In a bid to keep our night guards awake with some sort of productive activity, we bought an oil press and a big bag of peanuts. You put peanuts in a 2-litre bottle on top of the press, turn the crank, and out comes oil and “press cake,” which is the peanut solids. If you then smash up the press cake it becomes nsinjiro, which people here mix into porridge for breakfast.

We set up a cooperative with everyone who works on the property, giving each person duties related to acquiring peanuts, pressing the oil, packaging it, and selling it, and after two months everyone made about $10 each. So it works pretty well, but profit margins are very slim.

We thought we’d try pressing baobab oil instead, since the seeds are readily available in Salima and the oil is very valuable. Unfortunately, the seed coats are extremely hard and can’t be crushed by this hand press. So we did some research, found somebody at Penn State who gave us some tips, and removed the seed coats by hand. After about eight man-hours of removing seed coats and pressing the oil, we had 75 ml, worth maybe 50 cents if we had a buyer and could convince them of its purity. So again, profit margins are slim.

So finally we donated the press to Kindle, in the hopes that people would be happy to bring their own peanuts to make their own oil without having to worry about all of the buying and selling. Can you tell I’m not a business man?