Sipi Falls

Five hours down the road from Kampala in the Kapchorwa district, you'll find yourself surrounded by waterfalls and coffee plantations on the fringe of a now extinct volcano. Welcome to Sipi Falls.

Wassup Sipi!

Sipi Falls

Chameleon encounter

Four of my friends from work and I booked a place at Sipi River Lodge, which ended up being amazing! We stayed in a grass thatched hut, equipped with 5 bunk beds and, at night, played board games and watched movies together from our bunks.

Our bunk hut, right on the river

It felt just like summer camp, only in the mornings we woke up to a three course breakfast and french press coffee.

Jaipur is now among the ranks of Fenix supported board games

And, not just any coffee - Bugisu Arabica coffee grown by Ugandan farmers in the Sipi mountains. African coffee is typically known for its fruity and acidic tones, but Bugisu Arabica is much more earthy and bold. Perfect for the chilly, misty mornings in Sipi, when you can sit with you hot mug of coffee and look out onto the lush waterfall in the jungle around you.

Our morning breakfast spot - picnic tables overlooking one of the waterfalls.

Zoomed in on the falls.

The waterfalls, surrounded by banana trees and ferns in the heart of an African jungle, are so serene and make the area feel like a prehistoric oasis.

In a cave under the falls. Must have been prime property in caveman times.

On Saturday morning, we climbed down the mountain, through coffee plantations and subsistence farms, to the main waterfall where you can swim in the clear, cold basin and take pictures that make it look as though you're going under the falls. Actually going under the falls would result in less-attractive pictures where you bear the expression expected of someone being sprayed by a fire hose.

Too much. TOO MUCH!

Along the way, we ran into a few ReadyPay customers who had our panels sitting on the tin roofs of their homes. It was my first time casually running into a customer, since I don't visit the villages all that often unless it is a planned customer visit. It was amazing to hear how they loved the product. Sometimes from the Kampala office, I start to doubt our impact, wondering if all the hype is just a byproduct of a false-consensus effect and whether, to our customers, we're just another commodity. But as we spoke to one of the fathers who owned a ReadyPay kit, it became obvious that our solar was having a substantial impact on his life and that he felt a deep gratitude to the brand. He spoke about how his daughter was using the kit to do homework at night, how his security light kept thieves away, and how he was excited for the opportunity to get other loans from Fenix. Many people on the mountain clip into the utility lines that run through a nearby village, but he didn't want to steal and didn't want to support a practice that is very dangerous. ReadyPay enables him to live by his values without living in darkness.

I find, in the west, we're trained to be cynical about development efforts, and perhaps for good reason. There are a lot of people here who are too self-absorbed to really get the problems they're trying to fix. But the other reality is that this family in Kapchorwa lives under a government that takes no responsibility for the basic utilities a functioning society needs. I love Fenix and, specifically, my company's for-profit business model, because it means we HAVE to create value if we want to survive. In Sipi, I saw that that value is real and tangible and very deeply appreciated by our customers.

Our customer - you can see the panel on the roof!

After saying goodbye to the families, we hiked up to another fall, taking pictures like 90s cover bands along the way, keeping in line with our summer camp throwback.

I was expecting to reach the top and stand in relative solitude overlooking the peaceful beauty of the valley. Instead, we pulled ourselves up onto the top of the rock falls and emerged into the Ugandan equivalent of a hopping laundromat.

Laundry time

Ladies were washing clothes in the stream while kids ran across fallen tree bridges and pulled their cattle from grazing patch to grazing patch.

All blades of grass may look the same to us,
but cows seem to have more refined preferences.
If only its leg weren't tied to a branch...

As usual in Uganda, just when you think you've reached the wild "bush" country, you realize you're still just in somebody's backyard.

Nonetheless, their backyard is spectacular.