July 17, 2007 – Kenya

It was a late start today, but no one complained. I didn’t roll out of bed until 8AM and our first meeting wasn’t until 11:30. We were all excited to see Keely again, and Alex and I gave her a sandwich hug before we all jumped into a cab to head over to the Acumen office.

At Acumen, we met Nthenya who updated us on the latest Acumen investments in Kenya. The Acumen office in Kenya is quite new, so everything is still falling into place. It is a small, brightly painted office…the perfect home base for people that are often out in the field. Nthenya ran us through the major investments: ABE (Advanced Bio Extracts), Ecotact, an affordable housing project, and Shef.

I was particularly interested in Ecotact. The founding entrepreneur created pay-for-use toilets and showers that are clean and sanitary. The money that is generated from the facilities goes into a community fund. A community council then votes on what the funds are used for. Though it was initially rolled out as a nonprofit enterprise, the founder discovered that the Ecotact facilities can be run profitably when they’re installed in a marketplace (where merchants come, even from out of town, and end up using the toilets). In very low income areas, such as the slums of Kibera, the construction of the facilities must be partially subsidized.

We started discussing “sustainable business models” and what that really means in practice, when Eric (another Acumen Fellow) walked in. It was time to go to lunch, so we all hopped into two cars and drove to a nearby restaurant.

We decided to go for Mediterranean food in Africa—I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical. But pretty soon, every square inch of table was covered in small dishes filled with every imaginable Mediterranean delight, from hummus to pita to minted couscous. Everything tasted superb! It was fun to hang out with three Acumen Fellows (Eric, Keely, and Jocelyn). Alex and I were lucky to have Keely, our personal business informant. Any time a term was thrown into the conversation that we didn’t recognize, Keely gave us a quick explanation.

I was really excited to hear that Jocelyn has just accepted a job with Ideo to help expand their involvement with sustainable design projects (like their work with KickStart). We made plans to meet up with her in SF when we’re all back in the Bay Area.

In the afternoon, we were originally hoping to visit one of Acumen’s investments, but the scheduling didn’t quite work out. Our alternate plan turned out to be as informative if not more informative than another meeting. Instead, we visited Kibera, one of the world’s biggest slums. It is home to more than one million people (about a third of the Nairobi population). Though I didn’t know it at the time, my first introduction to Kibera was through the movie The Constant Gardener. The producers of the movie actually set up The Constant Gardener Charitable Trust, which facilitates school and bridge building projects in Kibera.

We went into Kibera with a friend of Nthenya whose name is Wavinya. Wavinya is an interior designer who is from a part of Kibera and knows the whole place inside out.

If you’ve seen The Constant Gardener, images of the vast shanty city of Kibera are probably what stick most in your mind. Still, no matter how unsettled I felt after watching The Constant Gardener or how many images stuck in my head, nothing compares to actually visiting Kibera itself.

The movie can never convey the smells. My first step into Kibera was welcomed by a wall of smells. They creeped up my nostrils and permeated my clothes. It was the sweet sour smell of open sewage mixed with trash and dirt. Of fish lying out in the open hoping to be sold. Of skinny dogs lying in front of doorways. Of piles of burning trash.

How can a movie convey the extent? When you watch a movie, you can not turn around and around and wind for two full hours through mazes and mazes of narrow streets filled with thousands of children playing in gutters. You can’t bend down and take a closer look at what’s in the gutters. To see that are filled with old veggies, egg shells, plastic bags, urine, and old gloves.

You definitely don’t get touched. By hundreds of little kids’ hands.

Nor do you hear them say “How are you? Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr you? Rrrrrrrrrrrr you?” with rolled r’s, for two hours straight. Alex swore that he would have a nightmare with kids whispering “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr you?”

Kibera is a different universe from rural poverty. As a farmer, you can live your whole life in poverty, but you may never have seen a western movie with lavish hotel rooms, pools, and vacations. In Kibera, you are constantly aware of your position. We passed a group of teenagers and one boy shouted, “Welcome to the ghetto!”

Still, you have to realize that this is their home. In fact, there have been housing projects that offer new apartments to Kibera residents who flat out refuse to move. They don’t want to leave the community they’re used to. In spite of everything I saw in Kibera, I only saw one person crying and she was weeping for someone who just passed away. The rest were laughing, chitchatting, playing with their kids, and going about life as usual. It’s interesting to think about what Regina (from KickStart) told us…that many people in Kibera are better off than they make out to be. In some ways, they have to propagate the myth in order to get NGO help.

We spent the rest of the afternoon resting and reflecting, and then we met Keely for one last dinner together. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant, but it was supposedly Mexican, and yet the menu offered a grand total of five Mexican dishes. The rest of the menu was filled with dozens of Italian dishes and we were very happy with our Italian dinner at this Mexican restaurant.

After a short round of interneting, we all went straight to bed.