This is what happens when I get bored. . . .
I am an avid believer in the philosophy that everything you need for success is before
you if you only recognize what you are looking at. This has led me to be here so that I
can take two projects, both of which have been proven successful and marry them to
create a financially self-sustaining, closed loop toilet project. In December, Tao will be
traveling to Malawi to learn how to turn human urine into fertilizer from a man who has
been running a company that does just that for the past seven years. When he returns we
will know what it will take to create a fertilizer company (Golden Opportunities) from the
liquid output of Dignity Toilets.
That same philosophy has also been behind the creation of a new company,
Blacklamp Investments. The name isn’t much — and to be honest, neither is the
company.
Farmers here use pesticides that have been banned for over 20 years in the U.S. Fleas,
mites, and ants reek havoc on farms and the pesticides reek havoc on the animals here.
Ants, mites, and fleas are everywhere!
I have been trying to find diatomaceous earth here and have been told repeatedly that
no one has it and no one has ever heard of it. Diatomaceous earth is perhaps the greatest
pest killer ever discovered and most people have no idea about it. Borax is also a great
pesticide and that seemed to be right up there with diatomaceous earth for availability. I
could not find it anywhere – until I got desperate.
A few weeks ago I noticed that sugar ants were outside the back door. There were not
many and I did not think too much about it. Two weeks ago I found them in the house
and a few day later they were crawling on my bed. The common treatment is to call a
pest control company to come and fumigate the house. They show up with tanks of
pesticide and spray down the house inside and out and charge about 500 cedis ($85). I
did not want to do that and went back to searching online.
I started using different chemical names and soon found that borax is used in refining
petroleum. (Who knew)? We have a refinery on the outskirts of town and sure enough,
there is a warehouse stacked to the teeth with 50 pound bags of borax.
Even though buying one bag of borax from the warehouse is akin to buying one
cabbage from a farmer and asking him to go to the field to get it, the warehouse folks
sold me a bag.
Ants have no desire to go anywhere near borax, but they love sugar. If you mix ½ cup
of sugar with 1 ½ tablespoons of borax and a cup of warm water, you have ant killer.
You put it on cotton balls and set them where the ant trails are. Just like four-year-olds at
Halloween, the ants gorge themselves and get hyperactive on the sugar.
There are two things about ants that work against them in this case – self preservation
and anatomy. When the explorer ants come back to the colony after foraging, worker
ants clean them to make sure they are not bringing anything undesirable into the colony.
When the exploring ants encounter the sugar syrup it clings to them. When they come
back, the worker ants clean the syrup from the foragers. The worker ants also end up
ingesting the sugar mix and getting some on themselves, which other ants remove. Even
the queen ant gets to have some in the process as the ants share some of their bounty with
her.
Now you might envision a colony of ants all laying around as sated as relatives after a
Thanksgiving dinner but unlike the relatives who pat their tummies and belch, ants have
no way of passing gas in one direction or another.
Borax causes ants to have gas. . . and they (including the queen) die. It takes about
two days to wipe out a colony. The cost? It came to somewhere around 55 pesewas
(about 9 ½ cents). Ants all have the same anatomy whether they are sugar, big, black, or
even fire ants. The bag of borax is enough to make about 1175 units. And I know a few
farmers who are wanting to buy this miracle, nontoxic, natural bug killer. The market is
clamoring for the product.
The borax costs me about $30. The sugar was far more expensive ounce for ounce.
All told, I will have about $112 invested to make the 1175 units of ant killer. And I
should easily have a return of about $2000 after packaging costs.
The following day I found diatomaceous earth. They don’t call it that but that is one
of the things they use to clarify beer – and we have four breweries here. And sure
enough, I found a warehouse that carries three products, one of which is what I want.
And although the owner objected he, like the other, agreed to sell me one 50 pound bag.
I now have a mineral that I can repackage (that’s all I have to do) and sell as a nontoxic
way to get rid of fleas, bed bugs, mites, cockroaches, spiders, and virtually any
exoskeleton bug.
Insects with an exoskeleton have a wax coating that allows them to retain moisture in
their bodies. Diatomaceous earth is like microscopic tubes with sharp edges all over it.
The bugs climb through it and it scratches off the wax coating on their bodies and the
earth desiccates them. It is food grade and edible so animals can lick it off their skin or
coats with no harmful effects. If the farmer mixes 2% of it in their food it kills off any
parasitic worms internally and when flies lay eggs in the feces the larvae are killed when
they hatch because the mineral does not dissolve.
And because it is a mineral, insects cannot develop an immunity or tolerance to it. The
killing action is mechanical and not chemical.
Agricultural use will move more product. Household use will give me a far better
profit margin. All I have to do is repackage it. And raise the price.
Oh, and my permits are in. I can work now.
Keep Smilin’
Doc
