorded an audio guide for me to put my headsets in when I'm walking into the airport, where I would go, what I would do, what I gave you, kind of like, step by step, yeah, step by step. But actually, I had, like, I was, like a CIA guy, just following following instructions. So he laid it out for me, but he knew as far as the Dubai Airport, yeah. So he laid out for me the steps to follow. I printed out all my documents to make sure I was not disturbed, including the proof of funds, which is very important for all African travelers. So I had all my documents, and I had him walking me step by step, get into the airport, Do this, do this, and I got onto the flight. And where I had the most difficulty was Dubai, because I booked the plane tickets myself, uh huh, and I put a layover of 40 minutes, 40 minutes, and I was supposed to move from Terminal One, I think I was in terminal two. That's where I landed, uh huh. And I was supposed to go to terminal one to take my next flight to Prague, so I had 40 minutes to connect in between. But because it's in a different time zone, I was still thinking in Ugandan time. Yeah, I was in Dubai, so I thought I had one hour and 40 minutes. So I took my time up until I asked someone for directions. They're like, which flight, and I showed it to them, they told me, you have less than 40 minutes. So now I started running through the airport. Got to check in, the lady almost slapped me the there was the final call for the for boarding.

7:15

So I ran to my boarding gate after being checked in, and everyone was seated. They were preparing to close the boarding.

7:27

And I was lucky, they had already removed the tunnel that you used to board. Oh, wow, yeah, but when I stood at the boarding gate, I held my passport. And it so happens that, because there's a lot of Ugandans that go to Dubai to work. The person who was on the tunnel was actually from my country. Okay, so he moved it.

7:44

When I was getting in, he said hi to me in our local language.

7:48

So they opened for me and I got in. Wow. So my first time to be in Dubai, I think that's when I formed one of my dreams. I need to travel in first class, because I got to see the first class guys. Usually you don't see those guys, but they were all surprised to look at me like, Who is this? Who enters after first class? So I got in, went all the way to the back.

8:13

And for me, that experience has never left me, that when someone asks me what Bitcoin is on a personal level, that's what comes to mind. So I reached Prague. I interfaced with all the Bitcoiners I'd been seeing on Twitter, spent some time at the circular economy's booth.

8:34

Got to have very, very deep mentorship from Herman, deep mentorship from Fernando, and they followed it up all the way up to when I got back, a quick story when I was getting back, still because I'd booked the planes myself, I missed a flight. I missed a flight in Riyadh, and I had no money. I felt the power of Bitcoin again in Riyadh because I didn't have money to book a ticket. Haman was able to send me SATs. I converted those SATs into local ugx, deposited it on my account and booked a ticket from there.

9:12

So it was it was another way for me to experience the personal touch of Bitcoin. And I got home, I'd studied Chinese, and I already had a job working with Chinese, because I can speak.

9:31

So I think just just get a little more background to the audience. So you would originally gone to study the university to be a lawyer, and then you switched after your first year to study Chinese.

9:42

So I I've lived majority of my life on the internet, especially YouTube. So I'd shaped my perspective to know that being a lawyer puts you in between a lot of careers, in between the ability to represent different organizations. But the way law is practiced in Uganda, I was not comfortable, because it's the old, old law. We still refer to documents of the 1920s so I felt like it was not updated.

10:10

And then the teaching system, I was not fine with it, so I didn't even wait for the first semester to end. I decided to quit. When I quit, my parents quit with me. They were like, if you're not doing low not support. Around that time, the first ever bachelor's degree in Chinese and Asian studies had been listed on the whole continent. So I I understood a bit about the power dynamics of China and the US. And just because China has been really pushing into Africa, including Uganda, no Uganda is one of their biggest, I would say places, because they have a lot of factories down there. So I'd seen a lot more Chinese in the community. So I thought I can go learn a new language, learn about the economics, learn about their culture, and I will be easy to employ because they don't speak English, and they are not trying to learn how to speak English. So I spent the first semester of of my university just going between courses, going from low trying to change to do this Chinese.

11:23

And for the first year, I had to pay for myself because my parents were not having it. And I figured out a way i i sold, I know how to do marketing. I sold some products that they were selling, and I managed to pay the first semester. Second semester, I paid it from a salary I received from a Chinese company. So when I got in, I immediately told people or the the administrators, that I need a job. So connected with some Chinese paid me for for the second semester, and I was among the best in that first year assessment. So the Institute gave me a scholarship for the second the second year, the whole of second year, and by third year, I had worked the whole of second year with Chinese so I could afford. I paid my tuition and completed the three years and I can speak.

12:23

So I was highly desirable. Yeah?

12:23

Everyone wanted to hire me because you speak Chinese, yeah, not I can. I can do business in Chinese because that's where I practiced the most. Uh huh, I can eat. I won't have it had when I go to China, or when I'm around the Chinese community? So straight from uni, is when this whole story of BTC Prague happened. So I graduated in january 2023, I actually graduated after I lost my dad.

12:56

So it was, it was very sad moment, but as as I was still looking for what to do with my life, I'd refused the Chinese role, uh, shortly after the death of my dad, because they were putting me on a lot of pressure to report to work, so I was still in between. And that's when Herman made that post, and everything changed, yeah. So that's, that's kind of the background. I discovered Bitcoin way earlier than that, but I'd not focused on it, because I think we have a graphic that you'd put together, yeah. So you just gave a talk at the plan B forum this past week, which you did an amazing job. I was, I mean, you know, I see a lot of presentations at these things, but very succinct. Had it all dialed in? I was, I was very impressed you did a much better job than I would have done. So, yeah, you could tell you you did your homework and put your time in. I love to, I've grown up in Uganda, but I don't think I am Ugandan first, but I am a global citizen.

14:04

That's what I believe. I've been inspired by a lot of people who come from different parts of the world, and Jordan Peterson is among them, and he says, if you have something to say and you don't know how to say it, it will only be you that experiences it. So part of the skills I've been working on for over the years, more than 10 years, actually, is speaking. I did international debate. By that time, I sucked. I could have been the reason why we were first runners up, but I I've worked on it to make sure, if I have something to say, I'm not of I'm not less of words to communicate it. So yeah, this is the story of how Bitcoin has evolved in in my community, up until before 2023 so. In in 2021 I discovered Bitcoin in 2016 the first person I told was my uncle. He was a banker. Still is. He told me, unless you want to become a thief or a money launderer, you can take that path. So of course, I didn't fully let go of it. I just kept at the back of my mind. I was still in school, so I had all these other things going on, but in 2018 when I left high school, that's when I kind of gave it a bit more attention, and I ended up giving attention to all the shit coins instead. So I wasted a lot of time in between there and the first time I ever made money from Bitcoin was when I tried out Bitcoin first in 218 I bought Bitcoin first, before I bought everything else, and from the wallet to which I bought, I sold and left. It was like $4 worth of bitcoin doing the shit coin array up until 2020s that$4 became eight. So when I came back to that wallet, my mind was like, okay, so you don't have to do much. Just buy bitcoin, go do life for four years and come back and find a miracle. So that's the story I was telling those people, the 2021, my first cohort. So I put together my friends, and I told them guys, I kept this Bitcoin thing, and this is how it has performed. If we figure out a way of making money in the real world, we can actually buy bitcoin, and by then, all the other cryptos that I had in mind, and maybe by 25 we can be rich. And logically, when you're more than one, all of you don't agree. So most of them, when I we're not doing that, we'll just go, take the normal route. I was not satisfied, so I kept I kept on online researching, and I connected with a few people on Twitter. And then I got introduced, I think, a month earlier, before the Bitcoin pizza day, I got to know about the history of Bitcoin Pizza Day and the transactional value of of bitcoin and how that transaction has only changed so much. Yeah. So a friend of mine, who is based in Nigeria, runs a community called crypto boot camp community. He asked me, Would you like to organize, uh, Bitcoin pizza day in Uganda? He said, why not? So with my five, my four other friends, we formed a company, because he couldn't deal with us if we were not a company. So we formed a company, a crypto education company, and he funded us to do the Bitcoin pizza day. But because he was a crypto community, we were supposed to speak about more than Bitcoin. Now, when we spoke more than Bitcoin online, Bitcoin maximalists, I love them so much I am one, they called us out. Why you young people concentrating your efforts like this instead of focusing on one thing? And first I thought they were against me becoming rich by 25 but I'm one who who always criticizes myself. This is something I learned from debate.

18:32

If you can't take the opposite side, then you don't deserve to be in that argument. If you belong on the side where you only agree with and you don't know what is on the opposite side. You don't deserve to be in that agreement the argument. So I checked out what Bitcoiners were saying. I checked the numbers, and there should go in numbers for some reason, speak for themselves. And if you open a bit more and look at how the charts look like and look at the history of all the so called Big cryptos, you realize they are really, really scams. And it's on surface level. You don't even have to do much. So it took, it takes time. And in between that time, I got to meet Paco, Paco reached out. He's like Paco de la India. Paco de la India, the Bitcoin traveler. Yeah, he's up in the mountains writing a book.

19:24

I cannot wait to read it. Yeah, because I experienced his change in real time the first time Paco came, that was in August 2022 we first messaged on Twitter. He's like, I'm coming. If you can, you can host me. But me, I'm not all about that crypto stuff. I'm Bitcoin only, and he pushed me into getting our first restaurant on board because he wanted to make a Bitcoin payment in Uganda. So of course, I know how to communicate. I went to a restaurant, spoke to the owner, convinced them to accept.

20:00

Bitcoin, at least for that day.

20:00

And they believed me. They believed that would get a lot of numbers for them on that day, but we didn't. We had like 15 people, and he was not having it. So on that day, we did pay with Bitcoin, but they refused to accept Bitcoin. The following days, and I met Paco. We had that meet up. Paco shared his story. He left me a digital copy of the Bitcoin standard I went through that took me months. I'm not quick at reading. My best way of learning is videos. So I watch a lot of these podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts. So it took me a while to read the book, but by the time I was done with it, I really, really understood what the problem was.

20:47

So I met a few other Bitcoiners, Chris Ellis. Chris Ellis was the first, I think, typical Maxi that I got to experience in real life. So even the mention of the word crypto would get him angry.

21:01

So he took us through a session where he brought a few of us together, he bought us books and pens, and we wrote down bitcoin wallet addresses like letter by letter, like we used to do this in the old days. You newbies are getting weak. You need to learn how to write these Bitcoin addresses, you need to run to learn how to write your seed phrases down. So we did a wallet session. We wrote down seed phrases, asked us to delete our wallets, and we exchanged the seed phrases. It's like so the next time you want to lose your seed phrase, remember that if someone finds it, they can log into your Bitcoin, and they can transfer it, or they can even spend it. So, and I meant a lot more of such characters online and interacted with their work.

21:50

And by the time Paco came back.

21:50

So Paco did very many countries, I think about 24 or something, in Africa. So when he was going back to India, he had to still pass in Uganda, because between the time he left and the time he was supposed to leave the continent I'd had personally been had changed, and the message I was putting in the community had changed. So he passed by, we did a Community Meetup. That's the one Paco is back. He's down in the white shirt. And before we even went for that meetup, we had a one on one, and in that one on one, Paco was different because I'd spoken to him before I spoke to him when he came back, he had seen what is really, really going on in Africa, and to him, what these are the words, he told me. He told me, you have to stop joking with this Bitcoin thing, because it can change the lives of your community. There are a lot of things that Africans are going through, and they are because of the money, and Bitcoin solves majority of these things, even if you don't go into it for the hodling and the excitement the new financial wave and all that, remember that some people don't have bank accounts. Those are very important instruments to to the growth of anyone financially.

23:16

Bitcoin offers that some people don't have a way of sending and receiving money that is cheap, Bitcoin offers that. So he put on me this weight of all the experiences, good and bad that he had made along the continent, and he left it with me in Uganda. It kind of shifted from this, like, yeah, model mentality, I like to, like, use Bitcoin as money.

23:40

Because the first time I met him is like, all the money you get, save it in Bitcoin, make sure you don't have any fear, to make sure you don't spend your Bitcoin. So it was like huddle, huddle, huddle huddle mentality.

23:51

But him moving around and seeing the type of problems we were dealing with. They were not just inflation problems. Inflation is like Africa's third biggest problem. The first problem is actually financial exclusion.

24:08

The western finance financial system does not cater for a typical African. Yeah, the financial systems we have are either built or funded by the West and are very expensive, so like mobile money, a lot of the people who praise mobile money just annoy me because it has 1516, to 25% transactional fees sometimes. So it's a tool, but it's a tool that takes 25% of the value that I create just to use it. So it works, but at an expense, at at a very big fee.

24:43

So that moment, really for me, became the turn turn around moment. It's like there's more to Bitcoin for me than there might be for a typical westerner who I'm interacting with online.

24:58

And that's when I got into the whole model of how do we use Bitcoin, and that's when I landed. I actually landed on Bitcoin beach before that tweet by Herman. That's how I followed her man, because I was looking for how people use Bitcoin. I got to Bitcoin beach first, and then I realized there is a community that is like Bitcoin beach in Africa. And I followed her man, and I started engaging his posts. And yeah, I I landed on that. And something also that happened is after meeting Paco, that's when we decided, that's when I decided to go Bitcoin only. And my other friend called a fan agreed with me because we had been together since high school. He had seen the evolution. He had met Paco those personal conversations. He's like, the person I immediately share with actually was on a call before he before I came to this podcast with him, so he kind of understood. But the other three, they were like, but we have all these partners in the crypto space. Bitcoin is very narrow. There are very few Bitcoin companies here. We won't get partners. We won't get funding. So we kind of disagreed, and for me, I couldn't wait, so I told them, I'm leaving, I will leave and create another company called a Bitcoin only company, yeah, and my friend was like, if you're leaving, I'm leaving. So we dropped the whole crypto education company, and along the journey of being friends, we'd always wanted to travel, but we didn't have money, so we had created a thesis that if we want something and we can't buy it, we offer it to other people, such that they buy it for us. So we done a shoe business like that. We like shoes, but we couldn't buy shoes, so we'd sell shoes, and the profits, we use them to buy shoes. We'd done that for a restaurant. We'd done that for a produce business, and it had worked. So I asked him if we could do it for travel, and he's like, what if we blended travel and Bitcoin? And that's what we did. So we created gorillas arts. It's a Bitcoin tourism company, and because we didn't have any tourists, we started by offering what we already knew, how to do education. So we started interacting with Bitcoin companies, asking them to fund us to do education locally. And that's when Herman's story comes in, and I apply, and everything else is like now falling into place. So the last piece, I think, the last falling piece in this timeline, before we go we go on, is that meetup. So I'd been interacting with Bitcoin from an outside perspective, and when I publicized all that, a lady from Kenya called noelin.

27:57

Noelin works with Machan kura, so noelin realizes there's something going on or starting with this community in Uganda.

28:06

So she travels all the way to Uganda, and we had a meet up.

28:09

That's the first time I saw like Bitcoin wallets. That's the first time I interacted with someone who understood Bitcoin, but from an African perspective.

28:20

So Noeline, we had a meet up with her. That's the first meetup we had in 2023 and it was different, interacting with an African perspective of Bitcoin, seeing that Bitcoin can move through feature phones, was like then there is a group of Bitcoiners that are African.

28:40

So for people who don't know what you're talking about with feature phones, he's talking about the old school, the old button. No phones, not smartphones, or dumb phones, as we might want to call them.

28:49

There's a company matching CUDA that developed the way, like, through basically, like a phone tree system. You kind of like, dial two for this, and you can actually send lightning payments.

29:00

It's It's awesome, it's awesome.

29:00

And I think that was as community leaders, as people who make things happen, you also need to believe in the thing that you're selling to the community, because if you don't, there's always that point of the point that you can't explain.

29:20

And up until ma chankura, it was always like, I know that my community really, really doesn't have smartphones, so I'm asking them to use this internet money that all of them don't have access to. So it always was a question that I couldn't answer, what about this phone? What about this brick phone. So when I met machangura, it was like, okay, all my problems are solved, so all I have to do is run with a Bitcoin thing. So that meetup, then now starts my ability to go to the community and actually sell Bitcoin to anyone. I remember when machangura had just extended to Uganda. Better. I stopped orange peeling everyone who was studied. I was targeting the normal, traditional person, and with machangura, they got Bitcoin better because it was through a system they were already using, and it was faster and cheaper. So it gave me that courage, that Bitcoin is for anyone and everyone. So yeah, we enter 2023 when, now I'm building a Bitcoin community only. And 2023 is when I get to Prague. When I come back from Prague with that circular economy's concept, I run with it, and just for everyone who is that was in Prague, right? That picture, that picture was in Prague. I see Herman and, yeah, and by that time, by that time you, you'll see that all the characters that would change my life in terms of my understanding of Bitcoin, actually in this picture, okay, Herman has been, I would say the that Guiding Light. I don't speak much, but I watch. I'm the kind of person who doesn't bug people. I just watch what they do, and I try to remodel it so I follow bitcoinica closely. Every time he posts a tweet he likes doing those long threads. Yeah, I read it, and I have my my notes part where I keep all those so whenever I'm building a structure or I'm thinking of doing something new in the community, I always refer to that thesis. And then, for now, have you been down to visit akasi? I was I went there for the first time just before I got here. Okay, it's also a conference, yeah, I went for adopting Bitcoin, and so I would consider Herman a mentor. And then Fernando was like, the coach, the one who was with me on the playing field is like, Do this, do this, do this.

31:54

Don't do this. If you do this, you will fail this way. If you do this, you will achieve this way. So Herman, Herman keeps that guidance coming, and Fernando makes sure I get the day to day things done. Well, they're both very big advocates for you, yeah, especially Fernando, he's always knowing what a amazing job you're doing, and because he's been with me, yeah, someone who is with you on the playing field knows the work that you put here. And I'm genuinely one person who loves to work. If I put my heart to something, I will get it done so and then now I think the other piece is going to be Jesse far far left. I'm going to say it here first. I've not said it anywhere. This year, we are unlocking Bitcoin mining in Uganda. Oh, really. Gorilla SATs already has an MOU with a person who is generating energy using agro waste.

32:52

He's an agro waste. Agroest.

32:52

Okay, so they like, they like. So the communities agric agriculture is the biggest source of income in Uganda, and majority of the people are agricultural people. So in part of the national parks that we usually take our visitors to, there's a nearby village, very big agricultural community. And there's a dreamer on the other side. He's a former aerospace engineer who built his own system that turns the agriculture waste into that community, so they like compost it and let it decompose and use the methane gas to create electricity. Okay, he already supplies that electricity to the community, which is amazing, really. Yeah, he sells it for half the price of what the national grid sells it. So when I approached him, I told him I knew he had excess power. Yeah, all, every energy generating company that does not have Bitcoin has extra power. So I reached out to him. He was open minded. He knew something about blockchain, but he, he's not very refined, so I pitched to him. I'm like, I I can't unlock Bitcoin mining for you to take off this excess energy that you have. And he's all bought in. I'm looking for miners. I wanted to first do a POC before I really try to raise or take any reasonable steps. But I have the MoU signed. We have our first miner down there. It's already hashing. So it's, it's exciting this year, and all the advice that I am running with is coming from Jesse, who is on the far left. So it's the picture keeps unlocking itself. So yeah, and after BTC Prague, I think the next slide will show better.

34:46

The first step we took was, how are we going to build it? How are we going to make this circular economy come alive in Uganda? So there was already a tour company that accepts Bitcoin. In, but tourists come in. Once in a while, there's a university, and the biggest question that Herman asked me was, so you want to start giving out free bitcoin to students that would create a kind of entitlement? Either they will receive the Bitcoin and convert it, or they will think you're a scammer, which is something I don't recommend for anyone building a circular economy to do, to just give people free bitcoin.

35:26

It doesn't you always have to be careful when you just give people it doesn't work. It does. It creates, yeah, it doesn't work. So what he pushed me to do and think about was, how do we unlock something that already needs funding, that already needs a sort of help in order for you to use Bitcoin to do that. And the immediate path that I found was the orphanage.

35:50

So I had explained that prior to to my visit to Prague Isma, who is the caretaker of the orphanage, had reached out trying to convert donations he received from a crazy maximalist who decided he's not going to send him dollars, he's going to send him Bitcoin. And Isma was trying to figure out how to convert to local shillings. Now, because of the hype and that retweets and the comments I got on Twitter, Isma got to see me, and he reached out to Jeff, who is a friend of mine. Jeff works with machangura, and he connected with Jeff. First, Jeff guided him on how to withdraw and go about it. And Jeff introduced Isma to me. So when I came back from Prague, the first thing I did was, if I take a trip and find that the orphanage is real because some non profits are not real. Yeah, in Africa, majority of them are not real.

36:48

So I had to first go and verify.

36:48

So when I reached there, I think he doesn't tell the story as big as it should be, what I expected, what he communicated online by that time was half the real problem. So I was ashamed to go there in doubt, even because I went there in doubt of, does it really exist, or is it any other group of people trying to make money off of running a non profit, yeah, so I got there. I got there ignorant.

37:25

I got there Bitcoin maximalist style. So as I said on stage, I took more books than food or fruits, like I'm going to see children who are in an orphanage who are starving, and I take more books. So I felt very, bad, but I got to ask him what his issues are, what his challenges are. And when I reverted back to her man, I was worried about the distance. As I had already mentioned to you, it's far. It's three hours drive, six hours of travel, if I am to go and come back on the same day. And I felt incapable of running a community down there, but Herman told me, you don't have to run the community. Just let the community be just add the Bitcoin piece. Whatever is already being done. Just enable it with Bitcoin so you don't have to go there all the time.

38:17

So after understanding the problems of the of the community, I spoke with Fernando about them. He's like, now you have a circular economy. And we started thinking, how do we solve these problems using Bitcoin? How do we now put Bitcoin to the right cause while not spending it. So we start on the journey of solving the orphans problems with Bitcoin started with beds. They were staying in a very, very bad place. I I wanted to put the picture for for the conference, but I didn't want to get to people's emotions. It's it was bad, health issues. They're in and out of school because they can't pay all the tuition.

39:04

And just as a little backstory, you were telling me before we went on air, that that this, the guy running this had actually been an orphan himself and and had kind of grown up in this.

39:16

And I believe it was the woman who was running it passed away.

39:19

And that's, that's the story where I felt dumb going there, doubting, because the first day I interacted with him, I asked him, How do you come to have 76 children in one place and you're just one caretaker? He's like so the story started with him being an orphan, and he was taken on by a lady who took the lady took on five of them, raised them up to when they were old enough to fend for themselves, and then she took on another group of 10.

39:49

So when she took on another group of 10, she unfortunately passed on. But before she passed on, she was in close contact with him. So when she passed on, she. The kids needed someone to look after them. So in her will, she had left a very small place for them to stay, and it was a written, handwritten will. So he kept the place and looked after the 10. The 10 became 15, because the same way they had become 10. The issue is not yet solved in the community. So he ended up with about 50 of them in that place, and the family of the lady kicked them out of that land where they had been staying that the lady had left because they made another will. So now that's when the agency comes in, and he goes online, he creates like a way of reaching out to people that can help, and he gets to rent a place. That's where we formed them. That's where the offer is currently.

40:56

It's still rented premises, but the rented premises were also in a bad condition. So that's where, that's the working piece.

41:03

We had with him, and he was an only caretaker. All the other four went on to start families.

41:09

One of them passed on because drug related issues. So he was the piece that stayed, and now he was taking care of 76 other people. And for me, the math in my head was, I'm like him at this point, I also lost my my parent that year, and he has 76 lives. He's impacting in his own way, maybe not to the standard that the world wants. I'm wondering whether I can even Garner that kind of impact. If so, if one person who has impacted by another one person is impacting 76 What am I doing with my life? So I decided to help him out, and I committed to be with those kids until they're old. So I took on I came in to become his brother and learn from him. And sometimes I tell him that he actually is my father, because he came in at a time where I was struggling with, like, finding myself, yeah, yeah, it's so, where, where was I? So the first time we went, we took we took books.

42:26

We took more books than food, and he laughed. He told me this later, he's like when you left, I saw how innocent and stupid you are. He jokes with me a lot because you had come to prove your own point. You didn't come with us in mind. You came to see whether we were real. You brought more books, but you started. So the first time I reached there, and Fernando taught me this from the start.

42:56

When you start something with a group like that, it shouldn't end. So we the first time I went with fruits and I told him it was real. He told me we are going to keep the fruits program forever. So the only way I track how many days we have been with the orphanage is based on the fruits Fauci as of today, we should be on 570 or 569 because in Cape Town, the day I presented, we were at 560 and that is what is reflected on one of the slides that I present. So we should at 69 because it's been nine, I think you expanded from there.

43:36

You also have an eggs for sad, yeah, we have eggs facades.

43:39

We've add protein to their yeah by the time, by the time we did the fruits, they were sometimes they would have the fruits as their daily meal, because by then they were there was no food. There was no structure to how they received food. They would have food today and not have food for three days. So the fruits now became the the simple thing they hold on to. And the only thing he told me, the only reason he kept in touch with me, and he didn't cut the connection, was when I reached there and we introduced the fruits for such the first day, I told him this, we will sustain. And he was happy to keep receiving that from us, but learning about their problems on that day also now intensified the conversations, and we started to try and solve some of them, but those books eventually actually are helping, because after getting a more stable way to get food, now we Have two meals a day, sometimes three, depending on how, how much runway we have in terms of funding and and the fruit, just to go back to the fruit for SAT. So the kids are actually making the transaction. Yes, they do, because so the first time we went, there we went with 14 cards. We still have those.

44:58

So these are the tap cards, the bold cards that you can load SATs on. So we have the bolt cards. We have the bitcoin is POS machine. We have one. So they have to line up long queues. But we are working on getting bold cards for all of them. It's been an issue because Fernando is busy and me, travel is hard. Yeah, every time I look at the money I should use to travel and pick these things, and then I look at the budget we have and the expenditures I'm supposed to make, yeah, majority of the conference invitations I've gotten, I've turned them down because they only guarantee the ticket. I can't be flying.

45:36

2000 $3,000 when I have that's half, that's, I think my monthly budget now, after adding eggs recently, is about 7000 7200 if I fly 2000 that's two weeks of feeding 130 people. So it doesn't make sense. So the whole the whole thesis is we started with what we could manage. We did the fruits for as long as we can, while trying to solve the beds, the mosquito nets, a lot of health issues. So once we were done with the basics here, we have not even said anything about Bitcoin. The only thing they do is every time they are having fruits, they just tap and get the fruit. We've not even gone out into the community. So we first focused on the internal issues, and I made this call to all Bitcoiners. Bitcoin is a tool. If people have problems, you can't start by trying to push them to the Bitcoin angle.

46:39

And yeah, use Bitcoin, and I can help you. It's more like you need to build trust. And to build trust is you work together to solve the problems that you find. So we did the fruits for the longest time. We were successful thanks to all the Bitcoiners that donated to Bitcoin Kampala. We raised 0.8 BTC, and we bought beds. We repainted the place, we repaired the toilet. We bought we bought their first toothbrushes and toothpaste. For most people, they don't imagine not washing their face and brushing their teeth in the morning, I met a 16 year old by the time we distributed those toothbrushes that had never used the toothbrush for 16 years, and I still felt stupid to have been asking them to tap cards, Bitcoin cards, before I bought them a toothbrush just to eat fruits, yeah, but, I mean, we have to to blend both the Bitcoin and the helping. So along the way, I've come to appreciate what it takes to build a circular economy. It's mostly trust, and now it's something we've managed to collect from the community, from the kids as well. So now we have two meals a day. Are guaranteed when we can we have breakfast sometimes, especially on Sunday.

48:15

So on Sunday is when we have the egg. We are still having the egg per week this year I want to have I want us to do two if we get enough funding. But we're also working on our own sustainability models. So every Sunday, we are guaranteed of breakfast. When we have enough budget, we can have breakfast the whole week. Two meals a day are guaranteed, and fruits, they have never stopped. So yeah, and the fruits thing is where now the Bitcoin aspect came in very well. After doing it enough in the orphanage, we'd been buying fruits from the same supplier, so we've supported a vendor for the last 500 and and are you able to pay that vendor in in Bitcoin? That was our first person to accept Bitcoin, and it was after a while. So this is another tip. When someone trusts that you're their client and you support them over and over again, they will listen to what you're telling them instead of walking into a vendor the first time, and you tell them, do you accept Bitcoin?

49:22

It's nice, it's corny, but it never delivers the message. So because we had been like buying fruits from this guy for a while, we had told him about Bitcoin the first time we bought fruits from him, but we didn't force him. We allowed him to become our friend and think of us as a consistent client, and along the way, he even asked for it, so we onboarded him with he didn't have a phone. We gave him a bitcoinized pos machine, and we've been paying him in Bitcoin since then. I. And him now he's our reference, our point of reference when we talk to other vendors, that's how we got the food, the food that we buy at the orphanage. It's our biggest expense. We pay for all of it in Bitcoin and Bitcoin, yes. So you have suppliers that will all our suppliers, as long as they hit the 30 day mark. If they are supplying us on a daily basis, we can no longer pay them in in Fiat, because it breaks our model.

50:25

Yeah. So what we do is, the first time we get the supplier, we don't push them over the the cliff. We tell them we have Bitcoin based circular economy.

50:36

If you want to continue supplying us, you're going to have to gradually learn, and the most of them, most of the vendors, anyone who is a business person, will be okay to that. Yeah. So unless we've had people who refused, the first person we did the eggs Fauci project with refused, not because of the Bitcoin, but because they didn't want to issue us receipts. So because we are an open source project, we keep all our expenditures, and the other prerequisite we have is for majority of the recurring expenditures, we need receipts.

51:14

And he was not able to deliver receipt receipts for the first three weeks, and we decided to change. So now we have someone who gives us receipts and is going to take Bitcoin. So he could take Bitcoin, but he couldn't deliver receipts. Okay, yeah, so it's been like that, the food vendor, that one is sorted. We pay in Bitcoin. We buy our firewood in Bitcoin, which we use for cooking. We are looking for, we are implementing to have a smarter way of cooking, but it requires money, so we have to keep a balance between using the existent model as we scale to the to the different models. So the firewood is paid for in Bitcoin, the food in Bitcoin, the constructions that we do nowadays. The first painting was not in Bitcoin, but that's when we got the chance to speak to the engineer about it. We told him, it's going to be a Bitcoin thing. And eventually, if we are to keep you as our recurring service provider, you have to learn about this Bitcoin thing.

52:18

So the most recent constructions we did at the school. Now we own, okay, we don't own. We control the school. We want to buy the school because the owner of the school could no longer manage it, and the biggest population in the school was from our orphanage, and that's the starlight Starlight school.

52:39

So last year, an inspector visited the school, and they were not convinced it was no longer a school. There was no funding. The toilets were bad. A lot of things were not in order, and they wanted to close it down. And the lady was willing to close it down because she's struggling with a chronic disease that intensified in COVID. So we had just achieved success at the orphanage, and we are now happy the school was accepting bitcoin because we are the biggest client still, and now she's like, I can't manage this anymore. I want to close it. And in that I was really scared, because the next nearest school is about 10 kilometers away. Wow. So it was a discussion I had with Fernando, and I told him, we either get a bus to take these kids there.

53:31

But it doesn't make sense for them to do a commute of 10 kilometers each day when there's a school down the road. It's like if you can convince the lady to agree for us to work towards owning the school, I think we can pull it off. And the lady is very, very good, because she also was taking care of orphans, yeah, in the school.

53:57

So that's how they become 113 orphans of Uganda. They are 76 then we had 3036, or 37 in the school. So when she handed over the school to us, the initial people who are paying tuition left because they are like these guys don't have experience running a school, but we retained the head teacher. He's helping us a lot, and now we are working to when we own the school overhaul, have a more Bitcoin favorable curriculum, and so the whole school issue now also is on our shoulders, okay, on top of the teachers being paid in Bitcoin. Yeah, that is I'm coming for you. The story is interesting on how those ones go to accept Bitcoin. So after that, Inspector visit. Inspector wants to push us closed. He gives us ultimatums. He's like, you don't have enough classrooms, you don't have sanitation facilities. The kids are using the bushes we had, but they were not enough. So if you need to solve these things immediately, you need to solve these things gradually. So the immediate things, we had to do them. And that's when we created the Save Starlight school campaign. Right now we've raised 0.98 BTC, and that worked on immediately worked on the sanitation facilities, immediately worked on paying teachers, because the standard we are supposed to have is the school now has 113 and the rule is One teacher per 10 students, so we are supposed to have around 15. So we had to hire new teachers and and keep keep it sustainable, like provide scholastic materials, books and what. So that's 0.9 BTC went towards that, and now the food, because we have 113 in total.

56:00

Yeah, so we have the school and orphanage now we are kind of bringing them together to become one, one machine. So the the the total staff we have is 22 uh, helping us with the school and the running of of the community, and then 113 children. So how they come to be paid in Bitcoin is, of course, I've and I this used to be me, but now it's Isma. Because now, initially I used to push the Bitcoin on Isma, but because Isma has also had his own moments where Bitcoin has saved him. It has pushed him to understand what we are trying to do with the circular economy. For example, the donor who left him with a big responsibility. So there was a shit corner, and they started a project together. I advised against it, but I can't control a man who has been running such, yeah, such a place. He helped.

57:06

He did buy food for the orphans.

57:06

He did buy them uniforms. He contributed a few things, and he was very helpful when he was around. But he started a big side project with the caretaker, and he left out of the blue. We don't know whether he gave up or he was kidnapped, or noone knows, even his family doesn't know, but he left behind and paid salaries, and everyone knew the caretaker as the point of contact. So the caretaker could no longer go to the school, could no longer go to the orphanage. He was like a rebel in his own village. Yeah. So we did. We came public about it, because I told him, I can't help you. These These funds are for the children. If I give them to you, then I can't explain publicly to Bitcoin as where the money they gave to the children went to pay for the mistakes that happen in your personal life. So we went public about it. Fernando was very helpful in guiding us. We went public about it. He posted the details of what happened, and we received the the donations to solve that problem, and we paid off about 10,000 plus dollars in salaries.

58:24

That was also something that had a silver lining to it, because now everyone who got to know that the person who was running the project left, and we used Bitcoin, and we crowd funded, and we've paid their salaries back, now has an understanding of the power of Bitcoin, because coming and working in the public space and being honest about it helped us. So now they they look at Bitcoin as something that can solve issues. So we get in with the school after doing the initial things that the inspector had asked us to do, everyone we hired the teachers and what this time around, it was not me. This must started speaking to them the moment they got in, the moment the owner of the school allowed us to take over it. And for now, we are just administrators of the school, and we are running the day to day, but we don't own the school. We don't, we don't make the big decisions. So we wrote an agreement with her. She gave us the administrative power. She gave us enough time, which is running out for us to buy the school, or she will have to sell it, because she needs to rest and and she needs money for her for her medical bills. So when we go to the school, the first thing was, now, Isma is the one who does this. He's like guys for us. We are living on the Bitcoin standard. Majority of our don't. Nations, if not all, come in Bitcoin. And the people who are donating to us want us to use Bitcoin, but we also want to use Bitcoin because of a, b and c, the whole list of things I've just given you. So as you plan on staying with us for the longest time, you have to become Bitcoin friendly. We gave them books. They started to do their own personal reading. Had a few sessions with them, and when that the time came, they didn't have phones to accept or pay with Bitcoin. They had the small feature phones. But what happened initially, now machangura no longer works in Uganda. What happened is the service provider who was enabling machangura work in Uganda stopped the service so it uses that because of the government or so the government put out a document that says, deal with crypto on your own risk. So in that country, in the in our country, because the service provider is Africa wide, the service provider is called Africa is talking, but the local branch of Africa is talking, refused to interact with machangura to allow us transact with Bitcoin because of that statement. Okay, so it's like we couldn't onboard them using Machan. So then Isma came up with a smart idea, and talk to the teachers about it. You guys are guaranteed a salary for the next three months if we took a portion of the salary, and we bought phones up front, and we just deduct it in the next few months of your life, of your service. Would that work? The teachers were they could not believe it, because most of them live hand to mouth, yeah, ideally, that's a loan that we extended to them, and all of them agreed. So now we bought all of them, new phones, very nice phones, actually not like that. Typical people want to buy people flagship phones, but flagship phones work for two, three years. So we got them, not high end, but slightly better, yeah, and yeah, that's how we got them to accept Bitcoin. We did a treasure Academy there.

1:02:25

Tresa has been very helpful in my community, because when I went to Prague, I had interacted with Joseph. I have a podcast with him. If you want the details of the story about me flying, I tell them in that podcast, what do you know what the title of the podcast was, or how would people find that it is stuck, stuck. I can spell it. It is S, A, T, C, K, U, J, podcast, okay, yeah, but it's mostly in Czech. But the episode we did with me and Herman is in English, English. I can share the link and it will be added, yeah, yeah, put the link in the Yeah.

1:03:02

So we did a tracer session for just the teachers, and we've taught them how to use Bitcoin.

1:03:11

Majority of them, they got in when Bitcoin was at like 40.

1:03:17

That's when we started paying them, and all of them would cash out immediately. And we allow them to do that because we don't want to, yeah, really push Bitcoin down their throat. But there's usually that one outlier who is like, let me try this. So the person left one month salary, and Bitcoin went from 40 to about 80k 8090, so he went and told his friends that Bitcoin is like Chinese magic, because by and that's when I realized we needed to do a class with them. So we started paying them in Bitcoin after like an initial explanation, a vague, not conclusive explanation, and to him, it was a miracle, because we had not explained in detail how Bitcoin works. So when Isma told me about that scenario, the guy was trying to sell his personal land to buy bitcoin, I told him, please don't allow him to do that, yeah, because things go wrong.

1:04:20

So when we did a session with them, they were very grateful they got to understand. And I'm told right now most of them, they will keep what they don't want to use in Bitcoin. And when I go there and interact with some of them, they will tell you their personal stories, like, I'm trying to start a shop such that I can make more money, and maybe I can also accept Bitcoin and and keep more Bitcoin. So there, there's a hope, a hope voice in them, when, when I speak to them, and it's, it's been really nice to see them now accept Bitcoin. But then. Now they feed into the circle. So the vendor who accepted Bitcoin for food previously had one client who pays in Bitcoin, who was us, yeah, but now they can also go and buy their normal household food from that vendor.

1:05:15

And now we have we are making the children are learning how to make soap. We made our first batch a few weeks ago. We've now made 200 liters of soap in total, and a few of the clients we've already sold, two are those teachers, and they paid their kids, paid in Bitcoin, in Bitcoin. So the circle keeps growing. It takes a bit of time, but it's it's growing gradually.

1:05:41

The other idea we've had with the children is we are teaching them how to make reusable sanitary towels, because now a few of them are crossing into adolescents. We have some in high school. We have a total of 15 children in secondary school now, and their tuition is, is a lot. So we need we need help. So those 15 now we are preparing to make sure when it's time for them to to need the sanitary towels, they can make them themselves, but we will also be able to sell those. Okay, so we've moved from we have the basics thanks to Bitcoin. So now we are thinking sustainability.

1:06:19

Yeah, the school is part of our sustainability plan, and earlier on with boat land. So the way I've been taught to think by Fernando and Herman is the donations can run out. They do run out. Eventually donors will move on to donate to other projects. So along the way, I've been trying to put in place sustainability models. And the first one we did earlier on was we purchased land, and on that land the kids have been doing farming. So right now, everyone who crossed into high school has a portion of the the land where they are responsible for and they grow food, and that food can be either consumed at the orphanage or we sell it to the community. So long term, the model is, if we can produce enough to feed them well and good, if we have extras, we can have a grocery shop that sells no more community products, but we can also sell that stuff in between. So that land purchase is very crucial, that for the times when we didn't have as many Bitcoin donations coming in, we can go to the garden and pick some food for the kids to eat. And that worked out well.

1:07:40

So the next model we are looking at is the school. Once we purchase the school we are trying to I want to point to paint it orange. I have to paint it orange. Make sure the kids are putting on an a uniform that says Bitcoin, because it's they understand it. They love it. We have a song. I will share it.

1:08:01

I'll share a link to it. The kids created a song, and Fernando loves it so much. He calls it the Bitcoin anthem, because the kids have actually seen the change. Yeah. We don't have to explain to them what Bitcoin is, because they went from really slipping down to right now. They have fruits every day. They have they know on Sunday they will have an egg.

1:08:25

They now know how to make soap.

1:08:25

Some of them are good at farming already. Some of them, we did a session with them, and this one was totally me. We gave them notebooks. It was I had a discussion with Santosh and Anuja when they were in Uganda, and Santosh asked me, okay, beyond giving these kids food, beyond giving them a good education, what personal skills are you giving them that will help them? And for me, the thing that changed my life the most is writing down what I want, writing down what I want to do.

1:08:59

I am a I'm big on vision books.

1:09:04

So Santos is like, why don't you do that? Why don't you give them that opportunity? So we bought books for all those who are in p4 upwards. We gave them books, and we told them, these are not for school. These are for write down what you want. And some of them want to be me, some of them want to be doctors. Some of them want to be pilots. Some of them want to be stuff they don't even know how to describe.

1:09:30

Yeah, because they've kind of like their dream journals, yeah, yeah.

1:09:33

So what we are, and I noticed also the dreams were shallow at first, so the immediate thing we did was we bought a screen. We bought a TV. And we don't have electricity at the orphanage, so we use solar. We got a simple solar system that provides some lights and can power the TV. So we try to inspire them through.

1:10:00

To the movies we play for them.

1:10:00

So now, tracking that the books and the TV along the few weeks that it's been there, I usually, when I go there, I speak to them personally, you'll find that someone wanted to be a teacher.

1:10:14

Now, saw something on TV, and they're like, I want I saw something, and I want to be this so it's it's really allowing them to become more developed on the side of what they can be.

1:10:27

And that's also, I think, our biggest sustainability model.

1:10:31

Because if I didn't have YouTube, I wouldn't have discovered Bitcoin. I don't know what will be Bitcoin when they are my age, but I want them to have the ability to discover it, and that is kind of where I'm trying to drive them to by teaching them how to write, teaching them how to be attentive, we are trying to get the debating aspect In. But all these come slower because they require money. And every time I look at the budget, and I have two, three months runway, I get worried, but they actually work.

1:11:10

You can feel the difference when you get there. We have a few of them who can define what Bitcoin is, the real definition of even me. I can't say it off head, and now they can say it off head. So there's, there's been a change.

1:11:23

There's still work to do, but whenever I look at the community on that side, and then the community I've not spoken to is the community around the university.

1:11:36

So just before we move on to that, I think one thing for probably a lot of our audience won't have experienced before, but I'm sure you're very familiar with is, for a lot of these kids, when you ask them, like, what their dreams are, what the future, they don't even they can't even comprehend that, because for them, they've just been trying to survive their whole life, and so, and That's where, that's where I appreciate Santosh a lot because I was at some point so focused on the now, focused on the month, focused on the two months of their lives. And it was like, if I kept that perspective, they would just eat and go to school and do the normal stuff, but the normal stuff doesn't change.

1:12:24

Yeah, their life. So it's, it's when, when it gets to, how do you really change someone's life? What tool do you give them? For me, in my biggest opinion, it's a dream, the dream I got from being on YouTube, even having the courage to believe that crypto can make me a millionaire, pushed me down the drain to go and end up in a Bitcoin only stance. And for me, it's been, it's been that interaction, that ability to dream beyond, beyond where my mind and my society is, that has enabled me to be able to do what I know how to do. So if I can deliver even a portion of that, or more than that, that's what I want to do so by teaching them about Bitcoin, putting a screen in place. I hope to, we hope to have electricity very soon, giving them these hands on skills. I would want them to dream to be farmers, but not the local farmers, because I've met a lot of very well established farmers. They can be that. So that's the kind of perspective now that we want to lead this year with. Is there electricity in the area that you can connect to? Or what does that involve?

1:13:51

So we got a quotation. Of course. Bitcoiners will first ask you about electricity. Crazy Ones are like, set up a miner there. Show them how Bitcoin mining works. It's not cheap.

1:14:03

Yeah, it's not cheap to get the nearest electricity. I've really not thought about it, because I don't know, maybe I am still limited in my mind, but Fernando always tells me the world will provide but it's expensive because the the really the polls are far from where you guys are at. Yeah. And the quotation I received was about 36,000 to get just to bring the power in, yeah, just to bring it to the school.

1:14:32

36,000 US. So it's like you might be better off just setting up a full solar system, and we are exploring both, yeah, there's, there's a path we could use, and we were trying it out.

1:14:47

Hopefully it works, I don't know, because we have, if we have a school, we can apply to get government sub. Electricity.

1:14:57

But we have to, like it's it's a split between we have to own the school to apply for this subsidy. But part of the money that we could use to apply for electricity can pay for the school, and if we don't pay for the school, we lose both. So it's like the power the different play. But once we have the school, it's something we can apply for and subsidize to like half or even quarter. Takes time, but it works, or, I don't know, there's always an opportunity down the road. Yeah, there are other ideas I was I was exploring in terms of setting up a full solar system.

1:15:44

And setting up a full solar system means we have to use the roof of the school, which would work, but it's later on, because I still have structures to finish on the school premises, and once, once I finish them, then we can put the solar. So solar still, we have light, not enough, but at night, it's not like pitch dark, how it used to be. Yeah, we have a bit of light. We have a TV room. One of the biggest classes is our TV room. So for now, I feel like we can work with that, but the goal is, if we can have some laptops down there for them every time I go there and I power my laptop all around me, and it's it's fun to see their curiosity. Kids are kids. That's what I was telling you. Like I can't explain to them that there's no food when kids are curious, whether they come from a rich background or from a poor background, they will all be curious the same way. So it's those things that I really have to weigh my options before I take certain decisions.

1:16:49

And I usually want to offload as much weight as I can from Isma, because we could decide to go lean on the budget and get some things. But if we go lean, then that means we are bringing back the pressure that he is trying to run away from. Cos, basically, speaking, Isma is older than me. I am making 26 this year. Isma is making 33 or 34 he's not had a life for the last 10 years. Yeah. So that the little freedom he's received from Bitcoin, I can see it. I can feel it when he speaks to me, taking some of that pressure, yeah, taking the pressure off, as I was saying, he's losing weight. He was he was eating all the wrong food, or sometimes not eating. And that's the first time I came to believe that you can gain weight because of stress and not eating. Yeah, which is very contested, but I watched it happen. So he's been getting better the way he looks after his health and everything. So there's a lot of things at play before we go for some stuff, but I think all in retrospective.

1:18:01

It's going to it's going to work out well, the thing I'm excited about the most is the kids learning how to use their hands, because it then means at whatever point these donations take us to, they can fend for themselves. Because I, before I went to uni, I could not believe that a young adult could pay their own tuition, but when circumstance came, I thank my uncles, who trained me very well. They had given me the the vision to be what I'm trying to give them, yeah, if you can do it on your own, then you don't need help. So that's the model I'm trying to replicate. The way I was raised, to find information on the internet, be a dreamer, write down what you want and be able to communicate it. If I can give that to the children, if I can replicate myself, even in one or two of them, I know they will be fine.

1:18:58

Yeah, yeah, I love that. So, so that kind of covers what you're doing there, and then you start to talk more about the the work that you're also doing at the with the university.

1:19:13

So before, before the orphanage happened, Bitcoin was far away.

1:19:18

It's like, how do I explain it to the student, to the person who is in the city. Now the orphanage added, added a piece, so every time I'm speaking to them, I can show them what we are doing with the orphanage.

1:19:31

And again, it's about the dream, when someone sees where they're going. Can visualize so that the the the juxtaposition I always put is, if bitcoin can do this for the orphanage, what can it do for you as a student? What if bitcoin can do what it has done for me? Now I usually use my example because I'm they are going through the same university I went through. They are walking the same roads I.

1:20:00

Walked. It's like, what can you do with Bitcoin? And the perspective is, I learned about Bitcoin when I didn't have money. So you don't need money to use Bitcoin, you can gather as much knowledge as you can.

1:20:13

And when you make that bit of of simple money that you make, just keep it in Bitcoin. And I started kind of giving that narrative around 2022 when Paco left, unsurprisingly, this year is I spoke to someone in their first year in 2022 so 2022 they were in first year, 2023 second year, 2024 they graduated in 2025 this year, we are in February. So they started working. So campus closes and they go for internship. So the money they were paid from that internship, they bought Bitcoin.

1:20:51

When they bought Bitcoin, Bitcoin went up. That's what I dreamt of three years ago when I told them and watching it come to place like, how many more students can I give that money of as you look to work in whatever field you want to work in, just save some bitcoin when you get paid. Because we live in a country where we have inflation, we live in a country where you don't have a good savings instrument, but you're already smart enough to make some money. So if you can save a bit of it in Bitcoin, then it will help you. So it was a thesis I was still testing. I'm sure there are some who are not telling me, but there are people who are really happy they started doing Bitcoin when I shared it with them. So the model we are using around the university is that do as many meetups as we can, structured meetups. We get a cohort. That's where treasure Academy now has been very helpful. So we do tracer Academy has a model of three classes over three weeks.

1:21:57

So we meet a group of 2520 people each. We meet them every Saturday for three Saturdays go from zero Bitcoin to like a place where they can find information on their own. And we've done that for we did it.

1:22:18

2023, we did four. We did three cohorts, 2024, we did four. So we've built a very big community around the university doing that, and then we've had the opportunity to have a few vendors. We have total vendor number, including the orphanage and the university area. We have 20. And out of those 20, the biggest percentage is at the orphanage, but the few we have around the university help to complete that cycle. So when we meet them for the meetup, those who show through the meetups for all the three, Tresa gives us a budget to give them about 2000 certs. So sometimes 3000 depending this year, 2024 were able to give them to 2000 in 2023 we gave them 3000 and at the end of the class, we do a community tour, so they go to these vendors and actually spend certs. Okay, so it completes the circle for them. It's like, okay, even if I do not have where to convert from when the SATs I keep go up in value. I can go and buy a snack. I can go and buy whatever. I can get a haircut. The first vendor around that place to accept Bitcoin was my barber. My Baba had seen me go to Prague. He had seen me in high school. Sorry, at uni, he had been trimming my hair. So we were friends. So when I was traveling to Prague, he knew because I got a haircut before I went. So when I came back, I brought him a t shirt from Prague. He's like, I'm like, Yeah, brought for you something from abroad. So he eventually asked me, he's like, this Bitcoin thing, tell me more. And I realized I had been focusing on the wrong okay, not, not. I was not paying attention to the local community as well where I was, because they have been watching me. They know the place where I ate from. The guy was looking he would see that I have gone from the student who would come once a day to Now I eat every day. I eat a meal every day. So I talked to the baba. I onboarded him. I started tipping him in Bitcoin. Eventually, he asked to be fully paid in Bitcoin. And now we have all these students that I teach about Bitcoin. Part of the things that they first do is they go get a haircut for Bitcoin. So it's like now he has more intentional clients. Of course, the students don't have a. Sustainable source of SATs.

1:25:01

Those who can will convert their pocket money into Bitcoin, and they will get the haircut. But the other way we have of putting Bitcoin in their hands is juicy B, j, c, b is a fruit a fresh fruit juice shop we put in place just next to the university.

1:25:19

Myself, a fan Anuja and Santosh.

1:25:19

Afan is my partner that I've had for the longest time that I mentioned. So at that place, when students buy five juices, we have, like, a loyalty card every time they come, we stamp, and when we stamp, yeah, that's a fun and when we stamp, it's, it's a Bitcoin stamp, it's a little b so we stamp five times.

1:25:45

On the fifth time, if they don't have a Bitcoin wallet, we teach them basics what Bitcoin is.

1:25:57

Open for them a blink and we put 1000 Uganda shillings worth of bitcoin in that wallet. So if they want to spend it, they have to come back another five times because we give them half the price of our cheapest product.

1:26:11

Okay, so we push them to keep it instead of spending it on that day. So the most immediate question they always ask is, Where can I spend it? We are like, if you bring it back, we can take it, but our cheapest product is 2000 we give them half of that. So either they buy more, or they support us more, and hit 2000 and then they can buy an extra glass, or they go into the community now, so we have, like a snacks place where they can spend the 1000 now, okay, it's, it's, so we have a local delicacy called a Rolex, uh huh. It's not the watch, it's rolled eggs. It's in in a flower mixture. So it's like a rolled eggs Rolex. That's how, that's how we got the name. So they can buy a Rolex, though. Okay, so in the 1000 we give, we give them.

1:27:07

It's not that we intended it, but we found that it's a coincidence that either they have to support us 10 times to spend with us, or if they support us only five times and get the the Bitcoin they can go spend it with another vendor. So last year, 2024 we onboarded, to be exact, 53 of course, when you're giving keynotes, you say 50 plus, yeah, to make people imagine what the plus is, whether 52 or 59 so we did 53 we gave 53 students their first Bitcoin. And we have a lot of them asking us, because the premises of the juice, they scream Bitcoin, that the juice brand is called juicy B, the B is a Bitcoin, B. Yeah. We have the white paper in there. We have pictures and QR codes that lead them to like these different places. And them being students, they have smartphones, so if there's a QR code displayed that says, Learn more about Bitcoin, here you will see them casually scanning it. Some of them will ask, we have murunji Is the shop manager.

1:28:17

Murunji, went through my first Bitcoin program before he started working at the shop. So he's a very good point of contact for them to explain Bitcoin. And because it's a standard, permanent place, they can come, ask, ask for 20 minutes, go do some research, come back, ask. So it's like a very it's been a very beautiful model to see in the community since we started that juice shop. And then it's creating another form of circularity that was hard to unlock. Genuinely speaking, it was hard to unlock a way of giving sets into the community that's not handing them, yeah, for free. Yeah. So the goal around the community right now is Tresa is good, but treasure is not detailed. It's an introductory way. So we now have the task to create my first Bitcoin sort of replica, so they can go through the treasure those who are not, those who don't know, because signing up for my first Bitcoin, you already know something about Bitcoin, and you want to get as much information. Yeah. So the model I'm thinking for the the university area right now is, yes, we can do the treasure three day, three different days.

1:29:37

But someone who is interested to dig in more. We want to create regular cohorts, physical ones.

1:29:41

We have online right now via School of Satoshi, we received, ah, a Bitcoin beach grant, the partnership with geyser and Bitcoin Federation, yeah, so School of Satoshi is one of the people that we actually taught in the. Um, in the group that I just explained, the first university students who graduated. Now, the person who is running School of Satoshi came from that quality. Yes, that's awesome. So it's been like, it's for me, it the a lot of things click. Eventually they say, when you plant a seed, you don't see it grow, but when the tree grows, you can look at it and Marvel. So I saw Angela not know anything about Bitcoin. We taught Angela. Angela went through the model that has now become of trying to target them when they enter the university and hoping that by the time they finish, they know the value of Bitcoin. So she looked at the community and realized we don't have an education arm, so she's like, Why don't I take it on? So she took it on. She went through the whole process of the grant, and she won the grant. So right now, she's already run three online cohorts, but the online cohorts are good for business class. I feel like if we had a physical cohort as well for the students around there, like always better to be, yeah, learning about Bitcoin physically is different. So my goal around the university for this year is find premises and have her run a physical cohort side by side with online, because she also completed University. Now, okay, instead of her going to work for any other fiat job, yeah, she can contribute to the community growth. So if we have premises, we'll have her do that. I recently got in touch. I got one of the community members who we didn't really directly help them, but from one of the community meetups we had, they got to discover a program called be trust. Be trust is for developers. So she is a developer, and now she wants to run a developer cohort. So we are hoping that space will also be helpful for her to run her physical cohorts. And it's important because she also wants to target the developers in the university. So it's like a match made, yeah, that will help. So for around the the university.

1:32:18

It's it's mostly March and student interactions and a few trips. So we are trying to have them experience what is going on on the other side. So when we have space in the car, we have to borrow, we have to rent a car every time we go there. So when we have space in the car will take two or three the ones that are active, yeah, take them to the orphanage and allow the shock of Bitcoin to to get them thinking and imagining what they could be. So, yeah, that's, that's the where, the way it's been for now top of mind is, right now we have a community group. It has about 400 members.

1:33:09

We have 20 vendors. We have, out of those 20 vendors, majority of them at the orphanage. Our biggest expenses as a circular economy, I would boldly say now we're at 80. We're at 75 in 2024 because of two people, the firewood person and we were still trying to get the eggs person. So now we at 80 because we got both of them. 85 the few expenses we still have to make in Fiat are when we rent the car when we maybe when we have to pay any other expenses out of that small ecosystem. But now, everyone who works with with us, or who is a volunteer with Bitcoin Kampala can spend on bit can spend in Bitcoin because either they are at the orphanage or around the university, so they can spend in Bitcoin. They can live on Bitcoin and everything. Because what do we do I need? I will use myself as an example. If I can eat, if I can drink juice, I really love that juice. If I can drink the juice in Bitcoin, I can get a haircut in Bitcoin, the only extra things I have to do, I can get airtime in Bitcoin using bit refill. The only extra things I have to do are like bike loads, which happens like once in two years. So all the other usual expenses, maybe, if you will, that's where we pay cash. But we'll figure that out. It's hard orange Bill gas station, but we'll try. So that's where Bitcoin Kampala is awesome, yeah, well, we should probably wrap up. This has been, I mean, this has been amazing to hear about all the things that you guys are doing, but I want to make sure we leave the listeners with. A Call to Action of how they can help support you guys, and you're doing so many different things, so let's kind of go down through the list of of what projects that they can support and where they can find those, whether that's Twitter or the website. But then also, if they want to come to Uganda and as tourists, they can use your company, Gorilla SATs, and support you guys in that. So, yeah, so why don't we start with that? Let's talk about gorilla SATs, how they can can find that. And then we'll talk about the orphanage and the school.

1:35:31

So gorilla SATs needs help on three angles. The first one is when you come gorilla SATs is me and a fan and and Bronson.

1:35:43

Bronson is a developer, and all the proceeds we get, we've we've dedicated. We were first profitable last year, and 20% of that went to the orphanage. We also donate to the orphanage. So we are trying to make a model where on each trip we we donate something to the and you guys will structure the whole trip for them like, No, this is, this is something that we do if, yeah, so you show up at the airport in Kampala and you'll have a driver there, you'll have an idea. No, we will drive. We are the two operators. So the way gorilla SATs is, is myself a fan, and Bronson, we decided to really become tour operators. Okay, so we are certified. We have the Uganda Tourism Board license, so we've so you'll meet them at the airport. Yeah, we'll meet you at the airport. The client journey actually starts before the airport. We'll give you the options. We have itineraries on the website, gorillasat.com, so we'll have different itineraries you can pick, or we can design based on your research that you have done about Uganda. We'll pick you from the airport. We'll organize transportation.

1:36:56

Everything is in our hands. You will sleep. You can spend Bitcoin for your whole time that you're in Uganda. We'll take you to the National Park. We'll take you to the orphanage, if you want, and you'll handle their hotels, everything, yeah, the moment the package has everything. The itineraries are very clear on the on the website, gorilla, G, O, R, I, double, l, a, the hyphen middle, dash, S, A, T, s.com, you'll find everything to do with Gorilla certs. The other thing right now we need help is we are trying to introduce ourselves to the mining aspect, but we don't have we've not raised funds. We don't have so much. So if there's a bitcoin miner listening, and you have some extra miners lying around, would love it if you ship them to away. And we will, this would be with a project that's using the renewable energy. He has multiple sites across the country. He's only in the MOU with only with four of them that he has allowed us to take advantage of. So once we are done with the POC, we are trying to raise money to do that, and our goal is, Uganda has a lot of hydro. He's not directly tapping into hydro, but all the hydro miners are also not profitable. So if we can unlock his sites, we want to use them as proof of concept to drag these people and show them that you can actually do have you talked to Eric? I had a brief conversation with Eric. We only signed this MOU in December.

1:38:34

That's when we closed it. The person I've been directly in touch with is the gentleman. His name has run away, Jesse. Jesse is an independent minor. So Eric is big, yeah, he's big sites because we are still doing the small things I didn't want to bother him with. Give me one minor. Give me two. Let me let me try. So when I figure my my whole process out, Eric would be more helpful. Right now we are consulting Jesse. He's very, very helpful. And once we are at a level where we need industry grade, mining level, there we will engage gridless, yeah, and that's it with Gorilla SATs.

1:39:24

When it comes to the project, the project needs a lot of things. The top priority right now that is heavy on my shoulder is the school. The School genuinely the school, because now the owner is dealing with a sick owner, means whenever they need to pay bills, they will call you when they're in the hospital, they will call you to ask if you have some money to give them so and that has been happening more often than when we started. So how much do you guys need to raise to buy the school? So the school is the two. Total agreed amount is 78,000 US. We get the school, the structures and the land where the school sits. And on top of that, there are a few things we need to finish on the school. So that arrives to around 90,000 once we finish the school. I think majority of the stuff there is really done. The school right now is top priority. But then the empowerment projects that we trying to do, I have a conclusive, shareable document that I can give, that you can publish in case people want to donate. But the school, I cannot say it enough, the school, is heavy on my shoulders. And eventually, if I have the school, I know I can figure out the electricity. Yeah, I can figure out the electricity. I can figure out everything I need to do for me the school is like, up there, and I'm trying to to escalate our activity around the university as well. So if you have time, you can come and volunteer both around the university, if you are a city person, but if you really have the chance, would love some more volunteers at the school. Why?

1:41:13

If the children want to be me, imagine what would happen if more people who are not from where they come from spend time at the orphanage? So we are trying to have a volunteer based system where you can come in for a week, stay at the orphanage, interact with them, mentor them in the way that you see fit, but we have to first discuss what you're going to speak to them about well, and obviously, be very careful in vetting the people that come in, because anytime you're dealing with children, yeah, that is something that, from the start, has has gotten me into trouble. Me and children. I love children so much, so I make sure everyone before you get close to them. We have to have spent if you want to come by the end of the year, you need to establish contact now. You need to know who you are, yeah. So kids are very, very fragile, but that's a model we want to unlock as well, to allow them to dream beyond what is in their society, and just to escalate our activities, we have so much work to do. This is not your typical well funded NGO. They are salaries. Our salaries are still poor. You would be surprised that our teachers don't earn even $100 but they still serve us. We we pay shy of $100 and we are the we pay the best in the village compared to all the other schools, but that is your pain and the best money, yeah. So yeah, that helps us, and that has helped a lot, because otherwise, if they would get another opportunity, they would go but because we pay them in Bitcoin, and those who have now seen the benefits of Bitcoin, are weighing their options to stay, but I would really want to increase their salaries and and also enable Isma build a life of his own.

1:43:09

Yeah, because he doesn't have a life. I have a life because I am far away. Yeah, at least they have something around the university. I have gorilla science. I feel like I need now when you're living in the facility, because we work with with a number of missionaries and stuff here in El Salvador, when they're living on the grounds with the kids, yeah, it's very never can get away. There's always something middle of the night. Yeah, there's always an emergency. So for me, it's like I would really want to get him a life of his own. Yeah, maybe a house separate. There are all these things that I can't get through, all of them, but that that is top priority once we have the school give him a life of his own, such that he can, he can have a better perspective, because right now, to him, it's a burden, but it's also a blessing, and it needs to get to a level where he sees it as a blessing. I always joke with him, and I know he will watch this. I tell him, you, he, he, he, he is the father of a village, because if we raise 113 children and they have families.

1:44:23

If they settle in one place, that's a whole district. Yes, that's a whole district. Even if all of them just have one partner, we always do the math together. Those are 226 people in one place. Yeah, if all of them have one child, then you have a village. Yeah. So that's that's where we stand right now.

1:44:43

I also personally have my entrepreneurship dreams, and they come through the gorilla SATs angle, and I wouldn't want to always have to worry about this whole thing. Yeah, I already have. People who have bought into their dream. Ah, shout out to the the image was there all the faces that are there are the ones that make sure this thing is running. I love and respect all of them, and I would want to pass some of the big responsibilities to them such that I can also I don't have a child. I have 113 Yeah, but a child of my own, yeah?

1:45:24

Really is something I think about a lot these days after spending these last two years with them, I would want that pleasure. Yeah, no, you need the balance, yeah, to make sure that you're doing but also building your own life and your own family. And yeah, there's a time it got very stressful where I felt like I was cheating my personal self. There's someone I discussed this with and they told me, of course, there's a price to pay, and the price to pay is your own little dreams you had built. You now have to pause them, and I want to pause them for the longest time, but I want to get back to them. Yeah, I was the person who imagined myself traveling more often, going to places to do work, to travel for leisure as well, because I'd spent all my life there. So I still want to do those things later on, and I I make this public that I am not going to to be there forever. I tell Isma, I tell the kids, I tell them, we are giving you a chance to design your own life.

1:46:33

Yeah, I've been able to design my life. And if you can learn how to design your life. You free me of that weight. So yeah, I started from what we need in general, but I had to end there to show that I deep down, there's still a human being.

1:46:49

Yeah, I might be a community leader, but the thoughts sometimes also take me away to what could have been, yeah, brained on without Bitcoin, and some of that is stressful. Yeah, no, I think that that's good to be realistic about those things.

1:47:08

So what? How can people follow you on Twitter? What's the I used to be loud on Twitter, but right now I'm loud on No sir, okay, but everywhere I use my personal handles and my names, everywhere you'll find me. I try to be everywhere because I need to be in the presence of opportunity. Yeah. So if you're familiar with Twitter, I'm there. Brandon Winnie, if you're familiar with no star, LinkedIn, though, I mostly use noster and Twitter right now. The campaigns, if you're Googling Google, the campaigns before you Google, me, save starlight.org that's the the platform we are using right now to raise for the school, sorry, and in turn, take care of everything that is within the school. As I've explained, Bitcoin Kampala is where the whole story started.

1:47:56

So that's also still up. That's mostly going to if you donate there, it's mostly the general project. So I try to separate them. There are people who have particular interest in the orphanage and the school. Yeah, that serves the light. If you're interested in that general Bitcoin thesis and what we're doing with the university and all that, that's Bitcoin Kampala and everything is public.

1:48:25

Awesome, yeah. Well, thank you, Brendan. I appreciate your time.

1:48:28

I'm glad you're here in El Salvador with us, and it's I'm glad I'm here. Bitcoin country is very, very beautiful, and you can feel the change. For me, it's there. There's something about Bitcoiners that we always forget to be human. We are Bitcoiners first. But when you reach here, you'll find the real hope of Bitcoin, like you'll find I interacted with the businesses that were at the conference, and you can feel they don't have a next week perspective. They have, they feel there's more life ahead than they've already covered.

1:49:05

And that shows what the leadership is doing. It shows what sort of message they are receiving from from the general community. So that shows an economy growing. So for me, the hope that is around here is, is something that is more important than Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is hope. Yeah, and if people have hope, whether they have it because of Bitcoin, whether they have it because of the leadership, if someone is thinking about running their business for their next 10 years, then they will look after society. They will take care of their family. They will take care of themselves. They will have better health. So there are all these things that come attached with the vibe that is in El Salvador that, for me, is very helpful, yeah, well, that's a good note to end on. Well, we'll have to, hopefully we can recap this in in here. All. Of all the things that happen maybe next year. So I plan on being here next year, but I want to make a promise. I am not coming back alone. This country is too beautiful for me to experience alone. I have to make sure at least Isma and maybe a fan and maybe Edith, three, four more people, so we might need more chance.

1:50:22

Yeah, all right, thanks.