Author: nng220

Trees, Dogs, and Fried Dough

nng220

Let me tell you a story. I want to share the Ukweli dream with you.

The date is August 2025. We have our marketing license (finally) and we are selling our test strips to thousands of women across Sierra Leone. Hassan drives his new motorcycle to the Kamabi clinic wearing new Ukweli swag and is holding a large bag of Ukweli Test Strips. Hassan gets into the clinic and the Community Health Officer welcomes him with open arms. He completely sells out of test strips and the Ukweli Health Workers are grateful for the opportunity to better serve their community. Hassan calls us and says that this is our 500,000th box sold. At this point, we have covered all of Bombali including Koinadugu and Karene in Sierra Leone and we have screened millions of people. We are expanding to Tonkolili in October. Our dream is to help to lower the maternal mortality rate in Sierra Leone.

This is our dream.

Here is the reality.

Picture 1. Marc portraying our reality.

Today, we were lost. With no marketing license, we are struggling to move forward. Today was the first time that I felt that we were not moving forward with our project. We had a long and turbulent meeting with our advisor. Here is what we can say with great confidence. (1) Ukweli values ethics, social responsibility, and integrity. (2) Nothing heals a hurting soul quite like “Don’t Go Breaking my Heart”.(3) Jordan CANNOT cut an avocado properly.

Picture 2. Jordan’s avocado cutting methods. What the actual hell. 

So after our meeting, we took a walk. I saw a tree. It gave me great joy. The tree really reminded me that we needed to stand tall and keep our roots, well at least a part of the palm tree did. On our walk back Zach used his dog sense to find and track the scent of World Hope, so we could get back to “work”. We printed some training packets at the local print shop.

Picture 3. Rohan and Jordan almost getting killed by an “Allah is Great” truck and a motorcyclist.

Zach accidentally sniffed out some fried dough. After the snack break, the team ran into two “Apotos”: Nate & Maria. They were trying to find avocados to bring to dinner, Nate left the avocados at World Hope by accident.

Picture 4. Rachel, Zach, and Naakesh smiling at the Wesleyan church. 

 

Tomorrow, the plan is to simulate our operations from our state-of-the-art control center at World Hope International. aka the conference room with spotty Wi-Fi. aka the cave.

Goodnight.

Picture 5. The Ukweli team at the print shop portraying the four stages of grief. 

8/9/19- Happy Friday!

nng220

Happy Friday! The Ukweli team started the day going to a Peripheral Health Unit. First, we visited Masangbo, a Community Health Clinic where we introduced our test strip to several nurses. We were joined by the Safe Motherhood Documentary and Sickle Cell teams.

 

While the other teams were building relations with the clinicians, we had the opportunity to take some great action shots of Hassan screening a pregnant woman with our strip! Hassan explained to the woman about the importance of getting screened early and often. He obtained informed consent and approval from the Nurse on duty. Watching Hassan do this allowed us to better gauge our training and messaging protocols before we implement our venture.

These pictures depict Hassan explaining our test strips, obtaining consent, collecting data, and reading the strip.

Back at World Hope International, we worked hard to iron out the kinks in our operations plan. Naakesh, Zach, and Rohan focused on training, messaging, and data collection. While Cassidy, Sage, and Jordan worked on finances and a 3-pager that concisely summarizes our venture. Tomorrow, we plan to double and triple check our work and begin training! We cannot wait to officially be up and running!

 

This week has been extremely challenging to say the least, but we could really feel the excitement in the air today. Between Hassan networking and using our strips, to getting the final pieces of our venture together we are extremely excited to move forward. See you tomorrow.