Welcome to the show where we expose new perspectives on our ever evolving world through the lenses of various industries, cultures and backgrounds.
Our guests are disruptors, united by a common goal to bring their purpose to life.
Whether they’re from the commercial world or third sector, from the global North or the Global S, expect an inspirational journey that will transform your perspective on just what is possible.
My name is Philippa White and welcome to tie on.
Earth What if the hardest part?
Of building something new isn’t the building at all, but that the world doesn’t yet have anywhere to put it.
We tend to assume that if an idea is good enough, people will come, that the audience is already out there waiting.
But sometimes what you’re really creating is the capacity for people to want the thing at all.
And that takes years, with no proof for a long time that it will ever work.
Welcome to episode 121 of Thai Unearthed. 20 years ago in Uganda, my guest today set out to build a home for artists who had nowhere to perform.
Faisal Kiwiwa is the founder and Artistic director of the Bayimba Foundation and over 2 decades he has helped turn an almost nonexistent art scene into one of the most vibrant in East Africa.
Festivals.
Training whole art forms that simply weren’t there before, but none of it was supposed to survive its first year.
Two months before his very first festival, the money simply disappeared.
What happened next, and who made it possible, is a story he tells far better than I could.
We talked about what it costs to keep going when the thing you’re building barely exists yet, about the decision he made to give up his own art entirely so the artists he champions would never have to wonder whose side he was on.
And about a partnership years later that looked nothing like the ones he’d grown used to and ended up showing him something he hadn’t even thought to look for underneath.
All of.
It sits another question with an answer I can really relate to.
What sustains a person across 20 years of this when it was never really success that kept them going?
So if you’ve ever cared about something long before the world understood why, well then this conversation is for you.
2:44
The Power of Collaborative Partnerships with TIE
Faisal, welcome to Thai Unearthed.
Thank you so much for joining me on Thai on Earth today.
It’s great to see you.
Obviously not in Uganda.
Where are you?
Thank you so much, Felipe, and it’s really a nice opportunity and I really want to say that I’m really grateful to and I and you and for him give me this opportunity.
I am in the Netherlands at the moment and it’s summer, I think they say.
I’m not sure.
I’m not familiar with the weather, but they say it has been gradually becoming the hottest summer ever.
So yes, you can imagine.
I come from the equator area, you know, tropical Uganda, and this heat is not normal for me.
That says a lot, isn’t it?
Yeah.
Yeah, and you’ve got your little fan.
Yeah, maybe isn’t helping that much.
It was very kind.
But maybe it needs to be bigger.
It’s hot it.
Helps.
Sometimes it helps to cool down the temperature, No, But as they say, you know, sometimes they say Africa is hot and it can be as as hot as 3540.
But the heat here, when it’s 25, it’s unbearable.
Well, also probably I’m thinking, I don’t know if you guys have air conditioning in the house, where in Uganda you probably do.
It’s the same as here in Brazil.
I don’t have it in the house, but in my bedroom I definitely have air conditioning.
The heating is there for the winter so they didn’t think about the summers.
Yes, the next generation, we’ll think about that.
So I’m also so excited to have this conversation and I feel so honored that the stars aligned and we found you and your organization and that we’ve just worked together.
So for our listeners, we’ve just done a Thai program with BAIMBA, an extraordinary organization, which you’re getting here about more in a moment.
And we worked with Arla Foods with a team of people for the virtual type program.
And it was so emotive.
I mean, I cried in the final presentation and we’re going to talk about a whole lot of different things today.
And it’s not just going to be that program, but I, you know, I’m just putting it here that you said it was an honour to be having this conversation, but it’s shared.
And I want you to know that finding passionate, smart, enthusiastic game changers in the world, wherever they are for me, I just get really excited and you are that.
So it’s an honour for me to speak to you as well.
5:12
From Artist to Founder: A Vision for Ugandan Arts
Thank you.
So I want to go back to the beginning.
What made you start by Inba?
In the 1st place, what did you see that made you think this needs to exist?
What’s the story?
Yeah, I grew up in a very philanthropic family.
My parents were very established in the community, so I was born in the city.
We had these community clubs sometime back as a community.
My parents used to support our community club and this community club was in a place nearby our home where we used to go there to practice theatre because by then there wasn’t so much theatre or or concert or film.
There was no TV where just beginning to come in Uganda.
That was in the 1980s.
And my parents supported this community theatre group where they would do drama every Christmas or Easter or New Year’s.
So being a philanthropic family, they were like, hey guys, why don’t you join and act?
And I was like, OK, I think I was 6, my first performance.
So that’s how I got my first introduction to the art.
I absolutely loved it and I think for me it was something I felt like I was blowning and not because my parents were financing it, but I think it was something I felt I could express myself and I really enjoyed it even at that young age.
I did stop a bit when I finished my primary school.
I wanted to do sciences because in school I did drama, you know, doing competition school competitions and I went through all the way.
But after that I was like I’m, I’m done with this.
I just wanted to do biology and chemistry and physics and that’s what I was doing.
Oh amazing, so both parts of your brain work really well then?
I just, I was just doing physics and chemistry and biology and, you know, not good at math, but you know, and you can’t be good at physics if you’re not good at math.
But then after that, I, when I was like, you know what, I, I need to go back to the arts.
So I went, I did my arts diploma, I studied music, I went to study film and TV production.
And then in the Christmas of 2005, I remember I was on stage, I was performing, headlining somewhere in Hoyma, the old city of Uganda.
And when I got off stage, I told my manager, I’m done.
And was like, what?
You just had a good show and was like, yeah, I’m done with this.
He asked me why.
So I told him I think I wasn’t happy.
It just hit me when I was on the stage.
I don’t want to do this anymore.
I felt like I wasn’t happy.
I felt like I wasn’t good.
I felt like I can’t express what I want.
And there were really simple reasons, but they were not simple to me.
But someone would say there were simple reasons.
One, it was becoming more and more expensive to be an artist in Uganda by that time.
And also too, I felt like I grew up in a community theatre, school theatre where you’re doing everything practical.
You know, you’re an artist, you perform, you play instruments, you perform with an assemble group or you know.
And then as I grew, I started performing music where you cannot afford that.
You had to have like, you know, you play on a backup or pre recorded performances.
For me, it wasn’t making it.
So I was like, I can’t do this.
And by that time I couldn’t afford to have my own band and I thought that the environment was too expensive for any artist like of my age and my upcoming as an emerging artist to really afford that.
So that’s what really drove me from stopping being an artist.
I call myself a retired artist and I decided to start an organization which would focus on supporting emerging artists and as well as established artists to see that they can have a space or an environment where they are happy to bring out their artistry in them.
To really perform in an environment where they feel it is fulfilling, makes meaning and also engaging with the audience in a more cordial way than what it was.
So that’s the beginning of buying, but it was really about that.
9:13
Cultivating a Vibrant Arts Scene in Uganda
Wow.
So it went from you being on stage, then just realizing it didn’t make sense.
You weren’t being able to afford to do the things that you wanted to do.
So then you started an organization that focuses on artists and makes all of this possible, and then you take these artists and your organization to perform all over the world.
I mean, that’s extraordinary.
And what’s it like carrying that contrast?
Because obviously having started everything in Kampala, touring around, I’m sure in other places around Uganda, but having that realization and then knowing where you’ve come from and now knowing where you stood and where you continue to stand on these stages, has it changed how you see their place?
Yeah, it’s a good question.
I think to be honest, and I’m, I’m not really good at bragging about what BAIMBA has done and not done.
But I would say that the vibrancy that you see now in Uganda is because of BAIMBA.
When we came in, for me, it was very important that before I started BAIMBA, I needed to understand what was it going to do because I knew how I felt.
But that wasn’t a strategy.
We needed a strategy.
We needed an intervention.
We needed to know.
By that time I was by myself.
I was like, what am I going to do exactly?
So I did some assessment of the industry as a whole and I looked around and I said, OK, I’m not happy because I cannot perform my music life.
That means there are many other artists who are like me.
And then I said, OK, if there’s so many other artists like me, what can I do for them?
What is out there?
So I looked around and there were three things.
One, I thought that we needed to fast as a country, understand who we are.
What are we?
We are very much a young independent country and we are coming from this history of tradition, folklore and songwriting and the tribes that have so many different dances.
Uganda is very diverse.
We have over 52 languages, 62 cultures.
And I was like, OK, how do you start?
How do you bring about this excitement in an imaging artist and from where you’re going to start from or cultivate them.
So the research found out that one many artists, we were not able to perform their music life.
Not only that, but there were no spaces, platforms for them to express themselves.
And then there was also a very big misunderstanding between art and music.
So there was a need for awareness.
Like when I organized my first festival, I called it BAIMBA, International Festival of the Arts.
And then people were like, but you’re having music.
But music is not art.
Art is.
Painting or Yeah, right because.
That’s what they knew.
So I was like, Oh my God.
So we needed to actually my, if you look back, my first festival was called by, by International Festival of the Arts and Music.
And then people were like, OK, now we understand.
So where’s, where’s, where are the paintings?
You know, like we had to bring the paintings and then we were like, how are you going to have a festival for three days?
What are you going to do?
And how do you bring music and fashion and poetry and film together?
Isn’t it chaotic?
But it was a new narrative.
And for me it was really important to cultivate this environment where artists understand that no, music is not just music.
Music is art and music is diverse.
Film is art.
Because without music in film, then that that that will be a silent film.
You know, it’s Charlie Chaplin, it’s no.
And then if it’s dance musicians and dancers, musicians and fashion designers to design costumes, film makers.
And it gradually started to make sense to swimming.
Even to my own colleagues that had I started working with, by that time they were like Paisa, what are you doing?
What is this?
And it was really a transcending process.
Also, the other thing for me that was really interesting was the idea that most of the artists actually could not perform live.
Remember, there was no one to perform.
We had four bands in Uganda by that time.
You can’t run a festival on 4 bands in the country.
You know, whatever, three days, this is not going to work.
So I said OK, I need to fix this.
I need to figure out how do we get new bands, even if you’re to run it first of all, four bands the first week for three days, how much can they play and what I want to do next year.
So for me it was like, OK, we have to start from the beginning.
So when I looked at the program, I was like, you know what, let me call my colleagues.
So I called friends from Tanzania, I called friends from Kenya, I called friends from Rwanda, Burundi, and they came in.
The idea was I wanted the Ugandan artists to see that they actually are the artists who are good, very simple, easy and playing their music life.
And it was an opener.
So many people are like wow, these guys are good, can I work with them?
So we made it a point for the past 20 years we’ve always, we bring artists from everywhere around the world to come for 2-3 weeks to Uganda before the festival to work, collaborate with local artists, create new music, record EPS and then perform it live in collaboration as well as they have their own sets.
So this has been the culture everywhere you go in Uganda now there’s a live band on every corner of the street because they understood the beauty and the value of performing music, life.
Just to add to that, I mean, it was also interesting because, you know, it wasn’t only just music because we also looked at other things like theatre, visual arts.
So we introduced new forms of art that didn’t actually exist, like video mapping, like silent disco.
I think there was no silent disco in Africa.
I got some guys from Glasgow, they were playing, they only had 9992 headphones and I told them guys come to Glasgow and my fizer.
But even here in Glasgow we are struggling to get audience.
I think come, Oh my God.
Really.
From Nigeria, they were like Faisal, but can I rent your headphones and like, where are you in Lagos?
I’m like, no, that’s too far.
Like like what?
So it was really amazing.
So we, we have done and that we, we do St. theatre.
We’ve done so much just to introduce for us our ideas, like even arts journalism.
We had an issue like after 3-4 years of the festival, we realized that actually our articles, people were not appreciating art.
They were not really, you know, in the media.
You could read the newspaper and be like, people didn’t know how to write about the arts.
So he said, you know what, let’s bring in professional arts journalists from.
I know I got a friend of mine from South Africa who came and really put together a team of young journalists and told them, do you love art?
Yes.
So I’m going to teach you how to write about art because you all have columns in the newspaper.
Right.
Yeah, up to now, journalism generation in Uganda is from our trainings, Yeah.
16:03
From Artist to Leader: Adapting in a ‘Laboratory’ Economy
So there is a lot, There is a lot that we’ve really done.
And just reflecting on the question about.
Being on these.
Stages in other parts of the world?
Has it evolved how you see yourself and the organization?
Yeah, it has changed, although it hasn’t changed my retirement feeling.
I can’t go on stage myself because I understood the difference between being an artist and being a programmer.
As an organization, we present art and being an artist myself, of course, I understand where the artist comes from, but it will be contradicting for me to also pursue my artistic career.
I’ll be competing with the artist that I’m trying to support and it has really helped me to keep in line with what I’m doing.
You know, every here we support 4 to 5 artists to travel, we give them mobility to go to perform.
And I think next week we have an artist going to Zimbabwe, Another one is in Belgium, another one was in Germany a few weeks ago.
We support them and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a poet or whether it’s a musician or a theatre person.
We just had a production in Kigali, you know, that we are supporting.
So we continue to see that and I’m always very proud to see that.
Some of these artists, of course, they don’t go with the, you know, the Baimba logo on them and stuff like that.
We are learning from our engagement with Thai.
We need to be more, you know, present as well.
It has always been, you know, my idea of really putting Baimba forward, but what I see is that really there is a founding appreciation of the arts community that by Inbox Existence has really made a contribution to the artistic vibrance, to the development of the human capital within the creative arts.
And I think that’s founding.
So you’ve been doing this a long time.
It’s so interesting listening to you give the timeline, because the timeline is actually very similar to my timeline of Thai.
So I started in 2005 as well.
And so we’re probably similar in age and similar kind of trajectory and living and breathing this organization, which is sort of part me, part separate.
But 20 years is a long time and it’s long enough to be wrong about something important.
And I just wondering, you know, what’s a belief that you held on to really early on, but that you now don’t hold anymore?
18:29
That’s a very interesting one.
To be honest, when I started, it was this fire in me of really being contributive, adding something which didn’t exist, like an entrepreneur.
And I think for me, it was like the way I looked at things, I thought it would be really great for Bimba to start a foundation, even if it’s not going to finish it, because there was none.
And I think where I’ll, I’ll quote what my, my mentor told me.
And Mr. Kaiser, he told me that, you know, when you have a vision and you achieve it and it wasn’t good enough.
So I would like.
Genius he.
Was like what?
Like you can’t achieve your vision, you just have to work towards it.
You can achieve your mission, but the vision is beyond your scope.
It’s like a peer of change.
And the fuel exchange is broader.
So I would say when I started, I had this fire and passioning me of making a contribution to the industry and the sector as a whole.
And I think I’ve done that.
And as an organization, I think we still strive to see so many things because we’re coming from a country where like the whole place is like a laboratory.
Everyone is trying something and there are so many opportunities.
You just have to know where to look.
And in this context of operating and working in a laboratory, it means that you either have to come into the market with everything that you need or you are on your own.
And I see it a little bit with some of the young entrepreneurs.
They haven’t really dug into this theory to understand.
And maybe the next 50 years there will be some kind of systemic.
Structure where such initiatives like buying back can be established or engaged or initiated and have an operation where there is a lot of so many different contributors to its existence.
But we came in at a time when we were literally on our own.
I think for me that really made the skin thicker, committed, more farmer and the idea of saying OK, what do I want to achieve?
It was beyond what I wanted to achieve because what I wanted and when you look at Baima, at the beginning, I said our unique selling point position in this market is to make sure that we as a people understand who we are.
I don’t think you can achieve that, but we work towards that.
I really wanted people to understand who are because we didn’t understand what culture, for example, when I talked about art and music, people’s thinking, it’s different.
We didn’t understand that the market needs support.
We didn’t understand that government has a role.
We didn’t understand that artists need to play their music live.
We didn’t understand that we need theaters, performance, festivals, studios, many things that we have worked on and I cannot point out.
So I did not come with one hope.
I came with this open age.
Every time I look around, I engage, I work with people, I talk to people, I listen.
And then I’m like, OK, what exactly is going to add on to what we are building and that the process is still going on as we we discovered with your colleagues from Ella and your, you know, your support and contribution during our past program.
I think it was amazing that for me it was even an eye opener, like I never thought about that.
So I have another task and I like that because I get easily bored.
So I’m only looking for new challenges.
Totally.
And I, I mean, just again, because I see a lot of myself and my journey and, and what you’re saying and I, I’m constantly looking for different inspiration because we get stuck in our own heads and in the same sort of monotony of life and doing the things that we know that we need to do.
But it’s so fascinating when you do a different course or you have contact with different brains and you have that come in and then you’re like, Oh my God, I just did, I never thought of that.
And then sort of a door opens and you’re like, OK, I’m going to follow this journey.
Let’s see where this takes us.
And it’s magic, isn’t?
It I like challenges, I like challenges.
So for me, like I’m always looking out and pass on.
It’s not just jumping on things because someone might get it wrong.
They’re like, oh, you’re doing too much.
You know, you’re in the market, you know you’re doing this, you’re working with us and you’re working with so many others around the world.
And it’s not that you want to do it because you want to spread yourself out there, but you find a need.
And as a human, you are contributing to a people’s will, enhancing their well-being.
And I think that’s brilliant.
So I love that.
I love to see where I can add my voice, where I can add my energy, where I can contribute my time.
And I’m always grateful for whatever comes, so I never stop.
And yeah.
23:26
Overcoming Early Challenges with Strategic Partnership
Yeah, great.
Well, I mean good.
Don’t stop, please.
I mean, there’s a whole other chapter in you and and the organization.
I’m just curious as an artist, retired artist, but still you are an artist, you’re creating all the time, right?
So you are an artist and I’m curious as to your inspiration or?
Particularly, who shaped you?
Who’s?
Someone and it might be an artist, it might be an elder you mentioned Mr. Kaiser, you know, a colleague, maybe even someone difficult in your life.
So it could even be, you know, that was a massive challenge and actually, wow, that was hard.
But God, it turned me around.
I just wonder is there a story there of someone sometime who?
Fundamentally changed how you see.
Yourself or your own work?
And what did they show you?
That you just would not have been able to see on your own.
There is a lot of people that have been really significant in my line of work, but I would say besides my own stubbornness in never stopping to do things, I think one person that I would be really fundamentally proud of has been my wife.
Because I started to be honest, as I said, if it wasn’t for her, I honestly don’t think I’ll be where I am.
And of course I’ve learned, I’ve talked about Michael Kaiser, who was the president of the Kenneth Center of Brad Eggen, who is the president of the Divorce Institute of I’ve, I’ve gone through so many people, but we’re talking about the beginning.
And I’ll tell you a story why She’s very supportive and instrumental.
When I started my first festival, I was 25 and at the age of 25, I was full of energy.
I would wake up and, you know, do things and we hadn’t met.
So we met when I think it was 6, four months to the festival and I was just running around trying to find sponsors and I had no clue about anything.
It was my first time, you know, just rebelling from being an artist to being and I needed this huge amount of money.
And I went to sponsors and stuff like that.
And most of them let me down because first of all, they were like, it’s a huge budget and they were like, how old are you again?
I’m like like literally someone whom we had worked together, built a program, built a budget, planned everything nitty gritty. 2 months to the festival, he calls me in the office with his bosses.
And like Pfizer, how much money did you ask for?
Like I think it was around 500 million Uganda shillings, which is like I think $200,000 I would say.
And they were like, how old are you again, 25?
What do you need all this money and you want us to trust you with 500 million?
Give me a break.
And I was like, what are you guys talking about?
I mean, like we’ve been for one year planning this.
Oh.
My God.
The, and the issue was that they had, I think they had thought about it because they called me to tell it to me in my face.
And then they, they had planned their own other thing.
They had planned their own festival, but this is where my wife comes in and she’s like, OK, I’m going to take a loan.
Wait, hold on.
But at this point in time, she’s obviously not your wife.
Yeah, we just meant like four months and yeah.
And we’re dating and I was stressed and she was like, what are you stressed about?
I’m like, you know, I have this big event and and she’s like, OK, if you needed help, tell me.
And then we’re like, you know, she wasn’t really engaged by that time.
And I think that she saw the stress level way of going.
I said, what’s the problem?
Yeah, they pulled out.
And she like, pulled from what?
They’re not sponsoring the festival.
Like I’m gonna take a loan.
And that for me was really, really, if it wasn’t of that long, it wouldn’t have happened and I wouldn’t be here.
And if she didn’t stop there.
So because when I got to the launch and I promised her, you know what, I’m going to pay you back immediately because this is big, because the lineup was good.
I had artist from France, from Senegal, from Rwanda, from Burundi, from all over East Africa.
It was a really good program.
And I told her I’m going to pay you all the money after the festival.
She’s like, OK, I trust you.
I got only 60 people, 60 for three days.
That’s how bad it was.
Oh my God.
I mean God.
You don’t know.
You have no idea what I was going through and what she was like.
She was looking at me like, are you serious?
We need to pay it back.
It took us five years, almost 6.
Years.
Wow, wow, wow.
You know, and on top of that, for me, I did not want to stop.
I’m like, OK, we’ve lost all the money.
We need to figure out what went wrong.
So we start and we brainstorm.
She like okay, maybe because first of all, people didn’t understand your program.
To be honest, people didn’t understand the program.
They were used to a concert when the concert go in the evening, watch a show, go back home.
But this is 3 days in a full program, theater, film.
So people didn’t know what they were going to, they didn’t come.
And then we change the strategies like, OK, we need to change this.
So for me, the idea of someone significant and I came along along the way.
And this is what I tell some of my colleagues and young entrepreneurs, like when you are emerging and getting into any business that you, you know, you’re really passionate about, it’s always good to have that someone who is your strategic partner in thinking and to give to support you in your strategic direction.
Of course, we can all be smart, Everyone is smart, but someone who understands you, like if I say something like I’m gonna do this, she’ll exactly know what I’m talking about.
I don’t need to explain because she understands the efforts of my ideas.
And I think that for me has been founding and has been really significantly important in my work.
Of course, nowadays she, she’s busy and I’m busy also.
So we don’t have that much.
And we also, you know, we are all growing and we talk, but we we have kind of like, you know, I’ve done enough for you.
You also do your thing.
So yeah, we kind of like, do your stuff now, you know?
Do your things.
I, I, I think I’ve got this now.
It’s OK, I’ve got this.
I’ve got this.
Yeah, because we went through sleepless nights writing concepts, proposal, stuff like that.
And then I had to learn I didn’t know anything.
I mean, I didn’t know what the donor award was about.
I didn’t know what funding was about, you know, fundraising proposal writing.
I could write, you know, a sponsorship proposal, but I didn’t know how to write a grant proposal.
I didn’t know how to manage stuff.
I didn’t know how to set a policy, you know, management structures and systems.
And I got that support internally from and it helped me build my team.
And now we are managing a $10 million program because of the foundations that we are laid from the beginning.
I’m forever grateful for that here.
30:16
Unlocking Growth Through External Insights and Equal Partnerships
She sounds like an amazing, amazing, amazing woman.
You touched on donors and that’s actually one of my questions for you because obviously there’s a whole landscape out there and for our listeners, I’m not sure how many people are that familiar with the NGO world, But of course there’s so many different ways that organizations live and there’s the donor landscape, like you say, grants and sort of donations and but obviously we just work together with the help from Arla and that as well was a slightly different relationship, right?
So Arla came in.
They didn’t come in as a funder, but as a.
Team working in.
Partnership as an equal with you, which I also think from my point of view, and this is what I hold on very strongly with Ty.
This is not about global N helping global S kind of top down.
It is very much on purpose and there’s a whole lot of training that goes into, you know, before people start working with the organization on purpose because this is about a win win and very much being equals.
And there’s stuff that they know.
There’s stuff that, you know, they benefit from knowing you and understanding more about what you guys do and they’ve got insight to another world.
I can help.
I’m just wondering, did that experience in any way change how you think about what business can actually offer place like BAIMBA and how maybe that’s another avenue of support?
Yeah.
And to be honest, I was really, really grateful.
And you know, you remember in our conversations and engagement, I always continued every session, we had to be amazed by the level of commitment and the level of insight and interest.
And you could see, you know, from their profiles, they’re totally from a whole different world, the food world and testing world, things I’ve never thought of, like actually keep the test food and before it goes into the shells.
How great that they do, but I also, you know, oh, you’re like, thank you God that you exist, but never even.
Thought about that we just speak food and eat it and look like has to be tested and know that and I’m like OK, so how do we transfer that knowledge and skill and approach to the arts.
So I was really really grateful and I think what I really realized working from a lot of grants and the donor world.
One thing I found different with our partnership with Thai and the contribution from Anna is that we’ve never had a partnership which is at equal level.
It has always been, you know as you explained, it has always been, I’m giving you money buying bar.
I want you guys to do this.
Of course, they always don’t tell us what to do in terms of like direct want you to do this.
No, we send our proposals, our strategy and you get money and they tell you no, no, no, you cannot spend it on that.
No, no, no, no, but no one has ever engaged with us at a level like tied it and and Ella in the way like, OK, let’s look at exactly what you guys are doing.
How can we add value?
How can we contribute to make your lives, your organizational sustainability better?
And I think for me, that was really, really grateful.
It was a very open air.
And it was also very significant in a way that it came from people, you know, and you’re going to call it green, like someone who has no idea about your business and they come in little like, what did you say?
Did you think about that?
I’m like, Oh no, I actually never thought about that.
Like, you know, of course I would say like if I was the, if I could go to their world of food testing, I would also give them something like, like, have you thought about this?
Then they’ll be like, Oh no, I’ve never thought.
You get what I mean.
So it was really, really important and really great that the level of commitment, the level of insight, the time and that they vested in making sure that they are actually understanding us and being clear on what they want to offer us and or what they want to contribute to BAIMBA.
It was really great.
And from my other donor world, it has always been, you know, you’ll get apply for the money if your program is good, we are going to give you this for this specific program, for this specific project, ABCD, you don’t use it for that.
You don’t give us a report you don’t care about, even if you argue for so many things, it is at that level.
But this was really, really important and I think there should be more.
And I’m really proud and grateful to the work that you’re doing.
I’m really happy to know that you’re doing this and you’re doing it for so many others.
And to BAIMBA, we are very, very happy and well.
I mean, that’s we will be working together again, like just so you know, this is the start of the partnership because you know when, when the time is right and when you need help and it’s not overwhelming.
But I’m happy to hear that you notice that.
And I have to say this team was extraordinary just from their humility.
I think that that’s what was so beautiful is, you know, they’re highly skilled, incredible professionals, but they were humble and they wanted to understand and they understood the sort of OK, no, but you, you need to teach us too.
Like we don’t know we’re green.
We we don’t know anything about your organization or Uganda.
I mean, some people might have, but you know, in general.
So that’s cool, but I think what’s also interesting is they didn’t just bring the resources, but they did bring the sort of different way of thinking because they come from a completely different world and it’s, you know, commercial and it’s structured and global.
You know, they’re a global team.
What did that outside way of thinking give you that perhaps you might not have been able to find inside Uganda’s own creative and development sector?
I think two things as I said that you know Uganda is a growing economy whereby there are not so many things that have been really thought of as relevant to any growing market.
So creative business is sustainability is not yet on the agenda for even when it comes to education later live alone, food testing, I would say those professions that they have, I don’t think anyone studies them in Uganda.
So we’re not yet there.
And what they bring, what they really brought to the table is this us getting us to think out-of-the-box whereby someone comes in and they kind of unwrap everything that you’re doing and they start picking out, you know, the grains and then putting them the puzzle together and they show you a whole different picture that you didn’t know about.
So I think that skill set that they brought on the table, which was totally out of our industry, that we didn’t know ideas and thoughts, that we didn’t know the process, the thought process thought.
The process was amazing and the the model that they asked you to kind of go through and to sort of really understand the competitiveness and sort of the different areas, it was so rigorous.
Yeah.
I think the second thing is also time.
I know we are so busy within our own world, working day in day out, managing project, running around looking for money, struggling with sustainability, managing people.
So we never really get time to actually think about where we’re going wrong or where we are failing and how can we do better And how can we, you know, rethink and, you know, re strategize or enhance our own, you know, an organization.
And I think that value was very much additional to our work.
Oh.
That’s so good.
37:23
Faisal’s Driving Force: Bayimba’s Enduring Legacy
And I’m curious now back to you because even though you’ve come through, you know, you started with the challenge of the first festival and then obviously you’ve come a long way and now you’re sort of dealing with much bigger budgets and much bigger events.
But I can imagine running something like by IMBA, there are tough times and there are times when things don’t go the way that you hope they do.
And there are times when you’re sort of chasing after more money and what keeps you showing up.
And again, it’s not the sort of the mission statement version.
I’m talking about what is true for you in a hard day when you wake up and you’re like, God damn it, this is just telling me today what keeps you going.
I think BAIMBA is what gives me meaning.
And I think I’ve had this conversation a lot with my wife.
Sometimes when I go short on my contributions, like, you know, there are days, as you say, when you’re like, hey, you need to put on your share on the table.
I’m like, it’s not going well.
Like can you get a job?
I’m like, I can’t get a job.
I have pain, but I’m like, OK, are we going to eat it?
You know?
But for me, it’s really what gives me meaning.
And I wake up to eat really trying to walk through so many different levels of pain, but to make sure that it’s surviving, it’s continuing, it does its work.
And I am proud of that because it’s the only thing I know.
I might sound stupid because sometimes people think that are you serious?
Can’t you get something else?
I really don’t know.
Because for me, that is what I wake up to, that’s what I go to bed thinking and it’s what fulfills me.
Seeing young children learning music, it’s seeing artists on stage, it’s seeing people collaborating, people traveling and coming back and telling you how much they are grateful for the opportunity.
You see that actually you’re contributing to people’s livelihoods, you’re changing people’s lives, you’re making a change within a community.
And now like with our new space that we have the island that we.
We didn’t even talk about the space, I mean.
So you can imagine how many local people are being employed there, how much we’ve come from, from the time I bought it to the time where it is now focusing on its growth.
You know, we are training.
We have an Academy there.
Over 200 students come there to learn fashion, to learn film, to learn music.
And you know, it’s not only about the festival.
We’ve established so many things.
And, and for me walking around and seeing someone coming out, I see many celebrity artists who have come from our academies and they’re pretty big stars selling music and concerts.
And also, you know, they’re very appreciative.
They come back to you and say, well, thank you for the opportunity you gave me.
One time I was signing a contract with a gentleman who is one of the biggest business rich guy media guru in Uganda.
And then he sent his lawyer.
I told me, oh, Mr. Pfizer, I’m so really happy to see you.
I was really looking forward to this meeting.
You know, my name is so and so.
And I was part of your training in West Nile in Arua when you came with Baimba to train us how to music.
I’m like, oh, wait, how was that?
Like 2000 and six, 2000 and seven, 2008?
I was like, Oh my God.
Oh, like, yeah, I’m sure you don’t Remember Me, but you know, I, I was, but I’m, that was really one of my biggest opportunity and it really gave me different feeling.
And that’s why I’m really happy to work in the media.
And I’m like, oh, that’s really wonderful.
So there are so many appreciations that people see.
And for me, I sit down and I feel like, yeah, it’s my contribution.
Well, I love asking people if they have something that they might want to share.
41:00
Finding Perspective and Looking Towards Bayimba’s Future
And because you live inside language and art every day, is there a Ugandan proverb or lyric or line of poetry or something that shaped you that you’d like to leave us with?
Yeah, it’s pretty bad, but I use it a lot when I’m under pressure.
My mother always told me when you come with your, you know, you ask has someone died and said no and there’s no problem.
So it’s a very weird, but when you say it in Luganda, yeah.
Say, can you say it in your language?
In Luganda you can you can say that well what you are for day then if someone has not died, then there’s no problem.
That’s good.
And it’s all about perspective.
Yeah.
Good advice.
And I think, you know, I used to work in advertising before I set up what I’m doing.
And there were many times where, you know, people are last minute calling for things to happen.
And it’s so stressful.
It’s like, let’s put this in perspective for a second.
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s a very good thing.
So because, you know, sometimes you can lose yourself, you’re working in the, in an industry which is very sometimes toxic and expectations are high in terms of quality, in terms of presentation.
And you know, even, and when people don’t know what they want to be honest, because I realized as a programmer, most people don’t actually know what they want.
You know, you just have to think for them and present to them.
If you do it well, and then they will be like, wow, that’s, that was amazing.
We didn’t know that they exist.
So we just have to breathe in and breathe out and then hope that we do better and think through how we need to navigate that and everything will be all right.
Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to tell our listeners?
I think we’ve covered it all.
Maybe you can have another podcast?
I think we need to have another podcast there’s.
A lot, you know, you’ve not talked about my learning.
I mean there is a lot.
There’s so much there.
I’ve not talked about our future of Baimba, you know, with our new support from Thai.
So we.
Yeah.
We need to have another.
So let’s in sort of six months time, we’ll have another podcast and we can reflect on maybe how things have nudged forward and we can talk about it’s on, I’m writing a note and I’m going to put you down instead of in six months time.
That would be great.
Faisal, this has been amazing.
Thank you so much for your time and we’ll do this again very soon.
Welcome.
Thank you too.
Hey everyone, it’s Philippa again.
I hope you enjoyed listening.
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A huge thanks to Benna Vieira for the music and to Pete Morgan for his help with the editing.
Until next time, and I hope we’ll meet again soon.
