User Story: Janet Apio Selling Water and a Charge

Every week our local teams in India and Uganda visit the homes of users to see how things are going – the following is a story straight from Janet Apio, one of BioLite's most loyal users in Uganda.

Hi - I am Janet Apio and I live in Komamboga central. If you want to visit me and you get lost in the neighborhood then you just ask for Mama Diana, the big lady who sells water. Because, as a business, I sell tap water.

I have spent one year using this BioLite HomeStove. I use the HomeStove the whole day. Everyday. Non-stop. I used to buy charcoal to cook my meals and to boil water. Now, I no longer buy or use charcoal. I buy firewood but I get the money from allowing my water customers to charge their phones on the stove while I am cooking. When they come to pick up water they realize they can leave their phone to charge. I can charge two or three phones in a day and I get 500 UGX for each phone charge. I always enjoy cooking my food and saving the money that I would spend on firewood since charging can do it for me.

Before I got the biolite stove, I was using the traditional three stones but the wall of my house turned black as you can see. Blowing the three stone fire with a lot of smoke was also a big problem for us and this often resulted into headache.

It was also challenging during the rainy season with cooking on the three stones because it was always hard to shift cooking to the house and this most the times hindered us from preparing a meal whenever it rained but this is a problem no more with this movable biolite stove.

Ever since I got this stove and started using it, everyone in this village come to prove whether it’s true; it cooks, charges and can provide light for the children to study at night and they always question, where can we find this stove? I therefore appeal to the company to manufacture more and make them available such that my neighbors and other Ugandans can at least each have one for themselves.