Musaazi wants to court MakaPad customers beyond the UNHCR, which buys 90 percent of production. He continues to run at the Ministry of Education as well as NGOs. The consumer market is a longer shot: "The biggest hurdle is convincing the public that a product made by a local person is as good as or better than something imported," says Musaazi. Still, he recently ordered more attractive packaging from China. And he plans to deploy three-wheeled motorcycles towing carts filled with pads in the cities and villages, as well as a team of door-to-door saleswomen. "We already have one girl who walks around singing, 'Pads, pads, pads for sale,' like a hawker," says Musaazi.
By 10 A.M., Nicholas Kasekende has been at Cozy-Tech Engineering Works for several hours, performing his usual role of supervisor/babysitter. Kasekende, Musaazi's energy systems manager, spends much of his time standing around chaotic, cacophonous machine shops like this one because he knows the moment he leaves, workers will abandon T4T's project for someone else's. "They take on too many jobs, so if the customer isn't right there watching, their work won't get done," says Kasekende, whose blue overalls belie his management position. He divides the company's manufacturing orders—mostly for the incinerators—between this plant and a plant some distance away on the logic that power failures are unlikely to strike both locations at once, so at least part of the work is always progressing.
Kasekende pays the machine shops' owners but also slips cash to individual workers to guarantee their attention. "An employee who works on the incinerators comes late because he has got a piggery project at home," he explains above the shriek of electric saws. "I told him I need you here. I will pay you an extra 50,000 shillings to come on time."
Conducting business in Uganda is a perpetual war with inefficiency and corruption. Officials solicit bribes, electricity is spotty, traffic jams eat up hours, torrential downpours stall work, and people blow off appointments or simply can't find them because there are few street signs. Musaazi leaves home by 6 a.m. and spends his days pinballing among construction sites, MakaPad plants, the university, and customer meetings, not returning until 11 at night.
If the work can be frustrating, it is also not especially lucrative, at least at T4T's current scale. The company, which employs close to 250 people, most of whom make MakaPads, has revenue of roughly $300,000. (For comparative purposes, sales at companies on a list of fast-growth firms in Uganda range from $400,000 to $1 million, according to KPMG and Monitor Publishing, which compiled the ranking.) Musaazi owns 51 percent of T4T. The rest is divided among Nakibuule, Kasekende, and three of the entrepreneur's four adult children.
Musaazi genuinely doesn't seem to care about money. He has lived in the same on-campus faculty townhouse for 27 years, sharing the premises with the business of his wife, Sarah, who owns three small cafés and does a thriving side business baking wedding cakes.
T4T is generally profitable, but when it runs short of money, Musaazi opens his wallet. He has never taken a bank loan, although he considered doing so to fund the expansion of MakaPads into Kenyan refugee camps—a project that has temporarily stalled.
Occasionally, Musaazi will accept a job just for the intellectual challenge. That's why he designed a metal container that seasons wood for furniture making. At Erimu, a furniture company outside Kampala, production manager Cyprian Nsengiyunva hauls open the door to one container to reveal 400 hunks of timber swathed in a miasma of smoke. "Before, it took three years for hardwood to dry," says Nsengiyunva. "Now, with these dryers, it takes just one month." Musaazi built a dryer for Erimu, then taught employees there to build more. "As payment, they made me a very nice bed," says Musaazi. "You have made a lot of money out of this," he tells Nsengiyunva. "I think you should also make me a stool."
On the day I am to leave Uganda, Musaazi takes me to the shore of Lake Victoria, where we sit in a deserted outdoor restaurant under a flapping canopy. As we lunch on fried tilapia and chips-I break down and follow his example, using my fingers to pluck silky white flesh from the filigree of bones-Musaazi walks me through his projections for T4T's myriad products. He has several new ones in the pipeline, including a product he asks me not to mention because he is applying for a patent. He will soon market a device that allows parents to precisely divvy up pills for children. In Uganda, very few medicines are distributed in pediatric versions, and typical pill cutters make a hash of quartering tiny tablets, leading to frequent over- and underdosing.
MakaPads are T4T's best shot at a blockbuster, Musaazi believes. "In Uganda alone, there should be eight million people using sanitary pads," he says, as rain starts to spatter the table. "We think we can capture 50 percent of that market, because so many people are poor. If we can sensitize people to the need for pads, then they should choose ours. That is our hope."
Musaazi gestures toward the churning water, metal gray beneath a glowering sky. Somewhere out there, he tells me, are the Ssese Islands, which he has never seen. "I never go on holiday," he says. "But if I had time, I would go there. I understand there are beautiful beaches. Maybe I could take a book. Maybe I could have a drink. I could lie down and rest. I have never just lain on a beach before."
The sky yawns, and the rain buckets down. We grab the chips and make a run for it.
