My name is Domitila Silayo; I am 22years old, core founder of Jatropha Herbal Soap and the 2nd runner up of the Anzisha Prize competition 2013. Jatropha herbal soap is a made from an extract of Jatropha oil, which has medicinal qualities that helps in curing skin infections like ringworms and dandruff. Currently the business is in a position where we want to start producing the hotel soaps; therefore we are working on acquiring markets for the hotel soaps.
On Wednesday 19th March, I, David and Fredrick took a bus to Nairobi. The journey was very long, it took us 14 hours to arrive at Nairobi, and it was quite an adventure since we passed through a number of places which were very interesting. Upon arrival, our fellow Barclay Paul came to pick us from the bus station. Though he kept us waiting, I don’t blame him, I blame the Nairobi traffic jam. After he picked us we went to have dinner then we got on our way to Nairobi upper hill hotel. There we meet Miss Chi, frankly speaking i was so happy to see her again and so was she to see us again.
On Day 1, we went to Java house where we had an interview with a journalist from how we made it in Africa, while at the same time Miss Chi and Barclay had gone to Capital fm for the radio show. Later on they joined us together with Best who had just arrived on that same day and we had lunch together. After lunch we went to Kuza Biashara where we meet other successful entrepreneurs. We got to share ideas with them on different aspects of our projects. We also had another interview at Kuza, at the end of the day we went back to the hotel and we had dinner.
On Day 2, we went again to Kuza Biashara where we had time to talk about our projects and advice one another on what they can do with their projects. Having some nice talk with all fellows was quite helpful since it opened up my mind to a number of things that can help in the growth of my project. Later on we had a Swahili dinner which was awesome and on the next day we had some goodbyes though it is always not easy to say goodbye but we had to since time was over and each one of us had to go back home and keep on doing amazing things with their projects.
Lastly, one cannot deny that we really had some wonderful moments with the Indaba program. Good thing about this program is that it brought together all the East African Anzisha Fellows ever since the program started; this helped in building up new networks and friendship within us. I would like to thank the Anzisha Prize team for organizing the Indabas program.