 Look who I brought for you. I'm here to see my hero. Ha! What do you mean? I'm here to meet my good inspiration, man. How are you doing? There you go. Wow, the hero. It's a small role. You and the president come to visit you. They're telling me I'm your hero. No way! You're my hero, man. Oh, I can't just believe this. Wow, man. In Burundi, in Burundi. In Buganda, in Gasenghi, in my hometown. In Jackson. To make it possible. After hearing your story, I was like, these are the kind of stories that I really want to tell. We've been on the road for hours. I'm like, are we still going to get there? Wow. Just to come and see you. Ubuntu, kindness. I've seen so many women working over there. Why, do you employ new women? Well, we mix, but one thing I have believed that women actually are able. You know, sometimes we think that they're, you know, the lesser beings, but first of all, when they're trained and they're included, they have more integrity than many of us men. I'm not trying to put ourselves down. They can also commit and integrity, hard work, and being honest. But also, we want to empower them. I think, I believe that, you know, like, when we're running, my sister was taking care of me. You know, as a woman, I want to be able to empower, to appreciate what she did to me by empowering other women and girls. So you have a rice one? Yes. One thing, we want to be sustainable. Okay. So we want to use as less imports as we can. We want to use as less chemicals, or chemical fertilizers as we can. So we try to create, so like I built this, this is where people come to slaughter so I can get the tripe, the guts, you know, the grass from the stomach, which then I turn into manure and I use it in my rice farms. The rice farm? Yes. Oh, that's the rice? Yeah, this is the rice. Are these your workers? Yeah, these are my workers. So they work on the rice farm? Yes, here and also there are the ones that were preparing those veggies. In total, how many acres of land do you own in here? How many acres are you farming on? 10 hectares. I think it's about 16 hectares. Just for the rice? Just for the rice, the rice paddies. But we alternate. So now we have rice in, you know, now like you see in July or in June when we harvest it, we'll go because it's more dry. We do veggies here, more vegetables. Wow. And one other thing that we do, just so these girls and boys have ownership, what we do, we try to say, okay, we are growing this piece of land but I'm giving you a piece of land that you own. What I'll help you with is to find your customers and also to put value on the crop that you're growing or in the veggie that you're growing. So that way, they don't feel like they're just working for me but they're my partners. Yeah. Another thing that you'll have to see, the way we grow this rice, it's, you know, like that's another value that I bring. So sometimes I agree, like I spent so much money to get a Chinese expert to come and teach me how to grow this type of rice and how to make it different. So we do examples, like over there where you see those people, we try to grow the same rice but doing it different way and as a control, like mechanism. And then we grow this with, you know, the technology that they're teaching us. And this one proves that it does really well better than that side. So we're always learning. I don't just come and say, okay, let's just grow rice. We look at how can we have more yield. This rice, the type of rice, you plant only one but you can see we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, about nine, ten, you know, that grows off of it. It's the method that we use. It's, you know, making sure that the way, like I say, a lot of farmers, even in Canada, we always complain that last year was a better year. But I learned really quick that being a farmer really is putting value on what you're doing. Honor your farm, be good to your environment, be good to the land, don't abuse it, and to feed you again. I believe in divine connection to my land. I believe that my blood is mixed to the land. My blood is connected to the land. So deep in my heart, we've been good to the land and the land has been good to us. This is another system that we use, actually many people, like I told you, we want to be as efficient as possible. Use local resources that we have. So for example, this free energy system, if we turn this on and this on and fill this drum with water and then close this off and close this off, so this drum has nowhere to breathe, and then we open this here, then the water from the drum will come out and then from there, when the drum is, the water is coming out, it pulls that. This is so many ways that we try to... Is that how you get the right? Correct. We do have natural water coming in but when we have a few days of no rain, then we have an issue. So we use this type of irrigating system. Another thing that we do also, and you'd be shocked to hear this, one thing that I do, I believe in being nice to other people. So this lady that you see here, her husband was a patient in my hospital. He was a patient and his wife was a patient, so his wife died, his first wife died unfortunately, and he told me, I have nowhere else to go, I'll just stay. So I have so many cases, there is another old man right here, and I say, okay, these people want a home to stay. How can I make them... How can I make them... How can I include them in what I do? How can I make them not feel so vulnerable? Because when they just sit like that, they get old and they die. But when we encourage them, we give them small activities that they can do. Like this one here, he was mentally ill and people were throwing stones at him, calling him all sorts of names. But I looked at him and I said, if you give him an activity, I said, what if I give you four goats, can you take care of them? If you take care of them, one of them will be yours. And so we set up small places for them and they come, we take care of them, but they also take care of us. We become partners. You can see now he's remarried, he's got a second wife after he lost his wife. So he's very happy. So this is the story for us. When we see someone that is vulnerable, we give them an activity to do. This is my other farm. The mango plantation. Like you can see, we just harvested maize. Why mangoes? Really, so we're trying to do it the natural way. The land is very good for it. And the surprising thing, all the things that you're going to see, it dates back to 2014. And you'd be surprised. How does this land grow things so fast that within less than 10 years, you have a plantation that you could harvest mangoes. You have mangoes here, we're growing more there. What drives you? Really, first we have the advantage of the labor the cheap labor that we have, the land that is very conducive for farming throughout the year, fertile in a tropical region. So since I'm a lover of natural food, homegrown food, let's give it a shot. And the more you produce when I plant a mango, I take care of it, it gives me fruit. The more I want to take care of it more, the more I want to plant some more. And so it's not just mangoes, we plant oranges, we plant trees, natural trees. At this point, I think, up to this point I've planted over 100 and 100,000 of trees here in Burundi. And I want to plant more and more. I want to make Burundi green, but also to plant important things. I believe in my biological grandparents where they used herbs for treatment as medicine. So I'm also growing herbal medicines, herbal plants. So we want really to have a community or a country or a continent that is able to sustain itself. And it's possible. So this is my compound. This is the Ubuntu compound where earlier I was telling you where my sister and I were, you know, almost died. Behind here and the orchard, this is where all, you know, like the planning happens. This is where we live. And behind these walls will be the hospital which I'm going to show you. But we want to be sustainable. I keep saying this. We want to feed off of the land and take care of it. So up to this point, the only thing we are buying from the market is salt. Otherwise, sugar, we have beehives, you know, for nutrition we have, so we have some goats, we have cows, we have beef, we have chickens, and we also have fish, you know, and then we grow veggies. So we are trying to be as much self-sustainable as we can. Another thing that we notice, we don't plant things in a row. We keep things natural. Those are my crocodiles. That's a crocodile. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Geez, you scared me. Why are you keeping crocs? The reason why is when I was in Canada, you know, kids would say to me, you know, have you seen, you know, crocodiles or hippos? And I say, I've seen it on TV. But you're from Africa. You know, as we've traveled to see them, you know, but me, I was under privilege that I didn't get a chance to go see where the crocodiles are or go to the zoo. So that privilege I didn't have, I thought I should also have it with the young kids here. So when they are learning science about crocodiles and things like that, then they can say, okay, let's go to Jackson's and see the crocodiles. So here, for me to be able to do this, I talk to the youth and I say, you know, what do you want to do to be able to make yourself comfortable financially? Many of them will say, I want to buy a taxi. I want to buy a motorcycle and go there. And I tell them about all the consequences that they meet when you own a taxi. First, the police will want some, the mechanical will want some, the driver will want some, you know. But I say, you know, why can't we do simple things, fish farming? So we compare. I say, how much do you buy a taxi? They tell me, like, even we start with a motorcycle. So they will say, a motorcycle is about 4.9 million Burundian francs. And it's okay. Let's do that same thing with a fish pond. And so when we do fish ponds with less that amount of money. And so then when we put the fingerlings in, we say, okay, so with the motorcycle, how much money do you make per day? So they say, okay, 30,000 Burundian francs. So okay, so let's try to aim at getting 3 kilos of fish every day and see how it goes. And so when we set this up, the person with the motorcycle it's already, you know, finished. But here we got many people who have their names registered for a 3 kilo per day of fish, you know. And so we are able to make that continuous income and we can even get more if you want and some to eat. And there won't be no police. There won't be no, you know, mechanic or a driver wanting some. All you need is to just, you know, like even the feed that we use you use, you know, like food waste really, local food waste that we can make pellets out of, you know. So it's it's like an activity to teach people how you could save money or how you can maintain you can have a long living business that is sustainable using the local means that you have. We have to keep the water green just so the fish is not stressed. Sometimes we add manure or we add other things just to make sure that the water is green. So as you can see here we can put 5,000 fingerlings, you know and when we harvest here like the last time we harvest we get 300 kilograms within three months and if you multiply that by actually here it's cheap like we sell cheap 10,000 so double that but you know, so when you tell someone that here what you can get from here is more than owning an actress truck or a taxi some people don't really don't really believe it I think you're teaching them and it's time for them to believe Oh now they have believed and even people like we have wealthy people here in Burundi they come here and I say if I can do this I think you have so much money you can do a thousand of these not rocket science it's just simple a little bit of water you can use brain water you can collect it so my dad used to beat me yeah when you don't do this, you know like yes, shelling you're quick bro I grew up doing this all my life I'm a village boy I was born in a village now this is simpler now you take this off now this is faster you have another village boy here and I'm proud to be one yeah it's good that we don't forget where we come from one thing that I really feel disappointed about is this whole concept of patron mentality boss mentality I don't know where it came from but I think it has really handicapped many of us because each youth when they have a high school diploma you know or when they have a motorcycle or something that is a little bit higher than others according to western standards then they feel like bosses and they withdraw themselves from the community and guess what becomes they want to live a high life and high life is very expensive so they are not making any income because they want to be called boss to wear suits and I always get I would call it abused because so many people expect me to be in suits to be before they start showing you respect I just try to get me but for me I say what earns me my respect is these blisters that I have in my hands compared to being in a suit and I do believe that there is places for everything you know you can't just think about wearing suits where you don't have an activity that fits that suit and so I tell my friends let's not try to be who we are not be yourself if a suit doesn't make you comfortable in this hot weather why wear it I saw you with the president of your country right I was like that's my guy see my president is cool he understood he only wants to see what I am capable of doing he was interested in what I am capable of producing so I always tell people it's about the value you bring on a chair exactly values to be who we are not then in the end you have to start to think about if you don't know where to get that suit you gonna steal one thing that I always think it's important not to forget who we are so in 1993 when war broke out and my sister and I were trying to run away from the village going across the river to go to the Congo we got attacked we ran back from the main road and she couldn't go past this point where we are standing right here this is why I call this the thought chamber the visionary chamber this is where because I had a very very bad memory when my sister got shot this is where I left her to die you know so it was very painful for me to continue thinking about it to live with this and then when I found out that my sister actually didn't die the Red Cross did find her here and took her to Bujumbura and she got the fluid in her lungs drained and she survived you know I asked her to remind me where this spot was because she was older than me and she had good memories so she brought me back around this place and we realized that's where she almost died so I continued to think about this place negatively initially I was thinking I hated it but then I said why can't I turn it into a positive thing if my sister almost died there can we use this place to make life you know to create more life you know to save lives so then the first thing was to build a hospital around here and this is a little bit outside the hospital because this is a place I sit every day to meditate to evaluate about the project we are doing to think about the new projects and so this used to be a worse place that I could think of but now it's the best place because it's where I sit every day to try and sharpen up my vision and everything this is beyond my imagination and I really want to know how many people have you employed yes so we have you know when we first moved here we had to look for the need areas we have needs so we have different departments in the agriculture section we have 150 workers that work permanently in the hospital we have 53 staff in the construction area we have about 37 workers, messengers what are you constructing everything here we build our own stuff we don't hire other companies so in the construction area we have plumbers that we've sent to school ourselves they're young and able their experience you may have in welding we train our boys our welding shop is right here so I'll show you that we have a school that employs about 27 teachers you own your school here yeah we do have a school we built the school too we started it yes I hope this truck is not for you please don't tell me that this is our truck you can see it has some of the things that we produce tomatoes and stuff like that so this is for when we need it for agriculture we use it for agriculture it used to be very inconvenient for us to have to hire other people but with this we could bring construction materials we could use our harvested goods it has a big fridge in the back so if vegetables need to be taken care of maybe meat or fish then we turn on the fridge so it's a multi-purpose vehicle that we use so it's for our community use you're empowering your people why is that so important to you well in a few years from now Jackson will be no more but I would like my legacy to stay behind I believe in education I believe in skills training so when people have knowledge then my legacy won't be meaningless so we would like people to carry on our vision and so through training them empowering them that's the thing that would give us best hope for the future young child lost all the way from here and ended up in Canada are you shaking why is this place this is Mugimbu home of Ubuntu this is where my great grandparents used to live but there was nothing here after he died everything was broken down so I thought to keep the legacy I need to build something here I need to make this land the way it used to be put value on it we have about more than 50 hectares of land here of course the people after my grandparents his children had sold the land and I had to rebuy it because it's very important to me but how did you guys construct because from the road that we came up here a machine would definitely not be able to come in here man there was never no machine here no machine no caterpillars just a bunch of men and women it's the same old concept when I visited the pyramids I always asked myself how did they construct these pyramids and so I want to bring that legacy back we don't want to be dependent to wasting machinery acts when we can do we are able so we have the people all these rocks were crushed from the mountains around here carried here by humans and you could see you're proud of us if you come up here all this landscaping the big wall over there it was done by the people and most importantly we provided employment this was done by humans without machines no machines so all this rock that you see no machines, no trucks as far as you can see that's our land we would like to keep our country green we want to be part of the taking care of the environment so this water right here is the cleanest water that you ever see have it drink and taste it it's cool it's not too hot what do you think wow it's chilled right just better than all the mineral waters that I've been drinking in the city I believe you so really this it's something that means a lot that's Mucho Ubuntu that's my daughter's name and my son's name there and we we are trying to keep it natural these chairs are weaved by a local guy right here so I'm actually trying to promote him feel how comfortable you know his excellency the president of Burundi sat in this one I won't sit in it for his owner you know and I was sitting in this one can I sit in? since the president sat in there sure, sure you know this is Burundian manufactured right here in Mugimbu how do you feel, is it comfortable? impressive, of course I even feel like sleeping but I have 2 minutes remaining I don't want to doze off I'll just give you guys a quick tour here and we'll get going so this is next time you come this will be your bedroom definitely you know this will be the bathroom the solar panels that we're going to use we have some special batteries that we just imported so this one is 25 kilowatts so it can run at least for a month without being charged these will be the solar panels that will be setting up so we have some more bedrooms how many bedrooms in total? we have 5 bedrooms oh and so there's another fish farm there it was just an example a model I told you we do it commercially so we have about 2 hectares of fish of Niziza we could do this all day just sit here watching nature that's what energizes me the big ones are not coming up how many of these you got? so the whole thing I think we have about 20 all from here it started in 2020 what? bro I feel like this is 100 years no you started this 2020 man so over there I guess you can't see it we're going to build a big stadium you're going to do your own stadium yes we're going to build it here we want this community to be a village a complete village that can sustain itself bro you can create your own country is this profitable? yes very profitable that's why we do it if you have a message to people in the diaspora man I always say you know let's come back to our roots let's come back and build up on Africa let's empower the resources are there I age all the diaspora friends from wherever they are to consider coming back and chipping in the development the momentum is already there it's vibrating so I welcome them to come the risks may be there but we have some good testimonies that we can share we've gone through the challenges risks are everywhere I always tell people the moment you're born that's the biggest risk so it's better off if they're coming to develop besides it's their own home so they won't be any losing when you come to help your people do you regret coming back? absolutely not if I was made to rethink about the decision that I made I would make that same decision 10 times I'm so glad I'm so glad I put on my boots and packed on my bags and came out I don't regret that I was scared like anyone else I was nervous I didn't know what to expect but where I am at this point it's all about Africa it's all about Africa one love in Africa what has been the major challenge? challenges of course as an innovator you always have to think outside the box and sometimes thinking outside the box can like we failed it doesn't always work we've made mistakes but from those mistakes it's straight I heard the sound of a pig that's a cow so let's see one of it jeez I'm so sorry so what I did I put cows in different places just so we can create manure so like one here there's one over there there's another one over there all this land the banana that works out here we always look at what's the best what works over there these are still green but we're gonna put them in they can fall it's fine they're still green you found one for him anyway but we have to go I don't want you to miss your plane and then you'll be mad at me I'm so happy man that you can I wanna say you've done something that I know and believe that a lot of Africans are gonna be inspired and your story will impact many so I don't care even if I miss my flight I know that I've done a story that will impact many so Jackson you're an inspiration and all the best in your journeys but I'll be back reserve a room for me and make sure when I come that room is specially for me man not this guy not this guy