Jason Miller
One of the more entertaining perks of my job is that I’m constantly learning how the rest of the world actually operates—often the hard way. Business practices, hiring norms, workplace etiquette—every country has its own unwritten rules, and occasionally those rules make absolutely no sense until they suddenly do. Most of the time, I’m drinking from a firehose of new information, but I’ve learned to enjoy the chaos. If nothing else, it guarantees good stories.
Rwanda is high on my list of places I’ll go out of my way to visit. A good friend of mine, Roger, lives there with his wife. Together they run a fish farm and a primary school near Lake Miravi, not far from the Burundi border. Roger is English—calm, methodical, and equipped with the kind of patience you need if you’re going to build something from scratch in a place where “supply chain” can mean “we’ll see what shows up.” His wife, a Rwandan national, is the heart of the operation on the education side. The school serves children from the surrounding community, and it’s clear where her passion lies.
Whenever I visit, I try to unplug completely. It’s not hard. The lake does most of the work—warm breezes, dense greenery, and sunsets that feel a little excessive, like nature showing off. Evenings are usually spent outside, watching the light fade over the water or wandering past fishponds and hatcheries that somehow feel both industrious and peaceful at the same time.
One night over dinner, I asked Roger to share a few of the more memorable challenges he’s run into while building the farm. He didn’t hesitate. There was a slight smile, which should have been my first clue.
On the farm, they produce much of their own food. That includes experimenting with fish feed and, naturally, maintaining a couple of cows. And as Roger discovered, cows are not the complicated part. People are.
The issue, as he saw it, was efficiency. Milking the cows was taking far too long—chasing them down, holding them steady, generally turning a simple task into a daily ordeal. So Roger did what any organized, efficiency-minded person would do: he designed a better system.
Out came the pencil and paper. What he came up with was, objectively, a solid plan—a two-cow milking station. Each cow would walk into its own small enclosure, positioned facing opposite directions. At the front of each enclosure sat a manger filled with feed, keeping the cows happily occupied. On the outside, perfectly aligned with each cow’s udder, was a seat for the milker. Two cows, two milkers, facing each other, everything symmetrical and streamlined.
It was poured in concrete. Easy to clean. Easy to manage. Efficient. At least in theory.
The day came to test the system. Two cows were led into position and immediately got to work on their feed. Two experienced milkers stepped in. Roger stood by, likely already enjoying the quiet satisfaction of a problem solved.
One man sat down and began milking without hesitation.
The other man did not.
He stood there, uneasy, staring at the setup like it had personally offended him.
Roger asked what the problem was.
“We can’t milk from the left side of the cow,” the man said.
Roger assumed this was either a misunderstanding or a momentary hesitation. “The cow will be fine,” he replied. “Just go ahead.”
The man looked genuinely alarmed. “No. We can’t. Our fathers never milked from the left. Our grandfathers never milked from the left. We don’t do that.”
This was not covered in the design phase.
Roger, now encountering the immovable force of tradition, tried a more direct approach. He explained—firmly—that they were there to milk cows, and the cows, as far as he could tell, had not expressed any concerns about left versus right.
Still no movement.
Both men looked increasingly uncomfortable, but also completely unwilling to budge. There was no arguing, no raised voices-just quiet, absolute refusal. It was clear they understood the stakes. They also had no intention of crossing this particular line, regardless of consequences.
Roger found himself at a standstill. Firing them wasn’t something he wanted to do—they were loyal, capable workers—but the situation wasn’t exactly sustainable either.
So he shifted tactics.
If authority and logic weren’t working, maybe incentive would.
He reached into his wallet, pulled out 5,000 Rwandan francs—roughly four U.S. dollars—and offered it to whoever would milk the cow from the left side.
There was a brief pause.
Then one man grabbed the money, dropped onto the stool, and proceeded to milk the cow from the forbidden side with remarkable speed and efficiency. He finished, stood up, and stepped back out as if he’d just completed a slightly dangerous experiment.
Roger, understandably pleased, pointed out the obvious. “See? Not so bad.”
The man nodded. “Yes. It’s done.”
Then he added, very matter-of-factly, “But no one will drink this left-handed milk.”
And that was the end of the discussion.
To this day, the milking station is still in use. The design remains—mostly intact. But the original vision of symmetrical, side-by-side milking didn’t quite survive first contact with reality. Instead, one of the men—unlucky on any given day—squats between the two cows so that both can be milked from the right side, as tradition demands.
It’s not exactly what Roger had in mind.
But it works.
And, importantly, the milk is apparently safe to drink.
Jason Miller (Kyalo) 