July 24, 2007 – Kenya
I woke up early, after a night of unsettled sleep and discovered a new row of mosquito bites on my arm. To pass the time, I pulled out my book and read until the boys were up, and then we organized laundry and put together a backpack for the day. Seid and Mohamed made us a magnificent breakfast—a combination of American-style eggs and Swahili-style samosas.
Today, we ventured over to Shela, the main beach near Lamu. Most tourists take a motor boat or a dhow over, but we decided to walk. It was high tide and much of the path was covered in water, but we just hiked up our pants and continued onwards. We walked past Lamu’s power plant—a huge diesel generator surrounded by blackened earth and empty diesel cans that lay strewn about. It was painful to look at.
Farther along the path, we walked past the Ministry of Land Management, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Wildlife. So many ministries…they are all housed in the most lavish buildings on the island, but I’m not too clear on what policies they're implimenting.
We arrived at Shela just as our many layers of conservative clothes were soaked through and through with sweat. My awe at Muslim women and their many veils grew as we walked over. How can they take the heat? At the first restaurant, we stopped for a refreshing lime juice.
On the sandy shores of Shela, we explored what was around the bend…and the next bend…and the next. Shela beach stretches for twelve kilometers around the headland and there’s always another bend to explore. Among other oddities, Alex and I found a huge castle, said to be built by an Italian entrepreneur (with lots of money and interesting taste).
Over lunch, we struck a deal with a man named Abu who set us up with a sunset dhow ride. We set sail in mid afternoon and caught a strong wind out to the other side of the channel. Thick mangroves created a fortress along the shore. When a mangrove tree grows to its full size it begins producing offshoots that simply fall into the ground beside it and start growing into new mangrove trees, until there is an impassable net of mangrove roots and branches.
As we took down the sail and drifted close to the beautiful mangroves, a low “mooooo” drifted over the tops of their branches, reminding us that farmers still live on these isolated islands (despite inadequate water supplies).
A rain cloud moved in and we caught a refreshing drizzle before the sun set in between one cloud and another. On our way back to the Lamu dock, we fetched up an exhausted baby turtle that was floating on the surface to bring to the Shela turtle sanctuary. Turtles are illegal to eat here, but locals can get a small reward for bringing exhausted turtles to the sanctuary.
We had dinner at a restaurant with lights, but when we got back to the apartment, the electricity was out. We used kerosene lamps and L.E.D.s to make our way to bed.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Hajibs, donkeys, and dhows
July 23, 2007 – Kenya
Another morning flight out of Nairobi. Our new destination: Lamu.
As we were planning our trip to Africa, we received an offer to stay in Lamu. Peter Wheeler, one of Charly’s Social-Impact colleagues, owns an apartment in town. And according to Wheeler, “If you want a funky experience, you have to stay here.” So here we are.
Lamu is the main town of Lamu Archipelago, which consists of six islands. Although it was originally inhabited by Bajun tribespeople, the archipelago has been dominated by Arab culture since the early 16th century. Early Arab settlers exported ivory, tortoise shell, mangrove poles, and African slaves to Iraq, Oman, and other Arab settlements on the East African coastline. Lamu was essentially left untouched by foreigners after 1873, when the British abolished the slave trade, and the economy of the island started spiraling downwards. Other remnants of Arab culture are still thickly engrained in Lamu culture…Islam, Arabic dhows (sail boats), intricately carved wooden doors, and Swahili (which is a mix of Arabic and African tongues).
We landed on Manda Island and were promptly whisked away by Peter’s guys: Seid and Mohamed. They grabbed our bags and ran about twenty meters to a dock, where they tossed our luggage into the rear of a motor boat. Everyone who just stepped off the plane was headed in the same direction—to the dock and into the motor boats, which were all pointed towards Lamu.
The smell of fish intermingled with a bit of sewage greeted us as we pulled up to the Lamu dock. A dozen hands pushed and pulled us onto the dock, and our luggage was passed from hand to hand until it reached the main promenade. We rushed to keep up as Seid and Mohamed weaved through the narrow passageways into the depths of Lamu, all the while shouldering our heavy luggage. We turned left, right, left, past a skinny cat nibbling on a heap of trash, past small girls in veils and little boys in smocks and fezzes, past dark corners smelling of bat guano and urine, past tall walls of coral rock. When we reached Peter’s appartment, we were thoroughly disoriented, and Charly, Alex, and I each had a different notion of which way the ocean lay. We stepped into a courtyard filled with lush bushes and tall coconut trees whose leaves reached higher than the apartment walls. Passageways lead to more passageways and we meandered through the apartment discovering beds and bathrooms in small nooks here and there. It looks like a palace straight from Aladin. There are even three turtles in the courtyard.
After lunch, Seid and Mohamed went home and we decided to venture into town. Which way to sea? We almost considered taking Hansel and Gretel’s tactic and laying down pieces of bread to mark our path, except that all the donkeys would surely eat up our trail. Instead, we took as few turns as possible and eventually came to the main promenade. Everyone sitting on doorsteps along the way saw us walk past them five times: left, right, left, right, left. We had to memorize the route. Finding the way gets ten times more difficult in the dark and we didn’t want to “end up hosed” (to quote Charly) when we came back after dark.
Meandering down the main drag, we came upon a large courtyard in front of Lamu Fort. We sat down beside the locals and observed the scene. Everyone was there: orthodox women with only a tiny slit for their eyes to look out, pretty sandals, and henna-ed feet sneaking out beneath their flowing dresses; chickens in baskets waiting to be sold; a drunken old man; two Masai warriors; light skin; dark skin; donkeys; women in colorful dresses; men talking in the shade; girls jumping around with veils that occasionally fell off and had to be fixed; the intermittent white tourist.
We circled back to the seafront as it became dark. The street lights flickered on and then turned off. Oh well. A few generators were humming in the background and some lucky restaurants boasted incandescent light bulbs. We sat in a pub and had a coke by candlelight and then moved next door to Petley’s Inn for dinner. They make magnificent fruit juices and Swahili-style fish cooked in spicy coconut sauce.
With the help of an L.E.D. flashlight, we found our way back to the apartment where Seid and Mohamed left on some lights for us inside.
The voices of children playing in the alleys outside sound like they are here in our courtyard. I keep turning around expecting visitors and finding none. Even the sound of the coconut leaves in the wind is eerie and reminds me of the swish of robed figures sneaking through the night.
Another morning flight out of Nairobi. Our new destination: Lamu.
As we were planning our trip to Africa, we received an offer to stay in Lamu. Peter Wheeler, one of Charly’s Social-Impact colleagues, owns an apartment in town. And according to Wheeler, “If you want a funky experience, you have to stay here.” So here we are.
Lamu is the main town of Lamu Archipelago, which consists of six islands. Although it was originally inhabited by Bajun tribespeople, the archipelago has been dominated by Arab culture since the early 16th century. Early Arab settlers exported ivory, tortoise shell, mangrove poles, and African slaves to Iraq, Oman, and other Arab settlements on the East African coastline. Lamu was essentially left untouched by foreigners after 1873, when the British abolished the slave trade, and the economy of the island started spiraling downwards. Other remnants of Arab culture are still thickly engrained in Lamu culture…Islam, Arabic dhows (sail boats), intricately carved wooden doors, and Swahili (which is a mix of Arabic and African tongues).
We landed on Manda Island and were promptly whisked away by Peter’s guys: Seid and Mohamed. They grabbed our bags and ran about twenty meters to a dock, where they tossed our luggage into the rear of a motor boat. Everyone who just stepped off the plane was headed in the same direction—to the dock and into the motor boats, which were all pointed towards Lamu.
The smell of fish intermingled with a bit of sewage greeted us as we pulled up to the Lamu dock. A dozen hands pushed and pulled us onto the dock, and our luggage was passed from hand to hand until it reached the main promenade. We rushed to keep up as Seid and Mohamed weaved through the narrow passageways into the depths of Lamu, all the while shouldering our heavy luggage. We turned left, right, left, past a skinny cat nibbling on a heap of trash, past small girls in veils and little boys in smocks and fezzes, past dark corners smelling of bat guano and urine, past tall walls of coral rock. When we reached Peter’s appartment, we were thoroughly disoriented, and Charly, Alex, and I each had a different notion of which way the ocean lay. We stepped into a courtyard filled with lush bushes and tall coconut trees whose leaves reached higher than the apartment walls. Passageways lead to more passageways and we meandered through the apartment discovering beds and bathrooms in small nooks here and there. It looks like a palace straight from Aladin. There are even three turtles in the courtyard.
After lunch, Seid and Mohamed went home and we decided to venture into town. Which way to sea? We almost considered taking Hansel and Gretel’s tactic and laying down pieces of bread to mark our path, except that all the donkeys would surely eat up our trail. Instead, we took as few turns as possible and eventually came to the main promenade. Everyone sitting on doorsteps along the way saw us walk past them five times: left, right, left, right, left. We had to memorize the route. Finding the way gets ten times more difficult in the dark and we didn’t want to “end up hosed” (to quote Charly) when we came back after dark.
Meandering down the main drag, we came upon a large courtyard in front of Lamu Fort. We sat down beside the locals and observed the scene. Everyone was there: orthodox women with only a tiny slit for their eyes to look out, pretty sandals, and henna-ed feet sneaking out beneath their flowing dresses; chickens in baskets waiting to be sold; a drunken old man; two Masai warriors; light skin; dark skin; donkeys; women in colorful dresses; men talking in the shade; girls jumping around with veils that occasionally fell off and had to be fixed; the intermittent white tourist.
We circled back to the seafront as it became dark. The street lights flickered on and then turned off. Oh well. A few generators were humming in the background and some lucky restaurants boasted incandescent light bulbs. We sat in a pub and had a coke by candlelight and then moved next door to Petley’s Inn for dinner. They make magnificent fruit juices and Swahili-style fish cooked in spicy coconut sauce.
With the help of an L.E.D. flashlight, we found our way back to the apartment where Seid and Mohamed left on some lights for us inside.
The voices of children playing in the alleys outside sound like they are here in our courtyard. I keep turning around expecting visitors and finding none. Even the sound of the coconut leaves in the wind is eerie and reminds me of the swish of robed figures sneaking through the night.
July 22, 2007 – Kenya
We planned an early morning departure from Il Ngwesi because everyone has told us that the wildlife in Lewa National Park (which is on the way to Lewa airport) is worth a few extra hours. We were sad to leave our favorite lodge so quickly, but were drawn to Lewa by talk of guaranteed rhino sighting. Our bags were already on the way to the car when James announced that a staff member just spotted a cheetah down the road. All the guests hopped in the car with us and our luggage was abandoned back at the lodge. We drove just seven minutes and there he was: lying down on a little hill overlooking the surrounding domain, just 10 meters from the car. We stayed as quiet as is car-ly possible and inched closer and closer until we were just 25 feet from the cat. I was in awe…the cheetah just sat there, stretched, scratched, and lazed about for ten minutes. Then it calmly stood up and surveyed its surroundings. It wasn’t until it heard the sounds of people rearranging and trying to get a better view that it became spooked and ran away.
It was time to leave for Lewa airport, so we came back to the lodge and loaded up the luggage. It’s a two-hour drive to get from Il Ngwesi to Lewa airport and our flight was scheduled from 12:30PM. Just inside Lewa park, we stopped and had a picnic brunch on a rocky shelf overlooking a river valley. As we ate our hard boiled eggs and sipped our juice boxes, a herd of giraffes ran into the valley, followed by a rhino and its baby. We knew it was a ¬white rhino (and not a black rhino) because the baby was leading the mother (black rhino mothers lead their babies), their rear horn was smaller (black rhinos’ horns are the same length), they were quite large (black rhinos are smaller, though more aggressive), and they were eating grass (black rhinos eat a variety of bushes). There must have been a cat in the area which initiated their run for the valley.
Just as we neared the airport, we came upon a whole family of black rhinos: father, mother, and child. The father looked very unsettled about our approach and after contemplating a charge, turned around and began walking away. We passed a few more pumbas and antelope and then we arrived at Lewa airport—a slightly bigger strip of gravel, but still no infrastructure for check-in, metal detecting, or other formalities.
We hopped onto AirKenya…next stop…Nairobi.
Nairobi has become our second home in Africa. We are back again at the Palacina Hotel and already feel like old-timers (perhaps because it’s the only place we’ve been for longer than two days). We enjoyed one last dinner at the Palacina restaurant where we now know the whole menu by heart, and we talked about the influence of rap on today’s youth.
While Charly relaxed, Alex and I used the rest of the evening to catch up on blogging. Even though we’re technically operating in the future (by 11 hours), our blogs are approximately one week in the past…
We planned an early morning departure from Il Ngwesi because everyone has told us that the wildlife in Lewa National Park (which is on the way to Lewa airport) is worth a few extra hours. We were sad to leave our favorite lodge so quickly, but were drawn to Lewa by talk of guaranteed rhino sighting. Our bags were already on the way to the car when James announced that a staff member just spotted a cheetah down the road. All the guests hopped in the car with us and our luggage was abandoned back at the lodge. We drove just seven minutes and there he was: lying down on a little hill overlooking the surrounding domain, just 10 meters from the car. We stayed as quiet as is car-ly possible and inched closer and closer until we were just 25 feet from the cat. I was in awe…the cheetah just sat there, stretched, scratched, and lazed about for ten minutes. Then it calmly stood up and surveyed its surroundings. It wasn’t until it heard the sounds of people rearranging and trying to get a better view that it became spooked and ran away.
It was time to leave for Lewa airport, so we came back to the lodge and loaded up the luggage. It’s a two-hour drive to get from Il Ngwesi to Lewa airport and our flight was scheduled from 12:30PM. Just inside Lewa park, we stopped and had a picnic brunch on a rocky shelf overlooking a river valley. As we ate our hard boiled eggs and sipped our juice boxes, a herd of giraffes ran into the valley, followed by a rhino and its baby. We knew it was a ¬white rhino (and not a black rhino) because the baby was leading the mother (black rhino mothers lead their babies), their rear horn was smaller (black rhinos’ horns are the same length), they were quite large (black rhinos are smaller, though more aggressive), and they were eating grass (black rhinos eat a variety of bushes). There must have been a cat in the area which initiated their run for the valley.
Just as we neared the airport, we came upon a whole family of black rhinos: father, mother, and child. The father looked very unsettled about our approach and after contemplating a charge, turned around and began walking away. We passed a few more pumbas and antelope and then we arrived at Lewa airport—a slightly bigger strip of gravel, but still no infrastructure for check-in, metal detecting, or other formalities.
We hopped onto AirKenya…next stop…Nairobi.
Nairobi has become our second home in Africa. We are back again at the Palacina Hotel and already feel like old-timers (perhaps because it’s the only place we’ve been for longer than two days). We enjoyed one last dinner at the Palacina restaurant where we now know the whole menu by heart, and we talked about the influence of rap on today’s youth.
While Charly relaxed, Alex and I used the rest of the evening to catch up on blogging. Even though we’re technically operating in the future (by 11 hours), our blogs are approximately one week in the past…
Why private wildlife conservation is so much more exciting (than government-run operations)
July 21, 2007 – Kenya
Freedom at last! When James first told us we could go on a morning walk, I thought he was kidding. Hadn’t we just seen wild dogs attacking elephants about fifty meters from our room? After traveling through Lake Manyara Park and the Serengeti in the confines of a car, it almost felt taboo to be allowed to walk outside. Then again, the Masai do it every day.
With one armed ranger at the rear and one Masai warrior at the front, we made our way into the bush. Among our more benign findings, we encountered lavender (used as a natural deodorant), mint, and a toothbrush tree (much better than Colgate). Overhead, we spotted eagles, hawks, and weever nests (which are always on the west side of a tree, in case you ever get lost in Kenya). Closer to ground, we encountered tracks…there were giraffe, buffalo, elephant, dik dik, and cheetah prints.
Every once in a while, we ran into a large pile of dik dik scat. Dik diks are one of the tiniest antelope in Africa and have the tiniest scat. So why do they bother to sweep it together into big piles? As the Masai story goes…there once was a dik dik who was minding his own business enjoying the shade beneath an elephant. Suddenly, a huge elephant paddy lands on him and he is squished flat. After a day, the dik dik recovers and tells his mate, “It’s time for revenge.” Dik diks don’t have too much competitive advantage when it comes to size, but they aren’t stupid. The dik diks decided to push together all of their small scat in one big pile and ended up tripping lots of elephants (and some humans as well!).
After eating breakfast on the banks of a year-round river, we turned back towards the lodge. It was good to exercise and get sweaty. The land around us was heating up and all the animals were taking their midday siestas. Even the water hole next to Il Ngwesi was deserted, but not tempting enough to jump into. We waited until we got up to the clean water of the pool and then jumped in. James told us that in times of draught, even this pool becomes an elephant drinking hole.
In May last year, a hand-reared orphan black rhino named Omni was moved to Il Ngwesi. There are also two white rhinos in the sanctuary, but as a lone male of his species, Omni has become quite aggressive and the Masai are making plans to introduce another black rhino this year. In late afternoon, we climbed up behind the bandas and walked along the rhino sanctuary fence in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a rhino. We did not see any rhinos, but we enjoyed our hike through the valley beneath our banda, and imagined running into the elephants we saw here yesterday evening. Luckily, the elephant family had moved out, and we only encountered an owl, standing silently in a tree beside our tracks.
This evening, we received a beautiful farewell dinner and all the staff sang for us. It was a chorus of sounds that were out of this world…imitations of hyena, zebra, and owl. For the sake of cultural exchange, I also did some hula for them which they thought was hilarious :-)
Tonight, we didn’t roll the bed out into the open. Alex and Charly lay down on the platform and I squished between them with Charly on my left and Alex on my right. We looked up at a foreign sky. There were no dippers, Cassiopeia, or Orion. We couldn’t even claim knowledge of the Southern Cross. Instead, we talked about CPUs, buses, timeclocks per second, and assembly code. Pretty soon the only sounds coming from my left were the “put put put” of a sleeping Charly. It was time for bed.
Freedom at last! When James first told us we could go on a morning walk, I thought he was kidding. Hadn’t we just seen wild dogs attacking elephants about fifty meters from our room? After traveling through Lake Manyara Park and the Serengeti in the confines of a car, it almost felt taboo to be allowed to walk outside. Then again, the Masai do it every day.
With one armed ranger at the rear and one Masai warrior at the front, we made our way into the bush. Among our more benign findings, we encountered lavender (used as a natural deodorant), mint, and a toothbrush tree (much better than Colgate). Overhead, we spotted eagles, hawks, and weever nests (which are always on the west side of a tree, in case you ever get lost in Kenya). Closer to ground, we encountered tracks…there were giraffe, buffalo, elephant, dik dik, and cheetah prints.
Every once in a while, we ran into a large pile of dik dik scat. Dik diks are one of the tiniest antelope in Africa and have the tiniest scat. So why do they bother to sweep it together into big piles? As the Masai story goes…there once was a dik dik who was minding his own business enjoying the shade beneath an elephant. Suddenly, a huge elephant paddy lands on him and he is squished flat. After a day, the dik dik recovers and tells his mate, “It’s time for revenge.” Dik diks don’t have too much competitive advantage when it comes to size, but they aren’t stupid. The dik diks decided to push together all of their small scat in one big pile and ended up tripping lots of elephants (and some humans as well!).
After eating breakfast on the banks of a year-round river, we turned back towards the lodge. It was good to exercise and get sweaty. The land around us was heating up and all the animals were taking their midday siestas. Even the water hole next to Il Ngwesi was deserted, but not tempting enough to jump into. We waited until we got up to the clean water of the pool and then jumped in. James told us that in times of draught, even this pool becomes an elephant drinking hole.
In May last year, a hand-reared orphan black rhino named Omni was moved to Il Ngwesi. There are also two white rhinos in the sanctuary, but as a lone male of his species, Omni has become quite aggressive and the Masai are making plans to introduce another black rhino this year. In late afternoon, we climbed up behind the bandas and walked along the rhino sanctuary fence in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a rhino. We did not see any rhinos, but we enjoyed our hike through the valley beneath our banda, and imagined running into the elephants we saw here yesterday evening. Luckily, the elephant family had moved out, and we only encountered an owl, standing silently in a tree beside our tracks.
This evening, we received a beautiful farewell dinner and all the staff sang for us. It was a chorus of sounds that were out of this world…imitations of hyena, zebra, and owl. For the sake of cultural exchange, I also did some hula for them which they thought was hilarious :-)
Tonight, we didn’t roll the bed out into the open. Alex and Charly lay down on the platform and I squished between them with Charly on my left and Alex on my right. We looked up at a foreign sky. There were no dippers, Cassiopeia, or Orion. We couldn’t even claim knowledge of the Southern Cross. Instead, we talked about CPUs, buses, timeclocks per second, and assembly code. Pretty soon the only sounds coming from my left were the “put put put” of a sleeping Charly. It was time for bed.
Beginning to feel like lodge junkies (and missing Mom’s architectural perspective)
July 20, 2007 – Kenya
We ate a late breakfast in the dining room and looked out onto the sunny plains. In the distance, we could spot Mt. Kenya and its very ragged top, whose highest peak is just shy 5,200 meters.
The birds had already been up for hours, but still had plenty to talk about. Despite all their noisy chatter, it was peaceful, and we realized we were now the lone guests at Ol Lentille. The Americans left early this morning, Giles returned home, and new guests wouldn’t arrive until late afternoon.
Sitting on our patio, we read books and articles and caught up on a bit of journal-writing. A little before lunch, we walked up to the pool. On the way, we heard the humming of wasps and looked down to see a new wasp nest that was forming inside a small nook of the rocky staircase. Even the wildlife is making itself at home in Ol Lentille.
The heat of the day was settling in and the three of us were happy to jump into the icy pool. Thanks to the joint efforts of Alex and Charly, I was unsuccessful at keeping my head dry. Hakuna matata…it was a very refreshing dip.
It was strange being the lone guests at lunch, but the staff told us it is not all that uncommon, as yearly occupancy is usually only about thirty percent, which doesn’t bode too well for profitability…
Beginning to feel like nomads, we packed up our bags after lunch – it was time to move on again. We drove to the “airport” – a narrow strip of gravel in the middle of miles and miles of wilderness. A tiny plane and lots of Masai spectators stood on the runway. The pilot walked up from his resting spot in the bushes. He loaded the bags, and we all hopped in. The plane was just big enough for four people and made me feel that much closer to the elements. And that much closer to hurtling into the bushes when the plane dropped a few feet with turbulence. I think we all tightened our seatbelts a bit :-)
We landed very smoothly on a small, gravel runway. At first, there was not a human in sight. We climbed out and were hit by a wave of sweltering heat. Despite the lack of overhead shade, it was reassuring to have a clear view of the runway in front of us. The wilderness behind us only made me think of hungry lions and large, moody elephants. As the pilot started to pack up, I was glad to see a few armed men in army attire walk towards us. It was a bit strange sitting beside armed camo guys on a runway in the middle of Kenya but at least we felt safe.
Soon, a car rolled up and two Masai men loaded our bags into the back. Our destination was the Il Ngwesi lodge, the first community-run lodge in Kenya. After half an hour in the car, dodging thorny bushes that whipped past, we wondered why our pilot hadn’t landed at the airstrip that lies next to Il Ngwesi. Then, I saw the ten-meter-long airstrip that ends at the foot of a hill. Very few pilots risk landing here.
Il Ngwesi literally means “wildlife people” and marks a shift in the Masai mindset… it was not so long ago that each young Masai man had to kill a lion in order to become an initiated warrior (which had its inevitable toll on the lion population). Now, the Il Ngwesi logo depicts a Masai warrior with his arm resting gently on a lion’s shoulder. The Masai people no longer kill lions except in self defense and at Il Ngwesi, the Masai have created a wildlife sanctuary.
After we placed our bags in our hut, we came to the pool area and talked with James, the lodge manager, about Il Ngwesi’s origins. As one of the few college-educated Masai in his community, James is very well respected. He laughed at his current position – lodge manager – because originally he was the most adamant opponent of having a lodge in his community. It took over 100 meetings and several visits to other lodges in adjacent countries before everyone in the community supported the project.
Il Ngwesi sits on the edge of the Mukogodo Hills and has six separate “bandas” (huts) with a maximum capacity of 16 guests. Each banda has a thatched roof, a semi circular back wall, a large platform/patio, an open-air shower, and a bathroom. Our banda faces a small valley. It feels very open and yet private – on the whole, it’s like being in a tree house.
As the sun started to set, we heard an elephant trumpeting in the valley. In the dimming light, we saw an elephant mother running back and forth with two small elephants trying to keep up. All around them, five or six smaller animals circled in. We were surprised that these smaller animals bore the characteristic black, yellow, and white blotches of wild dogs. Wild dogs are highly threatened and have been nearly driven to extinction by persecution, rabies, and habitat loss. They travel in packs of twelve to twenty and run very long distances—covering hundreds of miles each day. Most well known for eating their prey alive, wild dogs have incredible endurance and chase their prey to exhaustion and then grab bites out of the legs and torsos of the weakened animals. It’s easy to be disgusted by these creatures and their barbaric ways, but then again, everyone needs to eat dinner and it looks like tonight’s menu was baby elephant.
The best feature of our banda is the platform, where you can roll out the bed and sleep under the stars. By the time we came back from dinner, the elephants had quieted down, but other night sounds had taken their place. Frogs, owls, and monkeys filled the night air with song as we fell asleep with only a mosquito net between us and the clear night sky.
We ate a late breakfast in the dining room and looked out onto the sunny plains. In the distance, we could spot Mt. Kenya and its very ragged top, whose highest peak is just shy 5,200 meters.
The birds had already been up for hours, but still had plenty to talk about. Despite all their noisy chatter, it was peaceful, and we realized we were now the lone guests at Ol Lentille. The Americans left early this morning, Giles returned home, and new guests wouldn’t arrive until late afternoon.
Sitting on our patio, we read books and articles and caught up on a bit of journal-writing. A little before lunch, we walked up to the pool. On the way, we heard the humming of wasps and looked down to see a new wasp nest that was forming inside a small nook of the rocky staircase. Even the wildlife is making itself at home in Ol Lentille.
The heat of the day was settling in and the three of us were happy to jump into the icy pool. Thanks to the joint efforts of Alex and Charly, I was unsuccessful at keeping my head dry. Hakuna matata…it was a very refreshing dip.
It was strange being the lone guests at lunch, but the staff told us it is not all that uncommon, as yearly occupancy is usually only about thirty percent, which doesn’t bode too well for profitability…
Beginning to feel like nomads, we packed up our bags after lunch – it was time to move on again. We drove to the “airport” – a narrow strip of gravel in the middle of miles and miles of wilderness. A tiny plane and lots of Masai spectators stood on the runway. The pilot walked up from his resting spot in the bushes. He loaded the bags, and we all hopped in. The plane was just big enough for four people and made me feel that much closer to the elements. And that much closer to hurtling into the bushes when the plane dropped a few feet with turbulence. I think we all tightened our seatbelts a bit :-)
We landed very smoothly on a small, gravel runway. At first, there was not a human in sight. We climbed out and were hit by a wave of sweltering heat. Despite the lack of overhead shade, it was reassuring to have a clear view of the runway in front of us. The wilderness behind us only made me think of hungry lions and large, moody elephants. As the pilot started to pack up, I was glad to see a few armed men in army attire walk towards us. It was a bit strange sitting beside armed camo guys on a runway in the middle of Kenya but at least we felt safe.
Soon, a car rolled up and two Masai men loaded our bags into the back. Our destination was the Il Ngwesi lodge, the first community-run lodge in Kenya. After half an hour in the car, dodging thorny bushes that whipped past, we wondered why our pilot hadn’t landed at the airstrip that lies next to Il Ngwesi. Then, I saw the ten-meter-long airstrip that ends at the foot of a hill. Very few pilots risk landing here.
Il Ngwesi literally means “wildlife people” and marks a shift in the Masai mindset… it was not so long ago that each young Masai man had to kill a lion in order to become an initiated warrior (which had its inevitable toll on the lion population). Now, the Il Ngwesi logo depicts a Masai warrior with his arm resting gently on a lion’s shoulder. The Masai people no longer kill lions except in self defense and at Il Ngwesi, the Masai have created a wildlife sanctuary.
After we placed our bags in our hut, we came to the pool area and talked with James, the lodge manager, about Il Ngwesi’s origins. As one of the few college-educated Masai in his community, James is very well respected. He laughed at his current position – lodge manager – because originally he was the most adamant opponent of having a lodge in his community. It took over 100 meetings and several visits to other lodges in adjacent countries before everyone in the community supported the project.
Il Ngwesi sits on the edge of the Mukogodo Hills and has six separate “bandas” (huts) with a maximum capacity of 16 guests. Each banda has a thatched roof, a semi circular back wall, a large platform/patio, an open-air shower, and a bathroom. Our banda faces a small valley. It feels very open and yet private – on the whole, it’s like being in a tree house.
As the sun started to set, we heard an elephant trumpeting in the valley. In the dimming light, we saw an elephant mother running back and forth with two small elephants trying to keep up. All around them, five or six smaller animals circled in. We were surprised that these smaller animals bore the characteristic black, yellow, and white blotches of wild dogs. Wild dogs are highly threatened and have been nearly driven to extinction by persecution, rabies, and habitat loss. They travel in packs of twelve to twenty and run very long distances—covering hundreds of miles each day. Most well known for eating their prey alive, wild dogs have incredible endurance and chase their prey to exhaustion and then grab bites out of the legs and torsos of the weakened animals. It’s easy to be disgusted by these creatures and their barbaric ways, but then again, everyone needs to eat dinner and it looks like tonight’s menu was baby elephant.
The best feature of our banda is the platform, where you can roll out the bed and sleep under the stars. By the time we came back from dinner, the elephants had quieted down, but other night sounds had taken their place. Frogs, owls, and monkeys filled the night air with song as we fell asleep with only a mosquito net between us and the clear night sky.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Ol Lentille: A sultan’s retreat in the Kenyan hinterland
July 19, 2007 – Kenya
Our beds were very cozy—the kind where you sink beneath the covers. I slept so deeply I didn’t wake until 7:30AM. The sound of Giles’ conference call floated down from his office, which was above our room. I eavesdropped for a little while and then unburied myself from beneath the covers and jumped in the shower. Everything is solar powered, so I was impressed when hot water came out so early in the morning—they must also have a battery powered water heater.
As I dried my hair, the words “Mr. Bush” caught my eye. I looked closer to see a certificate hanging on the wall: it was from President Bush and his wife Laura, who were wishing Giles and Jesmina a happy marriage! If you ask Giles and Jesmina about it, they just laugh. They’re very liberal and don’t agree with most of Bush’s policies. But yes, the certificate is real. It turns out that Mr. Bush at one time dated Jesmina’s mother, long ago before presidency was even on the horizon.
We enjoyed a breakfast on the patio, overlooking the pool and the African wilderness beyond it. Spencer went for a ride on his horse (and tiny Oliver tried to join him), while Charly, Alex, and I enjoyed the peaceful patio. Jesmina certainly has her hands full with those two little boys! They are full of energy: Oliver never sleeps through the whole night and if you try to hold him, he’ll wriggle away; Spencer is very adamant with his yes’s and no’s and loves talking. Inside the house, we heard a mix of languages. Jesmina speaks to them in French, Giles speak to them in English, and their nanny speaks to them in Swahili.
At noon, we were joined by some Americans from AWF (African Wildlife Foundation). Jesmina invited us all to sit down for a cup of tea and then we packed up for our next adventure: a visit to Ol Lentille, another project that Giles has a hand in. We said our good-byes to Jesmina and the boys and then jumped in two cars to caravan up to Ol Lentille. Ol Lentille sits up on a rocky crag within a 6500 acre private conservancy, 75 kilometers north of Mt. Kenya. But unlike Ol Pejeta, it’s not really a game reserve, does not have as much wildlife, and is not set up to do wildlife watching.
Nonetheless, the scenery is astonishingly beautiful and we sat on the pool deck overlooking a vast, green plain as we ate a late lunch. After lunch, Alex and I were invited to go to a bead market. If it involves bead crafts, count me in. Alex wanted to see it too.
Big mistake.
I guess you can say we got more than we bargained for, but not in a good way. We took a van to a village area. Instead of seeing stalls with beaders and their wares, we were greeted by Masai women singing and marching towards us. Not only were they selling their beads, they were selling their culture. Next, the men came along doing their song and dance. Finally, we were allowed to go around and watch the Masai warriors playing a game like mankala and watch them making fire by rubbing a stick between two stones. You could even see inside a Masai home (upon further prodding, we discovered these homes were just set up for viewing). Alex and I are not big fans of this sort of thing, but we had a good time imagining what the American equivalent of this would be like…
Alex and I thought about setting up the hottest new tourist destination in North America: the American in his native habitat. You would come to the middle of the United States and go inside a suburbia house to observe an American family eating T.V. dinners and popcorn in front of the television. If you come at the right time, you can even see the rare teenage specimen playing video games. Okay, I’ll stop being so cynical. In fact, nothing is completely black and white and cultural tourism is not all bad. In some ways, I am glad the Masai can make money in a way that allows them to stay close to home and reduces their number of cattle and the stress on the land.
When we came back, I joined Charly for a refreshing jump in the ice cold pool. On the way back to our bungalow, we stopped by Giles’ place. Here at Ol Lentille, each party stays in a bungalow. Ours is called the Sultan House. I don’t recall what Giles’ is called, but he calls it the Austin Powers’ suite. And it truly is. There is a round bed with a shaggy blanket on top, two curvy vases, and a glittery curtain leading to the bathroom. I loved this place…it’s so out of place and crazy that it works. The other bungalows at Ol Lentille are less exciting. On the whole, the architecture is not as captivating or coherent as I expected. It may because the managers are not Kenyan and there is less of a local hand in the whole building, planning, and implementing process. Still, there are some really cool spots where the natural boulders of the landscape become part of the rooms, which I really liked.
Before dinner, Alex, Charly, and I enjoyed sitting out beneath the stars with Giles. We were getting him up to speed on computer technology, internet marketing, Google, and the internet world. It’s funny because Giles is so super intelligent, but then he just doesn’t know very much about computers. He was amused by the Silicon Valley techie world, which reminded us of the bubble we live in.
The four of us joined the AWF folks for dinner in the Sultan House. After dinner, Alex and I tucked Charly into bed and a huge tickle battle ensued. It appeared as though the children faction had gained the upper hand when suddenly Charly came back with full force and we ran away to our beds giggling.
Our beds were very cozy—the kind where you sink beneath the covers. I slept so deeply I didn’t wake until 7:30AM. The sound of Giles’ conference call floated down from his office, which was above our room. I eavesdropped for a little while and then unburied myself from beneath the covers and jumped in the shower. Everything is solar powered, so I was impressed when hot water came out so early in the morning—they must also have a battery powered water heater.
As I dried my hair, the words “Mr. Bush” caught my eye. I looked closer to see a certificate hanging on the wall: it was from President Bush and his wife Laura, who were wishing Giles and Jesmina a happy marriage! If you ask Giles and Jesmina about it, they just laugh. They’re very liberal and don’t agree with most of Bush’s policies. But yes, the certificate is real. It turns out that Mr. Bush at one time dated Jesmina’s mother, long ago before presidency was even on the horizon.
We enjoyed a breakfast on the patio, overlooking the pool and the African wilderness beyond it. Spencer went for a ride on his horse (and tiny Oliver tried to join him), while Charly, Alex, and I enjoyed the peaceful patio. Jesmina certainly has her hands full with those two little boys! They are full of energy: Oliver never sleeps through the whole night and if you try to hold him, he’ll wriggle away; Spencer is very adamant with his yes’s and no’s and loves talking. Inside the house, we heard a mix of languages. Jesmina speaks to them in French, Giles speak to them in English, and their nanny speaks to them in Swahili.
At noon, we were joined by some Americans from AWF (African Wildlife Foundation). Jesmina invited us all to sit down for a cup of tea and then we packed up for our next adventure: a visit to Ol Lentille, another project that Giles has a hand in. We said our good-byes to Jesmina and the boys and then jumped in two cars to caravan up to Ol Lentille. Ol Lentille sits up on a rocky crag within a 6500 acre private conservancy, 75 kilometers north of Mt. Kenya. But unlike Ol Pejeta, it’s not really a game reserve, does not have as much wildlife, and is not set up to do wildlife watching.
Nonetheless, the scenery is astonishingly beautiful and we sat on the pool deck overlooking a vast, green plain as we ate a late lunch. After lunch, Alex and I were invited to go to a bead market. If it involves bead crafts, count me in. Alex wanted to see it too.
Big mistake.
I guess you can say we got more than we bargained for, but not in a good way. We took a van to a village area. Instead of seeing stalls with beaders and their wares, we were greeted by Masai women singing and marching towards us. Not only were they selling their beads, they were selling their culture. Next, the men came along doing their song and dance. Finally, we were allowed to go around and watch the Masai warriors playing a game like mankala and watch them making fire by rubbing a stick between two stones. You could even see inside a Masai home (upon further prodding, we discovered these homes were just set up for viewing). Alex and I are not big fans of this sort of thing, but we had a good time imagining what the American equivalent of this would be like…
Alex and I thought about setting up the hottest new tourist destination in North America: the American in his native habitat. You would come to the middle of the United States and go inside a suburbia house to observe an American family eating T.V. dinners and popcorn in front of the television. If you come at the right time, you can even see the rare teenage specimen playing video games. Okay, I’ll stop being so cynical. In fact, nothing is completely black and white and cultural tourism is not all bad. In some ways, I am glad the Masai can make money in a way that allows them to stay close to home and reduces their number of cattle and the stress on the land.
When we came back, I joined Charly for a refreshing jump in the ice cold pool. On the way back to our bungalow, we stopped by Giles’ place. Here at Ol Lentille, each party stays in a bungalow. Ours is called the Sultan House. I don’t recall what Giles’ is called, but he calls it the Austin Powers’ suite. And it truly is. There is a round bed with a shaggy blanket on top, two curvy vases, and a glittery curtain leading to the bathroom. I loved this place…it’s so out of place and crazy that it works. The other bungalows at Ol Lentille are less exciting. On the whole, the architecture is not as captivating or coherent as I expected. It may because the managers are not Kenyan and there is less of a local hand in the whole building, planning, and implementing process. Still, there are some really cool spots where the natural boulders of the landscape become part of the rooms, which I really liked.
Before dinner, Alex, Charly, and I enjoyed sitting out beneath the stars with Giles. We were getting him up to speed on computer technology, internet marketing, Google, and the internet world. It’s funny because Giles is so super intelligent, but then he just doesn’t know very much about computers. He was amused by the Silicon Valley techie world, which reminded us of the bubble we live in.
The four of us joined the AWF folks for dinner in the Sultan House. After dinner, Alex and I tucked Charly into bed and a huge tickle battle ensued. It appeared as though the children faction had gained the upper hand when suddenly Charly came back with full force and we ran away to our beds giggling.
A Full Day of Flying and an Introduction to the World of Private Wildlife Conservation
July 18, 2007 – Kenya
It was still dark outside when we heard Charly interrupt our dreams with a, “Dally dally, Kinder. It’s time to get up.” Ugggggghhhhh is pretty much the response he elicited. Nonetheless, the two of us were up shortly thereafter and quickly pulled on a warm layer of clothing before zipping and locking up our suitcases. It was time to head out. We had to catch a Safarilink flight from Nairobi up north to Nanyuki.
Safarilink is notoriously untimely and can arrive anywhere from 2 hours early to 2 hours late, but we hedged our bets and went for right on time. We were dropped off at Wilson Airport at 7:15 and were happily early. The flight was still scheduled to leave at 8AM.
The airport check-in was housed in what looked like a department store meets NASA control station. It was strangely homey, with its cozy orange chairs and café bar. And you could look straight through a partially sand blasted glass wall to see a hanger with new planes. Alex and I ate a small breakfast and drank extremely sweet canned fruit drinks that were covered with Arabic wording. Still exhausted, we couldn’t help but fall asleep in the cozy orange chairs. At 8 O’clock, the check-in counter attendants called our names and we stepped onto a van. The driver played loud hip hop music that definitely woke us up and we were dropped off at the departures terminal. As we looked at the field of tiny Cessnas getting fueled and cleaned, an airport official told us that the other eight passengers for our plane just called Safarilink. They got stuck in traffic, so the plane would be leaving late. We bought skittles at the convenience store and avoided paying the airport official the bribes he asked for.
Our flight was short and sweet and we landed in Nanyuki at midday. At the airport, we met Giles Davies. Giles is a friend of a friend. He is also a guru when it comes to private wildlife conservation. He is on the board of about twenty-some-odd private wildlife conservancy organizations and the founder of several of these. His life began in Kenya, but he did his schooling in England and ended up marrying a French girl, Jesmina. Jesmina told us, “He was always saying I want to go back to Kenya, I’d love to go back to Kenya. So I said, alright then, let’s go.” (I really like Jesmina! Giles is lucky to have such an adventurous wife). And here they are, living in a beautiful house near Nanyuki with their two adorable sons: Spencer (3.5 years old) and Oliver (1.5 years old).
In fact, this is the house we were trying to get to as we left the Nanyuki airport, when our car suddenly started to shake uncontrollably. Giles’ was borrowing on of his neighbor’s cars because his plane was temporarily being serviced. It felt like the wheel axes were misaligned and like the car was about to rattle itself to pieces. Rather than have an accident, we turned around and went straight back to the airport. Jaime, one of Giles’ friends arranged a helicopter ride straight to Ol Pejeta Conservancy (which would have been our next stop anyway) and we took it.
Ol Pejeta is one of Giles’ projects. It is located on the Laikipia plateau, a region where it is almost impossible to grow crops due to limited rainfall. As such, Ol Pejeta has traditionally been a site for cattle herding. When people first began herding there, they assumed that wildlife and cattle are mutually exclusive. They thought that the two would compete for food and resources (not to mention that lions would eat the cattle). However, it was difficult to keep away all the wildlife. As more elephants moved into the region from the north and farmers began to encroach from the south, the cattle herders had smaller and smaller areas to herd. The profitability of cattle herding in the region plummeted and the owner of Ol Pejeta tried to sub divide the land and sell it. Fortunately, the entire ranch was purchased by FFI (Fauna & Flora International) and then ownership was passed to the Kenyan Ol Pejeta Conservancy.
It is now a rhino conservancy. What does that mean? From a cash flow perspective, it means paying twice the money to manage the same area. The owners must install electric fencing around the perimeter and purchase appropriate tracking and monitoring equipment to keep tabs on the rhinos. More importantly…it means saving the rhinos, of course :-)
The worldwide black rhino population basically went into freefall the past century. Starting at around 100,000 in 1900, the numbers are now thought to be around 500. Although Ol Pejeta (with 90,000 acres) has the capacity to support over 120 rhinos, it currently has only 74. But 74 is 30 more than they had in Winter. Just this February, Ol Pejeta received 30 black rhinos from Solio Rhino sanctuary in central Kenya. Transferring rhinos is important to avoid overstocking at any one reserve and to keep the rhino breeding rates high. Did you know that Rhinos naturally control their population size to correlate with the carrying capacity of the land? As their population reaches carrying capacity, rhinos start to give birth to more males and the calving period lengthens from 2.5 to 3.5 years. Over time only new males remain and there are no longer as many offspring because there are fewer females to become pregnant. Very smart animals! If only humans did the same.
While at Ol Pejeta, we had a chance to talk with the rhino security team and the executive director of Ol Pejeta, Richard Vigne. At age three, rhinos are given a tag (which is placed in their front horn). This is used to track the rhinos, so the security team can check on their location at all times through Google Earth. The tracking devices also help the rhino veterinarian find any rhino that has been attacked by lions or humans. Plus, the tags are an added deterrent to poachers who fear they will be tracked when they try to sell rhino horn. Poachers are the main rhino-killers. Right now, with the price of rhino horn the highest it’s ever been, the security team is very anxious. It is no comfort to know that Kenyan law does not heavily penalize poachers and most poachers can easily pay bail with the income they earn from selling rhino horn.
From a business perspective, it is interesting to see how the Ol Pejeta team has diversified their portfolio. Like most wildlife conservancies, the majority of Ol Pejeta’s money comes from tourism (they run a seasonal tented camp and a lodge house). However, tourism is a fickle industry and they need to mitigate losses when there’s a downturn (particularly since Ol Pejeta is a for-profit business and can’t simply rely on grants). As such, they have also invested in 4000 acres of wheat and thousands of cattle. In fact, they have successfully pioneered wildlife and cattle integration by building lion-deterring cattle pens for during the night. Ol Pejeta also earns a lot of tourism from its Chimpanzee Sanctuary, which has 41 chimpanzees.
With so many different business aspects to discuss, we didn’t leave Ol Pejeta until dinner time. Giles borrowed a car from the security team, and we drove to his house for the night. At the gate, we were greeted by three blood hounds, three half blood hounds, one wild dog, two little boys, and Jesmina. Giles and Jesmina have quite the animal menagerie (not to mention a gorgeous house that they built themselves). After looking at “flogs” (aka frogs) in the pond outside with Spencer, we all came in for drinks and dinner. Spencer and Oliver were put into bed and we sat around the fire, enjoying the warmth and good conversation.
The house is amazing. It has thick clay walls and tall thatched roofs, huge couches with sleeping dogs, an orphaned bush baby (like a deer), and a dik dik (small antelope). The latter two run around in the garden and sometimes even in the house!
It was still dark outside when we heard Charly interrupt our dreams with a, “Dally dally, Kinder. It’s time to get up.” Ugggggghhhhh is pretty much the response he elicited. Nonetheless, the two of us were up shortly thereafter and quickly pulled on a warm layer of clothing before zipping and locking up our suitcases. It was time to head out. We had to catch a Safarilink flight from Nairobi up north to Nanyuki.
Safarilink is notoriously untimely and can arrive anywhere from 2 hours early to 2 hours late, but we hedged our bets and went for right on time. We were dropped off at Wilson Airport at 7:15 and were happily early. The flight was still scheduled to leave at 8AM.
The airport check-in was housed in what looked like a department store meets NASA control station. It was strangely homey, with its cozy orange chairs and café bar. And you could look straight through a partially sand blasted glass wall to see a hanger with new planes. Alex and I ate a small breakfast and drank extremely sweet canned fruit drinks that were covered with Arabic wording. Still exhausted, we couldn’t help but fall asleep in the cozy orange chairs. At 8 O’clock, the check-in counter attendants called our names and we stepped onto a van. The driver played loud hip hop music that definitely woke us up and we were dropped off at the departures terminal. As we looked at the field of tiny Cessnas getting fueled and cleaned, an airport official told us that the other eight passengers for our plane just called Safarilink. They got stuck in traffic, so the plane would be leaving late. We bought skittles at the convenience store and avoided paying the airport official the bribes he asked for.
Our flight was short and sweet and we landed in Nanyuki at midday. At the airport, we met Giles Davies. Giles is a friend of a friend. He is also a guru when it comes to private wildlife conservation. He is on the board of about twenty-some-odd private wildlife conservancy organizations and the founder of several of these. His life began in Kenya, but he did his schooling in England and ended up marrying a French girl, Jesmina. Jesmina told us, “He was always saying I want to go back to Kenya, I’d love to go back to Kenya. So I said, alright then, let’s go.” (I really like Jesmina! Giles is lucky to have such an adventurous wife). And here they are, living in a beautiful house near Nanyuki with their two adorable sons: Spencer (3.5 years old) and Oliver (1.5 years old).
In fact, this is the house we were trying to get to as we left the Nanyuki airport, when our car suddenly started to shake uncontrollably. Giles’ was borrowing on of his neighbor’s cars because his plane was temporarily being serviced. It felt like the wheel axes were misaligned and like the car was about to rattle itself to pieces. Rather than have an accident, we turned around and went straight back to the airport. Jaime, one of Giles’ friends arranged a helicopter ride straight to Ol Pejeta Conservancy (which would have been our next stop anyway) and we took it.
Ol Pejeta is one of Giles’ projects. It is located on the Laikipia plateau, a region where it is almost impossible to grow crops due to limited rainfall. As such, Ol Pejeta has traditionally been a site for cattle herding. When people first began herding there, they assumed that wildlife and cattle are mutually exclusive. They thought that the two would compete for food and resources (not to mention that lions would eat the cattle). However, it was difficult to keep away all the wildlife. As more elephants moved into the region from the north and farmers began to encroach from the south, the cattle herders had smaller and smaller areas to herd. The profitability of cattle herding in the region plummeted and the owner of Ol Pejeta tried to sub divide the land and sell it. Fortunately, the entire ranch was purchased by FFI (Fauna & Flora International) and then ownership was passed to the Kenyan Ol Pejeta Conservancy.
It is now a rhino conservancy. What does that mean? From a cash flow perspective, it means paying twice the money to manage the same area. The owners must install electric fencing around the perimeter and purchase appropriate tracking and monitoring equipment to keep tabs on the rhinos. More importantly…it means saving the rhinos, of course :-)
The worldwide black rhino population basically went into freefall the past century. Starting at around 100,000 in 1900, the numbers are now thought to be around 500. Although Ol Pejeta (with 90,000 acres) has the capacity to support over 120 rhinos, it currently has only 74. But 74 is 30 more than they had in Winter. Just this February, Ol Pejeta received 30 black rhinos from Solio Rhino sanctuary in central Kenya. Transferring rhinos is important to avoid overstocking at any one reserve and to keep the rhino breeding rates high. Did you know that Rhinos naturally control their population size to correlate with the carrying capacity of the land? As their population reaches carrying capacity, rhinos start to give birth to more males and the calving period lengthens from 2.5 to 3.5 years. Over time only new males remain and there are no longer as many offspring because there are fewer females to become pregnant. Very smart animals! If only humans did the same.
While at Ol Pejeta, we had a chance to talk with the rhino security team and the executive director of Ol Pejeta, Richard Vigne. At age three, rhinos are given a tag (which is placed in their front horn). This is used to track the rhinos, so the security team can check on their location at all times through Google Earth. The tracking devices also help the rhino veterinarian find any rhino that has been attacked by lions or humans. Plus, the tags are an added deterrent to poachers who fear they will be tracked when they try to sell rhino horn. Poachers are the main rhino-killers. Right now, with the price of rhino horn the highest it’s ever been, the security team is very anxious. It is no comfort to know that Kenyan law does not heavily penalize poachers and most poachers can easily pay bail with the income they earn from selling rhino horn.
From a business perspective, it is interesting to see how the Ol Pejeta team has diversified their portfolio. Like most wildlife conservancies, the majority of Ol Pejeta’s money comes from tourism (they run a seasonal tented camp and a lodge house). However, tourism is a fickle industry and they need to mitigate losses when there’s a downturn (particularly since Ol Pejeta is a for-profit business and can’t simply rely on grants). As such, they have also invested in 4000 acres of wheat and thousands of cattle. In fact, they have successfully pioneered wildlife and cattle integration by building lion-deterring cattle pens for during the night. Ol Pejeta also earns a lot of tourism from its Chimpanzee Sanctuary, which has 41 chimpanzees.
With so many different business aspects to discuss, we didn’t leave Ol Pejeta until dinner time. Giles borrowed a car from the security team, and we drove to his house for the night. At the gate, we were greeted by three blood hounds, three half blood hounds, one wild dog, two little boys, and Jesmina. Giles and Jesmina have quite the animal menagerie (not to mention a gorgeous house that they built themselves). After looking at “flogs” (aka frogs) in the pond outside with Spencer, we all came in for drinks and dinner. Spencer and Oliver were put into bed and we sat around the fire, enjoying the warmth and good conversation.
The house is amazing. It has thick clay walls and tall thatched roofs, huge couches with sleeping dogs, an orphaned bush baby (like a deer), and a dik dik (small antelope). The latter two run around in the garden and sometimes even in the house!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
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.
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.
July 16, 2007 – Kenya
People always say it’s impossible to account for social return on investment (SROI). Until today, I probably would have agreed with them. I’ve read Sara Olsen and others’ literature, but I’ve never seen really good SROI in action.
And that is when we met Regina. She works for KickStart, a Kenyan nonprofit that sells income-generating technologies that are affordable to the bottom of the pyramid. Their most successful product line is water pumps, but they also sell hay bailers, oil presses, brick-making machines, and bicycle racks.
Regina is not a city girl. She grew up in the countryside and came to the city for college, to study finance. Now she does social accounting. And…how? you may be wondering…
When KickStart sells a pump, they guarantee a one-year warranty. The buyer must write down his/her name, the name they usually go by, and where they live. Originally, KickStart just asked for a buyer’s name and location. When they went to the village, they would ask to see so-and-so, and the villagers would say, “the one whose sister just married?” or say “the one whose brother just had a baby?” The next question would be, “why do you want to know all this information?” They immediately became suspicious.
On the other hand, if you say, “Please may I speak with Regina, also known as Mama Jaime” they’ll know exactly who you’re talking about and they’ll be impressed, “How do you know Mama Jaime?”. Even Mama Jaime herself has usually forgotten the warranty information she filled out, “Oh that? Lots of products say warranty, but I never thought you’d actually come out here.”
It is a cultural thing. If you ever get lost in the countryside, you never just ask for directions. You greet each other, ask about family, work, life. After 20 minutes you may come around to asking for directions. Getting any more direct than that is considered very rude.
Instead, Regina sets aside a whole day to evaluate just two customers. This gives her time to chitchat and tell stories that help her wean out the information she needs. For example, you can not just ask a Kenyan woman how many children she has. She will usually say two (to avoid looking old-fashioned and uneducated, especially when talking to city folks). If she knows an NGO is coming to give handouts, she will suddenly have ten. Even the neighbors’ kids are all there in a row with dirt rubbed on their faces and looking miserable. She does whatever she can to get the most free bednets, free medication, and free food she can.
When Regina arrives unannounced, the villagers always say, “Hey Regina, my friend, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” She is able to see right away whether they are using the water pumps or whether the pumps are just sitting in the corner collecting cobwebs.
Regina keeps a separate client database for each of the three water pumps that KickStart sells. Currently, approximately 60% of their 40,000 customers are in the database. The goal is to look at personal growth: how does a farmer’s income with the pump compare to his/her income before the purchase of the pump. After the baseline assessment, subsequent assessments are taken at 18 months and 36 months after purchase. By going at village pace and always striking a two-way conversation, Regina has earned a place that feels like home in every community she’s worked with.
A lot of what Regina does is education. Most of the farmers have never “kept books” before. So, Regina translates important financial terms into village analogies. A pump becomes a daughter: the farmer pays her dowry and has no debt. Regina then asks, “Has the daughter been good? Will KickStart be able to marry off its other daughters?” Regina had to laugh when one woman told her that KickStart’s daughter has been like a whore…the neighbors, family, and friends have used her. They all don’t have enough money to buy one of their own.
Feedback like this led to the creation of the hip pump…a lower end pump that almost anyone can afford. Many villagers buy the hip pump and work their way up to the highest end pump, called the super money maker. Villagers can even trade in their old pump and get a discount on the upgrade.
We visited two families today. I particularly enjoyed visiting the second family. Mr. and Mrs. Habari are an older couple who still need to earn an income now that their children have grown up and moved out. I was amazed by their by their growth…in just one and a half years, they had tripled the size of their land and were producing 650 kilos of French beans for 45 Shillings (about 75 cents) a kilo. Mr. Habari is now looking at different produce buyers to find the best channel for selling his crops. As we left, they said we are welcome to come back any time, but that we probably won’t find them in their house because they prefer the office (their beautiful fields).
Our next stop was a move up the supply chain. We went back into town to visit one of the water pump dealers. Mr. Kimani is the man. He owns Farmwise, a farming supply store in Sabasaba (a subtown of Nairobi). When other store owners refused to take on the risk of buying KickStart’s pumps, he was willing to take the leap. Now he earns 17% profit on each pump and also gets extra business from visitors who are interested in seeing the pump in action. In a year, he sells about 170 pumps. In fact, the pumps make such good business, he does not mind spending his own money to advocate them.
After eating a quick lunch in the parking lot of a large superstore, we went to the water pump manufacturing plant. The pump manufacturing takes place at a car manufacturing plant. Though I’m not sure how the car manufacturer stays afloat with competitors like Numi, the simple facilities were perfect for what KickStart needs. Everyone was on lunch break when we arrived, but a few welders took us through the entire process. It was sheet metal bending and welding galore, not to mention sheet metal rolling (which has a special place in my heart)! As you can imagine, I was quite fascinated.
Phew…this is a marathon blog entry...
In fact, the actual day itself was quite exhausting, but we could hardly say no when another amazing opportunity presented itself and Regina and James wanted to take us to KickStart’s headquarters. As I stepped out of the car, I looked overhead and saw a hose dangling between the 40-foot-tall building beside us and the 100-foot-tall building across the street. On the roof, a team of engineers was busily taking figures, peaking over the edge of the building, and pumping water out of two buckets that stood at the base of the building. Regina quickly explained that the KickStart engineers are working on a new, deep water pump that can extract and pump water that sits 40 or even up to 100 feet underground through simple treadle motion.
We went up and joined the engineers on top of the building to look at their research process. Then we came back down and visited the product showroom, where we saw all the products KickStart has ever produced. One fun product that should be coming out soon is a bicycle add-on seat/storage rack. It’s actually big enough for two people to sit on back! Bike racks have an interesting history in Kenya. Not too long ago, the Kenyan government began enforcing stricter safety rules on the matatus (local buses)—now there can only be one person per seat, and each person must wear a seatbelt. As matatu prices soared, a new market opened up – bicycle taxis, also called Bodabodas. People attached racks to their bicycles and charged a cheaper price for transport. Today, the Bodabodas still exist and are a booming industry.
In the evening, we went back to Palacina Hotel to meet up for dinner with Nick Moon, a co-founder of KickStart. We talked about how KickStart began…how Nick Moon worked in the NGO sector in Kenya for some time and started to see its inefficiencies; how he realized that the work he was doing wasn’t doing much more than making himself feel good; and how little by little, it was failing to do even that. Nick has a fascinating background growing up in India and Singapore and has always had a global outlook. He is a carpenter and craftsman by trade and he had been teaching Kenyan school children how to build tables and other wood work so they might augment their income. By some wonderful fortune, Nick met Martin Fisher. Martin looked at the machines Nick was using to train Kenyans in carpentry and other crafts, thought it was good work, but knew it could be done better. As a mechanical engineer, Martin was able to redesign many of the machines. At the time, Martin was also researching a lot about appropriate design for the developing world and was interested in designing helpful machines that are easy to operate and affordable. Seeing that these products could really become a viable market, Nick and Martin founded KickStart.
We spent the rest of the evening talking about hybrid business models and fincancial sustainability, until Alex and I became too tired to keep our eyes open.
Off to bed...
People always say it’s impossible to account for social return on investment (SROI). Until today, I probably would have agreed with them. I’ve read Sara Olsen and others’ literature, but I’ve never seen really good SROI in action.
And that is when we met Regina. She works for KickStart, a Kenyan nonprofit that sells income-generating technologies that are affordable to the bottom of the pyramid. Their most successful product line is water pumps, but they also sell hay bailers, oil presses, brick-making machines, and bicycle racks.
Regina is not a city girl. She grew up in the countryside and came to the city for college, to study finance. Now she does social accounting. And…how? you may be wondering…
When KickStart sells a pump, they guarantee a one-year warranty. The buyer must write down his/her name, the name they usually go by, and where they live. Originally, KickStart just asked for a buyer’s name and location. When they went to the village, they would ask to see so-and-so, and the villagers would say, “the one whose sister just married?” or say “the one whose brother just had a baby?” The next question would be, “why do you want to know all this information?” They immediately became suspicious.
On the other hand, if you say, “Please may I speak with Regina, also known as Mama Jaime” they’ll know exactly who you’re talking about and they’ll be impressed, “How do you know Mama Jaime?”. Even Mama Jaime herself has usually forgotten the warranty information she filled out, “Oh that? Lots of products say warranty, but I never thought you’d actually come out here.”
It is a cultural thing. If you ever get lost in the countryside, you never just ask for directions. You greet each other, ask about family, work, life. After 20 minutes you may come around to asking for directions. Getting any more direct than that is considered very rude.
Instead, Regina sets aside a whole day to evaluate just two customers. This gives her time to chitchat and tell stories that help her wean out the information she needs. For example, you can not just ask a Kenyan woman how many children she has. She will usually say two (to avoid looking old-fashioned and uneducated, especially when talking to city folks). If she knows an NGO is coming to give handouts, she will suddenly have ten. Even the neighbors’ kids are all there in a row with dirt rubbed on their faces and looking miserable. She does whatever she can to get the most free bednets, free medication, and free food she can.
When Regina arrives unannounced, the villagers always say, “Hey Regina, my friend, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” She is able to see right away whether they are using the water pumps or whether the pumps are just sitting in the corner collecting cobwebs.
Regina keeps a separate client database for each of the three water pumps that KickStart sells. Currently, approximately 60% of their 40,000 customers are in the database. The goal is to look at personal growth: how does a farmer’s income with the pump compare to his/her income before the purchase of the pump. After the baseline assessment, subsequent assessments are taken at 18 months and 36 months after purchase. By going at village pace and always striking a two-way conversation, Regina has earned a place that feels like home in every community she’s worked with.
A lot of what Regina does is education. Most of the farmers have never “kept books” before. So, Regina translates important financial terms into village analogies. A pump becomes a daughter: the farmer pays her dowry and has no debt. Regina then asks, “Has the daughter been good? Will KickStart be able to marry off its other daughters?” Regina had to laugh when one woman told her that KickStart’s daughter has been like a whore…the neighbors, family, and friends have used her. They all don’t have enough money to buy one of their own.
Feedback like this led to the creation of the hip pump…a lower end pump that almost anyone can afford. Many villagers buy the hip pump and work their way up to the highest end pump, called the super money maker. Villagers can even trade in their old pump and get a discount on the upgrade.
We visited two families today. I particularly enjoyed visiting the second family. Mr. and Mrs. Habari are an older couple who still need to earn an income now that their children have grown up and moved out. I was amazed by their by their growth…in just one and a half years, they had tripled the size of their land and were producing 650 kilos of French beans for 45 Shillings (about 75 cents) a kilo. Mr. Habari is now looking at different produce buyers to find the best channel for selling his crops. As we left, they said we are welcome to come back any time, but that we probably won’t find them in their house because they prefer the office (their beautiful fields).
Our next stop was a move up the supply chain. We went back into town to visit one of the water pump dealers. Mr. Kimani is the man. He owns Farmwise, a farming supply store in Sabasaba (a subtown of Nairobi). When other store owners refused to take on the risk of buying KickStart’s pumps, he was willing to take the leap. Now he earns 17% profit on each pump and also gets extra business from visitors who are interested in seeing the pump in action. In a year, he sells about 170 pumps. In fact, the pumps make such good business, he does not mind spending his own money to advocate them.
After eating a quick lunch in the parking lot of a large superstore, we went to the water pump manufacturing plant. The pump manufacturing takes place at a car manufacturing plant. Though I’m not sure how the car manufacturer stays afloat with competitors like Numi, the simple facilities were perfect for what KickStart needs. Everyone was on lunch break when we arrived, but a few welders took us through the entire process. It was sheet metal bending and welding galore, not to mention sheet metal rolling (which has a special place in my heart)! As you can imagine, I was quite fascinated.
Phew…this is a marathon blog entry...
In fact, the actual day itself was quite exhausting, but we could hardly say no when another amazing opportunity presented itself and Regina and James wanted to take us to KickStart’s headquarters. As I stepped out of the car, I looked overhead and saw a hose dangling between the 40-foot-tall building beside us and the 100-foot-tall building across the street. On the roof, a team of engineers was busily taking figures, peaking over the edge of the building, and pumping water out of two buckets that stood at the base of the building. Regina quickly explained that the KickStart engineers are working on a new, deep water pump that can extract and pump water that sits 40 or even up to 100 feet underground through simple treadle motion.
We went up and joined the engineers on top of the building to look at their research process. Then we came back down and visited the product showroom, where we saw all the products KickStart has ever produced. One fun product that should be coming out soon is a bicycle add-on seat/storage rack. It’s actually big enough for two people to sit on back! Bike racks have an interesting history in Kenya. Not too long ago, the Kenyan government began enforcing stricter safety rules on the matatus (local buses)—now there can only be one person per seat, and each person must wear a seatbelt. As matatu prices soared, a new market opened up – bicycle taxis, also called Bodabodas. People attached racks to their bicycles and charged a cheaper price for transport. Today, the Bodabodas still exist and are a booming industry.
In the evening, we went back to Palacina Hotel to meet up for dinner with Nick Moon, a co-founder of KickStart. We talked about how KickStart began…how Nick Moon worked in the NGO sector in Kenya for some time and started to see its inefficiencies; how he realized that the work he was doing wasn’t doing much more than making himself feel good; and how little by little, it was failing to do even that. Nick has a fascinating background growing up in India and Singapore and has always had a global outlook. He is a carpenter and craftsman by trade and he had been teaching Kenyan school children how to build tables and other wood work so they might augment their income. By some wonderful fortune, Nick met Martin Fisher. Martin looked at the machines Nick was using to train Kenyans in carpentry and other crafts, thought it was good work, but knew it could be done better. As a mechanical engineer, Martin was able to redesign many of the machines. At the time, Martin was also researching a lot about appropriate design for the developing world and was interested in designing helpful machines that are easy to operate and affordable. Seeing that these products could really become a viable market, Nick and Martin founded KickStart.
We spent the rest of the evening talking about hybrid business models and fincancial sustainability, until Alex and I became too tired to keep our eyes open.
Off to bed...
July 15, 2007 – In transit from Kilimanjaro to Nairobi
It was drizzling when we awoke this morning. All the trees were dripping and the smell of fresh farm soil was magnificent. We ate a hardy farmhouse breakfast, with real sausage and real coffee, which made Charly very happy.
After one last piece of toast and one last sip of juice, Alex and I went back to our room to grab the luggage. We were at once assailed by three staff members who all wanted to relieve us of our bags. You have to be very sneaky to escape them because they will even try to whisk your suitcase straight from your hand. But with a few Capoeira moves, we managed to dodge them.
Today, we took it easy. Our flight wasn’t until around 3PM, we were starting at 9:30AM, and Kilimanjaro airport was only 2.5 hours away. We used our extra time to stop at various gift shops along the way.
It was still raining outside as we rolled out of the Farmhouse gates. The road was paved and smooth, but our windshield wipers were broken. Mbisi did his best to avoid the larger blurry blobs (trucks) on the right-hand side and the smaller blurry blobs (humans) on the left, (while we all held our breaths).
Our first stop was a T-shirt factory where Charly bought a shirt to replace one that went missing in the laundry last week. When we came back to the car, we were all relieved to see that the sun had come out again. Mbisi gave the windshield one quick wipe with a towel, and we were on our way.
After stopping at one more gift shop and eating lunch, we began to feel a bit of time pressure to get to the airport. Happily for the environment but unhappily for anxious travelers, Mbisi drives to maximize fuel efficiency. Though he made attempts to pass the dalla dalla buses ahead of us, he very reluctantly accelerated and made Charly *almost* wish for my lead foot.
Our plane was actually delayed by half an hour, so we arrived at the airport just in time. Alex bought two bottles of Amarula and some postcards to get rid of our remaining Tanzanian shillings. And we boarded a small, two-propeller plane.
The flight from Kilimanjaro to Nairobi is short. By the time you reach steady altitude, it is nearly time to come down again.
We arrived in Nairobi in late afternoon and took a taxi straight to the Palacina Hotel. In our room, we bagged up our dusty safari clothes and organized the laundry lists. Alex and I hopped over to the gym while Charly did some reading. Then the three of us went for dinner at the Palacina restaurant, where we shared three yummy salads and Charly ate an ostrich steak!
The evening was free for reading, internet, and relaxation. I worked on the computers in the lobby of the hotel, but it wasn’t until midnight that the lobby attendant turned down the smooth jazz to a background hum. It was so nice to work – the lobby was abandoned and quiet, and the internet was free.
When I finally glanced at my watch, it was 2AM, so I packed up. The lobby attendant unlocked the door and I walked through the silent car lot over to the apartment building. Crunch, crunch, crunch (the gravel under my feet). I walked rather quickly, not wanting to be in Nairobi by myself at 2 in the morning.
The armed parking lot attendant reminded me, “It’s already morning,” and I hurried on. At our building, the gate was locked and the security man opened his window with drowsy eyes. He silently unlocked the door and I walked past. The flickering light of his TV followed me up the stairs until I was safely tucked away inside our room. I locked the door, turned off the light, and fumbled my way to bed. I was about to get in when I hit the bednet. A battle with the bednet ensued, but I finally made it through and under the covers.
It was drizzling when we awoke this morning. All the trees were dripping and the smell of fresh farm soil was magnificent. We ate a hardy farmhouse breakfast, with real sausage and real coffee, which made Charly very happy.
After one last piece of toast and one last sip of juice, Alex and I went back to our room to grab the luggage. We were at once assailed by three staff members who all wanted to relieve us of our bags. You have to be very sneaky to escape them because they will even try to whisk your suitcase straight from your hand. But with a few Capoeira moves, we managed to dodge them.
Today, we took it easy. Our flight wasn’t until around 3PM, we were starting at 9:30AM, and Kilimanjaro airport was only 2.5 hours away. We used our extra time to stop at various gift shops along the way.
It was still raining outside as we rolled out of the Farmhouse gates. The road was paved and smooth, but our windshield wipers were broken. Mbisi did his best to avoid the larger blurry blobs (trucks) on the right-hand side and the smaller blurry blobs (humans) on the left, (while we all held our breaths).
Our first stop was a T-shirt factory where Charly bought a shirt to replace one that went missing in the laundry last week. When we came back to the car, we were all relieved to see that the sun had come out again. Mbisi gave the windshield one quick wipe with a towel, and we were on our way.
After stopping at one more gift shop and eating lunch, we began to feel a bit of time pressure to get to the airport. Happily for the environment but unhappily for anxious travelers, Mbisi drives to maximize fuel efficiency. Though he made attempts to pass the dalla dalla buses ahead of us, he very reluctantly accelerated and made Charly *almost* wish for my lead foot.
Our plane was actually delayed by half an hour, so we arrived at the airport just in time. Alex bought two bottles of Amarula and some postcards to get rid of our remaining Tanzanian shillings. And we boarded a small, two-propeller plane.
The flight from Kilimanjaro to Nairobi is short. By the time you reach steady altitude, it is nearly time to come down again.
We arrived in Nairobi in late afternoon and took a taxi straight to the Palacina Hotel. In our room, we bagged up our dusty safari clothes and organized the laundry lists. Alex and I hopped over to the gym while Charly did some reading. Then the three of us went for dinner at the Palacina restaurant, where we shared three yummy salads and Charly ate an ostrich steak!
The evening was free for reading, internet, and relaxation. I worked on the computers in the lobby of the hotel, but it wasn’t until midnight that the lobby attendant turned down the smooth jazz to a background hum. It was so nice to work – the lobby was abandoned and quiet, and the internet was free.
When I finally glanced at my watch, it was 2AM, so I packed up. The lobby attendant unlocked the door and I walked through the silent car lot over to the apartment building. Crunch, crunch, crunch (the gravel under my feet). I walked rather quickly, not wanting to be in Nairobi by myself at 2 in the morning.
The armed parking lot attendant reminded me, “It’s already morning,” and I hurried on. At our building, the gate was locked and the security man opened his window with drowsy eyes. He silently unlocked the door and I walked past. The flickering light of his TV followed me up the stairs until I was safely tucked away inside our room. I locked the door, turned off the light, and fumbled my way to bed. I was about to get in when I hit the bednet. A battle with the bednet ensued, but I finally made it through and under the covers.
Monday, July 16, 2007
July 11-14 - Tanzania
So, in the Kleissner family, we have a saying that what happens in the wilderness stays in the wilderness...probably for a good reason, but I can't help but share a few of the juicy details of our Tanzanian safari.
Our adventure began on Wednesday the 11th, when we met our driver, Mbisi, and our safari vehicle for the first time. None of us have ever been on safari before (except of course Mbisi who has been working in the field for ten years). Mbisi is Keely-recommended. Indeed, the last time she went on safari with him to Ngorongoro, there were only four white rhinos left in the park and Mbisi found all four! Needless to say, we were in good hands.
However, for a person who loves the outdoors and hiking, getting used to the safari way of life was not easy. You step into the car at 6AM and only step out at designated touristy eating spots that are full of lunch tables, other foreigners, and their boxed lunches.
Although this can, at times, lead to cabin fever (which Charly and Alex loved), any desire to step outside to get some fresh air and exercise is quelled when you see a herd of wildebeest, zebra, and giraffes all grazing just meters from the car. Besides, Charly and I soon discovered the best ways to maximize our fresh air exposure: 1) keep the roof open as much as possible (despite the tendency of one of the supports to buckle and for the entire structure to collapse), 2) stay diligent about checking the buckle-prone support so that the roof doesn't collapse, 3) sit up on the roof when no ranger cars are around, and 4) run three loops around each touristy rest station to get out any heebie-jeebies.
The first day, we drove to Lake Manyara National Park. It is a small park on the way to Ngorongoro and is best known for the climbing-tree lions that perch up high and look for prey. Although we didn't see any lions overhead, we did see a herd of baboons eating fruits in a very prickly tree, and we crossed paths with many elephants and colorful birds. You can follow this link for a look at some of the pictures we took: http://www.alexhasnopants.com/~blog/jalbums/Serengeti-Safari/index.html
The park closes its gates at 6PM, so around five, we headed out. From the park gates, we drove another thirty kilometers to E-Unoto Lodge for the night. The last forty minutes of the drive took us off the main road through desolate Masai land, and we were surprised to arrive at a sizeable lodge in an isolated nook at the edge of the lush Great Rift Valley.
We especially missed Lisa's presence, since E-Unoto is in many ways similar to the Sri Lankan lodge she is helping advise. The architecture mimics traditional Masai homes (except for the pool, but Alex and Charly still really enjoyed a refreshing dip to wash away the safari dust). Except for the vice president who is American, it is Masai-run.
Day two was our longest journey. We had to drive from Lake Manyara State Park, through Ngorongoro, all the way up to the north western part of the Serengeti. Our goal was to follow the wildebeest migration. Every year, thousands of wildebeest travel a circuit, from the southern part of the Serengeti up to the northwestern region, through Kenya, and back through the Serengeti. There are over 1.3 million wildebeest in the park, which comes as no surprise when you hear that during their peak mating season (February and March), up to 8,000 wildebeast are born per day!
Much of the day, we were in transit: pummeling down a wild dirt road and sliding our windows open and shut to avoid the dust storms of passing vehicles. This is the highway from Uganda to Arusha and many cloth-covered lorries bounced past. Most of the trucks are dark green with a black-and-white striped tarp covering the main cabin. Messages are painted across the back that read: "God is good always" or the Swahilie quivallent.
Gazing out the windows, we looked out at miles and miles of open plains interrupted only by the occasional red and black dots. The meandering red figures and black dots are the Masai and their grazing cows. Sometimes you'll see a lone Masai figure crossing the landscape. Where is he going? You look back and see nothing for miles and miles but yellow grass and the occasional acacia tree...then you glance forward and are greeted by an equally desolate landcape.
The rhythmic bouncing of the car soon lulled me to sleep. It wasn't until we reached the gates of Ngorongoro park that I awoke to a lush jungle. Where did the desert go? It was drizzling outside and swells of fog were swirling around our car. Even the vegetation had changed from flat-topped acacia trees to stout, vine-covered jungle trunks. As Mbisi registered our vehicle, I looked out at the baboons who were taking advantage of this tourist stop to grab a bite to eat from boxed lunch leftovers. They weren't in the least intimidated by humans and were even climbing on some of the cars!
When we started out again, the fog was getting thicker by the minute and pretty soon we had slowed to a crawl as we plodded our way around the rim of Ngorongoro. Dark green vines reached out into the fog towards our car and the road was slick with a layer of slushy clay mud that sat loosely on the surface. In several places, our wheels just spun in place as the tail of the car swerved left and right.
We were glad to emerge on the other side of Ngorongoro to a sunny desert and hoped that Ngorongoro would clear up by the time we visit it in two days time.
We arrived at the EMC camp (the nomadic tent camp that follows the wildebeest) around 5PM, dropped off our belongings, and went for an exploratory drive to get to know the area (since we would be there for two nights). When we came back, we enjoyed a relaxing pre-dinner drink in the dimming light. But before long, we heard more than just our hungry bellies growling for food. We also began to hear the ferocous roar of lions not too far away. A camp manager soon came by with a flood light, scanned the surrounding bush, and said we had better come to dinner. Throughout our dinner, we joked with our Spanish neighbors that they would get eaten first since they're in the farthest tent. But upon returning to our tent, we did not joke around. Nobody wanted to be lion dinner, so we went straight inside our tent and enjoyed the false security of our screened tent walls.
Although we were surrounded by screened tent walls, there was little else about the tent that reminded me of camping. I have never experienced such luxurious camping before. Our tent had a partition that sectioned off the bathroom area, which included a shower, flush toilet, sink, and mirror. The bedroom itself contained three nice twin beds, a writing desk, and even some carpets!
Our three beds just barely fit into the length of the tent and were pushed snuggly together. Very soon, Charly was securely tucked under the covers of one of the beds in his usual sleeping attire (nothing). I jumped on top of his bed to wish his a good night when all of a sudden, I was tickle-attacked by my oh-so-loving brother. In my attempts to squirm away, I kicked and wriggled and then gave one final push to get him away when - KABAMM! Alex and I looked down at a perplexed Charly who was sitting askew in the remains of a bed that had collapsed beneath him. Asking Alex for his whiskey bottle, Charly sat there making sure the blanket was still around him as he sipped whiskey and Alex and I fell down laughing. As Charly carefully crawled with his blanket toga into Alex's bed, Alex and I were ordered to fix the bed. Barely able to keep a straight face, we finally put it back together and everyone went to bed with sore abs :)
On the 13th we woke up very early (around 5:30) so that we could get in a morning drive. This is the best time to see animals because it is still cool and animals are out looking for breakfast. After driving around for an hour without finding the lions, the driver of another car told us to head the other direction. We were heading back to camp, when we saw many other cars. We joined them and soon saw the family of lions - a male lion, two females, and several children. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized we were just 30 meters from our tents! After a noisy night, the lions looked very sedate. All of them were napping, except the little ones who had some excess energy and were playing around with each other.
By midday, the morning coolness had been replaced by a sweltering heat. All the animals were gone and we followed suit. We went back to camp to get lunch and relax. After trying to read but realizing that even our brains had melted, we took a sweaty nap and didn't wake up until 3PM. Hanging around in the slight breeze outside, Charly and I read a bit until Alex woke up at 3:45. It was time for an afternoon drive. We came back just in time for dinner and once again heard the sounds of lions. This time, we knew exactly how close they were. Though they quieted down as we were going to sleep, they growled loudly enough to wake Charly in the middle of the night. Our guide told us that they kept the majority of the family on our side of the river to make noise while they sent a few females on a stealth mission to hunt on the other side of the river. Indeed, they had success. In the morning, we saw the family feasting on wildebeest carcass.
On the 14th, it was time to drive back to Ngorongoro and go down into the crater. This time it was clear and sunny, but unfortunately we did not spot any rhinos. The crater is a fantastic bowl of about 265 square kilometers (and sides that go down to 600 meters deep). It contains about 20,000 to 30,000 wild animals at any time. Though animals do cross in and out, it is not common since there is good grazing and good hunting (indeed, we noted that all the animals are quite plump).
We spent our last night at the Farmhouse, a large farm with rolling hills, amazingly fresh food, and wonderful showers. After two days in the camp, it was nice to eat fresh salad and a great stirfry. We also enjoyed the beautiful landscape and the fresh earthy smell of the farm dirt and garden vegetables.
So, in the Kleissner family, we have a saying that what happens in the wilderness stays in the wilderness...probably for a good reason, but I can't help but share a few of the juicy details of our Tanzanian safari.
Our adventure began on Wednesday the 11th, when we met our driver, Mbisi, and our safari vehicle for the first time. None of us have ever been on safari before (except of course Mbisi who has been working in the field for ten years). Mbisi is Keely-recommended. Indeed, the last time she went on safari with him to Ngorongoro, there were only four white rhinos left in the park and Mbisi found all four! Needless to say, we were in good hands.
However, for a person who loves the outdoors and hiking, getting used to the safari way of life was not easy. You step into the car at 6AM and only step out at designated touristy eating spots that are full of lunch tables, other foreigners, and their boxed lunches.
Although this can, at times, lead to cabin fever (which Charly and Alex loved), any desire to step outside to get some fresh air and exercise is quelled when you see a herd of wildebeest, zebra, and giraffes all grazing just meters from the car. Besides, Charly and I soon discovered the best ways to maximize our fresh air exposure: 1) keep the roof open as much as possible (despite the tendency of one of the supports to buckle and for the entire structure to collapse), 2) stay diligent about checking the buckle-prone support so that the roof doesn't collapse, 3) sit up on the roof when no ranger cars are around, and 4) run three loops around each touristy rest station to get out any heebie-jeebies.
The first day, we drove to Lake Manyara National Park. It is a small park on the way to Ngorongoro and is best known for the climbing-tree lions that perch up high and look for prey. Although we didn't see any lions overhead, we did see a herd of baboons eating fruits in a very prickly tree, and we crossed paths with many elephants and colorful birds. You can follow this link for a look at some of the pictures we took: http://www.alexhasnopants.com/~blog/jalbums/Serengeti-Safari/index.html
The park closes its gates at 6PM, so around five, we headed out. From the park gates, we drove another thirty kilometers to E-Unoto Lodge for the night. The last forty minutes of the drive took us off the main road through desolate Masai land, and we were surprised to arrive at a sizeable lodge in an isolated nook at the edge of the lush Great Rift Valley.
We especially missed Lisa's presence, since E-Unoto is in many ways similar to the Sri Lankan lodge she is helping advise. The architecture mimics traditional Masai homes (except for the pool, but Alex and Charly still really enjoyed a refreshing dip to wash away the safari dust). Except for the vice president who is American, it is Masai-run.
Day two was our longest journey. We had to drive from Lake Manyara State Park, through Ngorongoro, all the way up to the north western part of the Serengeti. Our goal was to follow the wildebeest migration. Every year, thousands of wildebeest travel a circuit, from the southern part of the Serengeti up to the northwestern region, through Kenya, and back through the Serengeti. There are over 1.3 million wildebeest in the park, which comes as no surprise when you hear that during their peak mating season (February and March), up to 8,000 wildebeast are born per day!
Much of the day, we were in transit: pummeling down a wild dirt road and sliding our windows open and shut to avoid the dust storms of passing vehicles. This is the highway from Uganda to Arusha and many cloth-covered lorries bounced past. Most of the trucks are dark green with a black-and-white striped tarp covering the main cabin. Messages are painted across the back that read: "God is good always" or the Swahilie quivallent.
Gazing out the windows, we looked out at miles and miles of open plains interrupted only by the occasional red and black dots. The meandering red figures and black dots are the Masai and their grazing cows. Sometimes you'll see a lone Masai figure crossing the landscape. Where is he going? You look back and see nothing for miles and miles but yellow grass and the occasional acacia tree...then you glance forward and are greeted by an equally desolate landcape.
The rhythmic bouncing of the car soon lulled me to sleep. It wasn't until we reached the gates of Ngorongoro park that I awoke to a lush jungle. Where did the desert go? It was drizzling outside and swells of fog were swirling around our car. Even the vegetation had changed from flat-topped acacia trees to stout, vine-covered jungle trunks. As Mbisi registered our vehicle, I looked out at the baboons who were taking advantage of this tourist stop to grab a bite to eat from boxed lunch leftovers. They weren't in the least intimidated by humans and were even climbing on some of the cars!
When we started out again, the fog was getting thicker by the minute and pretty soon we had slowed to a crawl as we plodded our way around the rim of Ngorongoro. Dark green vines reached out into the fog towards our car and the road was slick with a layer of slushy clay mud that sat loosely on the surface. In several places, our wheels just spun in place as the tail of the car swerved left and right.
We were glad to emerge on the other side of Ngorongoro to a sunny desert and hoped that Ngorongoro would clear up by the time we visit it in two days time.
We arrived at the EMC camp (the nomadic tent camp that follows the wildebeest) around 5PM, dropped off our belongings, and went for an exploratory drive to get to know the area (since we would be there for two nights). When we came back, we enjoyed a relaxing pre-dinner drink in the dimming light. But before long, we heard more than just our hungry bellies growling for food. We also began to hear the ferocous roar of lions not too far away. A camp manager soon came by with a flood light, scanned the surrounding bush, and said we had better come to dinner. Throughout our dinner, we joked with our Spanish neighbors that they would get eaten first since they're in the farthest tent. But upon returning to our tent, we did not joke around. Nobody wanted to be lion dinner, so we went straight inside our tent and enjoyed the false security of our screened tent walls.
Although we were surrounded by screened tent walls, there was little else about the tent that reminded me of camping. I have never experienced such luxurious camping before. Our tent had a partition that sectioned off the bathroom area, which included a shower, flush toilet, sink, and mirror. The bedroom itself contained three nice twin beds, a writing desk, and even some carpets!
Our three beds just barely fit into the length of the tent and were pushed snuggly together. Very soon, Charly was securely tucked under the covers of one of the beds in his usual sleeping attire (nothing). I jumped on top of his bed to wish his a good night when all of a sudden, I was tickle-attacked by my oh-so-loving brother. In my attempts to squirm away, I kicked and wriggled and then gave one final push to get him away when - KABAMM! Alex and I looked down at a perplexed Charly who was sitting askew in the remains of a bed that had collapsed beneath him. Asking Alex for his whiskey bottle, Charly sat there making sure the blanket was still around him as he sipped whiskey and Alex and I fell down laughing. As Charly carefully crawled with his blanket toga into Alex's bed, Alex and I were ordered to fix the bed. Barely able to keep a straight face, we finally put it back together and everyone went to bed with sore abs :)
On the 13th we woke up very early (around 5:30) so that we could get in a morning drive. This is the best time to see animals because it is still cool and animals are out looking for breakfast. After driving around for an hour without finding the lions, the driver of another car told us to head the other direction. We were heading back to camp, when we saw many other cars. We joined them and soon saw the family of lions - a male lion, two females, and several children. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized we were just 30 meters from our tents! After a noisy night, the lions looked very sedate. All of them were napping, except the little ones who had some excess energy and were playing around with each other.
By midday, the morning coolness had been replaced by a sweltering heat. All the animals were gone and we followed suit. We went back to camp to get lunch and relax. After trying to read but realizing that even our brains had melted, we took a sweaty nap and didn't wake up until 3PM. Hanging around in the slight breeze outside, Charly and I read a bit until Alex woke up at 3:45. It was time for an afternoon drive. We came back just in time for dinner and once again heard the sounds of lions. This time, we knew exactly how close they were. Though they quieted down as we were going to sleep, they growled loudly enough to wake Charly in the middle of the night. Our guide told us that they kept the majority of the family on our side of the river to make noise while they sent a few females on a stealth mission to hunt on the other side of the river. Indeed, they had success. In the morning, we saw the family feasting on wildebeest carcass.
On the 14th, it was time to drive back to Ngorongoro and go down into the crater. This time it was clear and sunny, but unfortunately we did not spot any rhinos. The crater is a fantastic bowl of about 265 square kilometers (and sides that go down to 600 meters deep). It contains about 20,000 to 30,000 wild animals at any time. Though animals do cross in and out, it is not common since there is good grazing and good hunting (indeed, we noted that all the animals are quite plump).
We spent our last night at the Farmhouse, a large farm with rolling hills, amazingly fresh food, and wonderful showers. After two days in the camp, it was nice to eat fresh salad and a great stirfry. We also enjoyed the beautiful landscape and the fresh earthy smell of the farm dirt and garden vegetables.
July 10, 2007
This morning we were at the BRAC office at 8:15 sharp. Your first thought may be BRAC? Doesn't that stand for Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee? What are they doing in Tanzania?
In fact, BRAC in Tanzania opened just last year and BRAC has also recently extended its development work to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and several Afrian countries. BRAC now stands for Building Resources Across Communities and is one of the world's largest and fastest growing NGOs, with 4.8 million group members of which 4.3 million are borrowers. Though BRAC is most well known for its microfinance activities, they are extending into other development activities as well. For example, BRAC Tanzania is starting three new departments: agriculture, poultry and livestock, and health. Each branch of BRAC operates somewhat differently. In Bangladesh, both men and women may take out loans for any purpose, but in Tanzania, only women may take out loans and they may only use the money to grow an existing or new business. However, one commonality to all BRAC branches is their phenomenal growth rate. Although BRAC Tanzania started just last year, they are already at 12,000 members!
This morning, we met the branch manager, Libe. She took us to visit two lending groups in the community of Sekei. The instant Libe stood in front of the women, they became quiet. In a society where age is looked to as an indicator of wisdom, I was amazed at the utmost respect Libe receives from the women, though she is quite young. You can tell she is a role model and sister to them all. She knows exactly when to joke and when to be serious, and even though we couldn't understand what she was saying, we almost knew when to nod and when to laugh.
Every week, the BRAC groups meet once for just 15 or 20 minutes to make their payments, but outside these meetings, the women are constantly supporting each other. BRAC does not yet give them formal business classes, but they advise and learn from each other.
In the first group we visited, all the women were still on their first loan (of 100 to 300 thousand shillings) and you could tell they had not been together as long as the second group where three or four women were on their seccond loan (of 600,000 to 1 million shillings). The second group meeting was hosted by Mama Lucy [a quick side note: by Tanzanian naming convention, Lisa would be called Mama Alexi]. Even before BRAC came to Tanzania, Mama Lucy had organized a women's association of about 25 business women that she knew. Although it wasn't much, the relationships they had established made it very easy for BRAC to help them, and now the women are moving on to their second loans much more quickly.
Once the women finished their meeting with Libe, we had an opportunity to ask them questions about their jobs, how they take care of the children, what other loans they'd like to have access to, some of the greatest challenges they face, etc. Among all the women, there was a universal desire for a school loan project so they can send their children to secondary school, and a universal desire for a house loan project...potential areas of expansion for BRAC.
After we'd exhausted all our questions, we shared a bag of sugar and an Olyset net with each of them as a thank you for taking the time out of their busy schedules to talk with us about their work. We were quickly swept up by hugs, smiles, and shouts of "Keeleeleeleeleeleeleeleelee!", a Tanzanian yippee which Charly became quite good at as well :)
Over lunch, Charly took a rest in the hotel as Alex and I ventured out to a local eatery called Milk and Honey. We ate a full meal for a grand total of $5 and were joined at our table by a random businessman who never uttered another word after asking, "Is the seat free?". Aside from our mysterious guest, the meal was uneventful and superbly delicious.
In the afternoon, Tom took Alex and I to a local market where we braved all the "Karibu! Welcome! Looking is for free"s and managed to come out with a few nice goodies for friends and family back home.
At around 7PM, we all came together again for one last dinner at Via Via. After dinner, Charly went back to the hotel, while the youngins (Keely, Alex, Tom, and I) met up at the Masai Camp - a cross between a Dutch family camp ground, a Masai hut, and a club. Alex said it was reminiscent of something you might find at Burning Man. Sitting beneath a tall thatched roofed hut and a beer bottle chandelier, some of us enjoyed Amarula (a Tanzanian drink that is similar to Baileys) while others enjoyed new flavors of Fanta (passion fruit and pineapple). Unfortunately, the pool table was monopolized for the evening, but we enjoyed relaxing and chatting as we leaned back in our huge wooden chairs around a small wooden table with two candles that curved inwards to talk to each other.
This morning we were at the BRAC office at 8:15 sharp. Your first thought may be BRAC? Doesn't that stand for Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee? What are they doing in Tanzania?
In fact, BRAC in Tanzania opened just last year and BRAC has also recently extended its development work to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and several Afrian countries. BRAC now stands for Building Resources Across Communities and is one of the world's largest and fastest growing NGOs, with 4.8 million group members of which 4.3 million are borrowers. Though BRAC is most well known for its microfinance activities, they are extending into other development activities as well. For example, BRAC Tanzania is starting three new departments: agriculture, poultry and livestock, and health. Each branch of BRAC operates somewhat differently. In Bangladesh, both men and women may take out loans for any purpose, but in Tanzania, only women may take out loans and they may only use the money to grow an existing or new business. However, one commonality to all BRAC branches is their phenomenal growth rate. Although BRAC Tanzania started just last year, they are already at 12,000 members!
This morning, we met the branch manager, Libe. She took us to visit two lending groups in the community of Sekei. The instant Libe stood in front of the women, they became quiet. In a society where age is looked to as an indicator of wisdom, I was amazed at the utmost respect Libe receives from the women, though she is quite young. You can tell she is a role model and sister to them all. She knows exactly when to joke and when to be serious, and even though we couldn't understand what she was saying, we almost knew when to nod and when to laugh.
Every week, the BRAC groups meet once for just 15 or 20 minutes to make their payments, but outside these meetings, the women are constantly supporting each other. BRAC does not yet give them formal business classes, but they advise and learn from each other.
In the first group we visited, all the women were still on their first loan (of 100 to 300 thousand shillings) and you could tell they had not been together as long as the second group where three or four women were on their seccond loan (of 600,000 to 1 million shillings). The second group meeting was hosted by Mama Lucy [a quick side note: by Tanzanian naming convention, Lisa would be called Mama Alexi]. Even before BRAC came to Tanzania, Mama Lucy had organized a women's association of about 25 business women that she knew. Although it wasn't much, the relationships they had established made it very easy for BRAC to help them, and now the women are moving on to their second loans much more quickly.
Once the women finished their meeting with Libe, we had an opportunity to ask them questions about their jobs, how they take care of the children, what other loans they'd like to have access to, some of the greatest challenges they face, etc. Among all the women, there was a universal desire for a school loan project so they can send their children to secondary school, and a universal desire for a house loan project...potential areas of expansion for BRAC.
After we'd exhausted all our questions, we shared a bag of sugar and an Olyset net with each of them as a thank you for taking the time out of their busy schedules to talk with us about their work. We were quickly swept up by hugs, smiles, and shouts of "Keeleeleeleeleeleeleeleelee!", a Tanzanian yippee which Charly became quite good at as well :)
Over lunch, Charly took a rest in the hotel as Alex and I ventured out to a local eatery called Milk and Honey. We ate a full meal for a grand total of $5 and were joined at our table by a random businessman who never uttered another word after asking, "Is the seat free?". Aside from our mysterious guest, the meal was uneventful and superbly delicious.
In the afternoon, Tom took Alex and I to a local market where we braved all the "Karibu! Welcome! Looking is for free"s and managed to come out with a few nice goodies for friends and family back home.
At around 7PM, we all came together again for one last dinner at Via Via. After dinner, Charly went back to the hotel, while the youngins (Keely, Alex, Tom, and I) met up at the Masai Camp - a cross between a Dutch family camp ground, a Masai hut, and a club. Alex said it was reminiscent of something you might find at Burning Man. Sitting beneath a tall thatched roofed hut and a beer bottle chandelier, some of us enjoyed Amarula (a Tanzanian drink that is similar to Baileys) while others enjoyed new flavors of Fanta (passion fruit and pineapple). Unfortunately, the pool table was monopolized for the evening, but we enjoyed relaxing and chatting as we leaned back in our huge wooden chairs around a small wooden table with two candles that curved inwards to talk to each other.
July 9 - Tanzania
Having just come from the highlands of Ethiopia where mosquitos are less of an issue, I was surprised to find a netted canopy around each bed in our Arusha hotel. Ah yes. These evil little insects again...
More than simply a nuisance, the mosquitos here are killers. Currently, approximately 3 hundred million people contract malaria and over a million people die from it each year. While DDT spraying has virtually illiminated malaria from developed countries, places like Tanzania still face huge problems. It is said that one person in Africa dies every 30 seconds due to the disease.
Today, we visited AtoZ, the largest bed net manufacturer in Africa. In addition to making ordinary polyester nets, AtoZ manufactures special anti-malarial nets. During the manufacturing process, the nets are impregnated with a naturally occuring mosquito repellent that lasts up to six years! Unlike normal polyester nets, they do not need to be dipped in insect repellent every two years, and they are not toxic to touch. These are called Olyset Nets and were developed by Sumitomo Chemical, a Japanese company that offered a free technology transfer to AtoZ.
AtoZ has grown exponentially the past five years. They began Olyset production around 2003 and are already at a yield of 6 million nets annually, which amounts to about 18,000 nets per day! With the addition of a new factory outside of the main city (near the Arusha ariport), they are planning to phase out the old polyester nets all together and bring Olyset net production to 8.5 million annually!
AtoZ actually started in 1966 as a textile factory, with just 6 foot-pedalled sewing machines. So, why the switch to nets? There were several factors...1) a government-initiated secondhand clothing industry that drove anyone but traditional fabric-makers out of the Tanzanian textile industry (as a result, I have noticed that even very poor Tanzanians consistently outdress us); 2) NGO pressure to address the malaria issue; and 3) governmental support for a new factory for Olyset production (the government paid for 2 km of new road, electricity, and water costs of the new factory). In 1998, AtoZ first began stitching polyester bednets and by 2003 they started making the impregnated Olyset nets.
The greatest problem with the Olyset nets has been marketing and distribution. Although AtoZ is not keen on sharing the exact cost of goods, they say an average-sized net is around $8.50. With an income of less than a dollar a day, there's a very slim chance that a villager would buy an Olyset net. When and if they save that much money, they would most likely spend it on food or purchase the cheaper polyester nets. However, polyester nets need to be dipped in pesticides every two years to be effective and cuurent statistics show that only 2% of villagers will reapply the mosquito repellent.
Although the upfront cost of the Olyset net is high, when spread over six years, the cost of Olyset nets is cheaper than the polyester nets. This makes microfinance look like a great partner for AtoZ. If AtoZ could join with an MFI to provide loans to be paid back over the course of several years, Olyset nets suddenly become affordable to the average villager. Now that manufacturing is in place (and inventory is really stocking up), it will be interesting to see what marketing and distribution model AtoZ adopts.
Even though it seems that AtoZ is taking a huge risk with all its capital investments for Olyset production (and no crystal clear distribution network), AtoZ certainly hasn't put all its eggs in one basket. In fact, they manufacture many other products, including plastic buckets, t-shirts, and bottled water (everything from A to Z). They even manufacture their own biomass blocks to feed into a furnace that runs the plant! The factory is a huge facility and employs about 4,000 Tanzanians, which is very valuable in itself as unemployment is a big issue here.
Before leaving AtoZ, we bought some subsidized Olyset nets to give as thank you gifts to those villagers that we would visit later today and tomorrow. There is actually a special line of subsidized nets (made possible by the Acumen Fund). These are only $5 and they are distinguished by their blue and white stripes. Speaking of colors, if you visit the AtoZ showroom, you can find Olyset nets of every color. However, for the moment, only the blue dye has been tested and approved by Sumitomo Chemicals.
Before getting lunch, we also visited the Arusha market to bargain for 100kg of sugar (another gift for the villagers we will be interviewing tomorrow). Sugar is a nice commodity they can rarely afford and something they really enjoy. In the Arusha marketplace, everyone calls out "Jambo!" If you're a woman, you become "sister" or "mama", and everyone is eager to point out the obvious, calling out, "Jambo, mama! This is a grapes. Please, this is mango. Here you see we have beans." Charly, Alex, and I stuck close together to brave the crowds as Keely bargained a good price for the sugar. After all our purchases, we looked like a bit of a clown car - how much sugar, bednets, and humans can you fit inside one land cruiser?
Luckily, we split into two cars for our afternoon adventures, which helped alleviate the space problem. At around 2PM, we went to the Technoserve office. Technoserve is an organization that helps create business solutions to rural poverty and has branches in South America, Poland, and parts of Africa. They are currently working with farmers outside Arusha to convert from comodity-grade to highly profitable, specialty-grade coffee. Technoserve also helps farmers grow artemisia, a high-value crop that is used to make malaria medications. Ironically, this malaria medication will most likely never be affordable to any of these villagers, but selling it drastically improves their standard of living.
At the Technoserve office, we were introduced to Matt, our guide for the afternoon. His unruly sandy-colored hair, wild sideburns, and wrinkley tanned skin give away his love of the outdoors and hint at his dislike for paperwork. Charly and I hopped into Matt's car and Keely, Alex, Tom, and Favian (our driver) caravaned behind us. As we drove out to visit some of the Technoserve artemisia growers, Matt started some "story talk", as he says. Matt is quite an interesting character. He was raised in Kenya and though he tried to live in Ireland for a while, he says the people were less friendly and he missed Africa's never-ending plains and open spaces. Even though he has two young children in Ireland, he couldn't live there and eventually came back to Africa. As far as women are concerned, Matt says he just can't seem to hang onto them. Indeed, he's never married, though he also has one other daughter who is now 21.
We drove past the harsh, eroded landscape, waving villagers, and plains that stretch out forever in front of us (literally as far as the eye can see). Matt went to college in South Africa, intending to study agroforestry and eventually settled on agro-management. He has many interesting ideas about land degredation, how to stop it, and where most NGOs are going wrong. I agreed with a lot of what he said - that we can't only address the effects of poverty such as malaria and lack of education as so many NGOs are doing, but we also need to address the root causes: poor income generation, land degradation, and over-population. At the heart of most problems is the fact that the land has reached its carrying capactiy and the villagers are still operating as they have for thousands of years...even as grazing land turns to dust and farmland turns into steep, eroded ravines. How can they pay for medicine and education when their land is over-taxed and can not be used to create an adequate income?
Technoserve advises farmers on how to obtain more profitable yields from their crops. A lot of this includes educating them about how to curb soil erosion and land degradation. In each region they operate in, Technoserve chooses one or two entrepreneurial villagers to act as models and mentors for the region. For example, we visited one villager who is currently building a second house with all the profits he is earning. He grows artemisia, has his own artemisia nursery to sell seedlings to other farmers and gives them advice, and plants grasses between his fields to prevent erosion.
Technoserve started the Artemisia cultivation program among small farmers in March 2005. It began with 600 farmers and now supports 4000 farmers and benefits up to 24,000 individuals. In 2006 alone, the artemisia harvests yielded $370,000 additional farmer income and about 5.6 million malaria cures. We visited another plot of land where villagers were starting to harvest the artemisia crop. Unfortunately, they were not using the best methods of harvesting. They had simply chopped the artemisia plants and let them fall over to dry. But as the leaves dry, the wind blows some leaves away from the exposed top side and on the bottom side, dirt contaminates the harvest. It is better to cut the bushells, collect them, and stand them together in teepee-like piles. The sloppiness we saw may be a result of having only one buyer in the region. Without lots of competition, the buyer has become a little more relaxed and does not religiously check on its growers to maximize efficiency.
However, it is increasingly important for small farmers to streamline and perfect the artemisia harvesting process because synthetic Artemisinin is in the research pipelines and will probably start being produced in the far east by 2012. In order to compete with upcoming low synthetic prices, small farmers will need to have very clean, productive growing strategies.
As it grew dark, we parted ways with Matt, who lives on the other side of Arusha. Over dinner at Via Via, Charly, Alex, Tom, and I discussed the long-term sustainability of artemisia-growing. For the moment, it is a good business. In the future, I don't think it will be, but at that point, Technoserve will jump in and suggest more innovative business ideas for those entrepreneurial villagers that are ready to take them on.
Having just come from the highlands of Ethiopia where mosquitos are less of an issue, I was surprised to find a netted canopy around each bed in our Arusha hotel. Ah yes. These evil little insects again...
More than simply a nuisance, the mosquitos here are killers. Currently, approximately 3 hundred million people contract malaria and over a million people die from it each year. While DDT spraying has virtually illiminated malaria from developed countries, places like Tanzania still face huge problems. It is said that one person in Africa dies every 30 seconds due to the disease.
Today, we visited AtoZ, the largest bed net manufacturer in Africa. In addition to making ordinary polyester nets, AtoZ manufactures special anti-malarial nets. During the manufacturing process, the nets are impregnated with a naturally occuring mosquito repellent that lasts up to six years! Unlike normal polyester nets, they do not need to be dipped in insect repellent every two years, and they are not toxic to touch. These are called Olyset Nets and were developed by Sumitomo Chemical, a Japanese company that offered a free technology transfer to AtoZ.
AtoZ has grown exponentially the past five years. They began Olyset production around 2003 and are already at a yield of 6 million nets annually, which amounts to about 18,000 nets per day! With the addition of a new factory outside of the main city (near the Arusha ariport), they are planning to phase out the old polyester nets all together and bring Olyset net production to 8.5 million annually!
AtoZ actually started in 1966 as a textile factory, with just 6 foot-pedalled sewing machines. So, why the switch to nets? There were several factors...1) a government-initiated secondhand clothing industry that drove anyone but traditional fabric-makers out of the Tanzanian textile industry (as a result, I have noticed that even very poor Tanzanians consistently outdress us); 2) NGO pressure to address the malaria issue; and 3) governmental support for a new factory for Olyset production (the government paid for 2 km of new road, electricity, and water costs of the new factory). In 1998, AtoZ first began stitching polyester bednets and by 2003 they started making the impregnated Olyset nets.
The greatest problem with the Olyset nets has been marketing and distribution. Although AtoZ is not keen on sharing the exact cost of goods, they say an average-sized net is around $8.50. With an income of less than a dollar a day, there's a very slim chance that a villager would buy an Olyset net. When and if they save that much money, they would most likely spend it on food or purchase the cheaper polyester nets. However, polyester nets need to be dipped in pesticides every two years to be effective and cuurent statistics show that only 2% of villagers will reapply the mosquito repellent.
Although the upfront cost of the Olyset net is high, when spread over six years, the cost of Olyset nets is cheaper than the polyester nets. This makes microfinance look like a great partner for AtoZ. If AtoZ could join with an MFI to provide loans to be paid back over the course of several years, Olyset nets suddenly become affordable to the average villager. Now that manufacturing is in place (and inventory is really stocking up), it will be interesting to see what marketing and distribution model AtoZ adopts.
Even though it seems that AtoZ is taking a huge risk with all its capital investments for Olyset production (and no crystal clear distribution network), AtoZ certainly hasn't put all its eggs in one basket. In fact, they manufacture many other products, including plastic buckets, t-shirts, and bottled water (everything from A to Z). They even manufacture their own biomass blocks to feed into a furnace that runs the plant! The factory is a huge facility and employs about 4,000 Tanzanians, which is very valuable in itself as unemployment is a big issue here.
Before leaving AtoZ, we bought some subsidized Olyset nets to give as thank you gifts to those villagers that we would visit later today and tomorrow. There is actually a special line of subsidized nets (made possible by the Acumen Fund). These are only $5 and they are distinguished by their blue and white stripes. Speaking of colors, if you visit the AtoZ showroom, you can find Olyset nets of every color. However, for the moment, only the blue dye has been tested and approved by Sumitomo Chemicals.
Before getting lunch, we also visited the Arusha market to bargain for 100kg of sugar (another gift for the villagers we will be interviewing tomorrow). Sugar is a nice commodity they can rarely afford and something they really enjoy. In the Arusha marketplace, everyone calls out "Jambo!" If you're a woman, you become "sister" or "mama", and everyone is eager to point out the obvious, calling out, "Jambo, mama! This is a grapes. Please, this is mango. Here you see we have beans." Charly, Alex, and I stuck close together to brave the crowds as Keely bargained a good price for the sugar. After all our purchases, we looked like a bit of a clown car - how much sugar, bednets, and humans can you fit inside one land cruiser?
Luckily, we split into two cars for our afternoon adventures, which helped alleviate the space problem. At around 2PM, we went to the Technoserve office. Technoserve is an organization that helps create business solutions to rural poverty and has branches in South America, Poland, and parts of Africa. They are currently working with farmers outside Arusha to convert from comodity-grade to highly profitable, specialty-grade coffee. Technoserve also helps farmers grow artemisia, a high-value crop that is used to make malaria medications. Ironically, this malaria medication will most likely never be affordable to any of these villagers, but selling it drastically improves their standard of living.
At the Technoserve office, we were introduced to Matt, our guide for the afternoon. His unruly sandy-colored hair, wild sideburns, and wrinkley tanned skin give away his love of the outdoors and hint at his dislike for paperwork. Charly and I hopped into Matt's car and Keely, Alex, Tom, and Favian (our driver) caravaned behind us. As we drove out to visit some of the Technoserve artemisia growers, Matt started some "story talk", as he says. Matt is quite an interesting character. He was raised in Kenya and though he tried to live in Ireland for a while, he says the people were less friendly and he missed Africa's never-ending plains and open spaces. Even though he has two young children in Ireland, he couldn't live there and eventually came back to Africa. As far as women are concerned, Matt says he just can't seem to hang onto them. Indeed, he's never married, though he also has one other daughter who is now 21.
We drove past the harsh, eroded landscape, waving villagers, and plains that stretch out forever in front of us (literally as far as the eye can see). Matt went to college in South Africa, intending to study agroforestry and eventually settled on agro-management. He has many interesting ideas about land degredation, how to stop it, and where most NGOs are going wrong. I agreed with a lot of what he said - that we can't only address the effects of poverty such as malaria and lack of education as so many NGOs are doing, but we also need to address the root causes: poor income generation, land degradation, and over-population. At the heart of most problems is the fact that the land has reached its carrying capactiy and the villagers are still operating as they have for thousands of years...even as grazing land turns to dust and farmland turns into steep, eroded ravines. How can they pay for medicine and education when their land is over-taxed and can not be used to create an adequate income?
Technoserve advises farmers on how to obtain more profitable yields from their crops. A lot of this includes educating them about how to curb soil erosion and land degradation. In each region they operate in, Technoserve chooses one or two entrepreneurial villagers to act as models and mentors for the region. For example, we visited one villager who is currently building a second house with all the profits he is earning. He grows artemisia, has his own artemisia nursery to sell seedlings to other farmers and gives them advice, and plants grasses between his fields to prevent erosion.
Technoserve started the Artemisia cultivation program among small farmers in March 2005. It began with 600 farmers and now supports 4000 farmers and benefits up to 24,000 individuals. In 2006 alone, the artemisia harvests yielded $370,000 additional farmer income and about 5.6 million malaria cures. We visited another plot of land where villagers were starting to harvest the artemisia crop. Unfortunately, they were not using the best methods of harvesting. They had simply chopped the artemisia plants and let them fall over to dry. But as the leaves dry, the wind blows some leaves away from the exposed top side and on the bottom side, dirt contaminates the harvest. It is better to cut the bushells, collect them, and stand them together in teepee-like piles. The sloppiness we saw may be a result of having only one buyer in the region. Without lots of competition, the buyer has become a little more relaxed and does not religiously check on its growers to maximize efficiency.
However, it is increasingly important for small farmers to streamline and perfect the artemisia harvesting process because synthetic Artemisinin is in the research pipelines and will probably start being produced in the far east by 2012. In order to compete with upcoming low synthetic prices, small farmers will need to have very clean, productive growing strategies.
As it grew dark, we parted ways with Matt, who lives on the other side of Arusha. Over dinner at Via Via, Charly, Alex, Tom, and I discussed the long-term sustainability of artemisia-growing. For the moment, it is a good business. In the future, I don't think it will be, but at that point, Technoserve will jump in and suggest more innovative business ideas for those entrepreneurial villagers that are ready to take them on.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
July 8 - Tanzania
Welcome to Arusha! Well, not quite. We actually flew into Kilimanjaro airport because Charly still needed to get a Tanzanian visa, which isn't possible at the Arusha ariport. As we stepped onto the runway, we turned around and around looking for the famous peak, but clouds covered any view we may have had of Kilimanjaro and its snowy peak. No matter, we were soon greeted by the sunny Keely who gave us a warm welcome to Tanzania.
Keely is an Acumen Fund Fellow and one of Charly's mentees. She has spent the last nine months in Africa: eight months in Arusha, working with AtoZ manufacturing company, and the last month in Nairobi working with ABE and other prospective Acumen Fund investments. We are very lucky to have her as our guide because she won't be here too much longer. Keely has just accepted a job offer in Geneva to work for a new SME (small and medium enterprise) spin off of Blue Orchard, a microfinance investment fund. She will complete her work as an Acumen Fund Fellow at the end of August and will head home to California for the first time in three years! But she'll be back soon enough in mid-September to climb Kilimanjaro with her sister and mother before starting her new job.
[On the spot, Alex and I vowed to someday organize a synchronized job change--the perfect occasion to climb Kilimanjaro and maybe another peak as well!]
It was just about noontime as we rolled into Arusha and we stopped by The New Safari hotel to drop off our belongings in our room before heading to lunch. It seems Keely had already visited our room, leaving us each a Tanzania Care package: sanitary hand wipes, a notebook, a hand carved wooden pen, and a Keely-guided Tanzania itinerary for the next 2.5 days! It isn't hard to imagine why Charly and Keely work so well together :)
It's Sunday, so there's really only one place that's open for lunch--a nearby hotel restaurant. Keely invited her good friend Tom to join us and give us a quick crash course in Swahili. With a bit of Tangawizi (a strong sort of ginger ale), the Swahili began to flow and I could barely keep up writing down all the new words as Tom took us through greetings, numbers, and other useful phrases. Tom is actually Masai, but his family (39 members in all!) now lives in town. Although his father has several wives and tons of children, Tom and his siblings have been raised as Christians and will only take one spouse, which is the growing trend among the new generation of Arushans.
With a "twende?" ("shall we go?"), we left the hotel restaurant and Keely took us to Via Via. Via Via is a nonprofit restaurant and one of the few restaurants in Arusha that still has a thatched roof because the locals defended it during a period when thatched roofs were outlawed in Arusha (due to fire hazards). The restaurant, of course, was closed, but we walked past the main building out to the back lawn. Down on a small stage area, a man had laid out all his batiks, large and small, in the surrounding grass. This is another of Keely's friends: Felix. He is a local batik artist and has a studio just down the street. This afternoon, he organized a batik workshop for us. In addition to those batiks he laid out, he also had a binder with even more of his work--amazing landscapes, whimsical abstracts, and drummers and dancers clad in brightly colored skits and head scarves.
With much more than just a little guidance, we each designed and made our dream batiks. Charly made a large baobab tree next to a smaller acacia, both silhouetted against a Serengeti sunset. Alex went for a landscape scene of Ngorongoro. And I designed an image of a drummer and dancer jamming to an African beat. The process of batiking has many steps. I will describe the basics, but really, it's best to do it yourself, so if you're interested, let me know because I'd love to do it again! Here are two links to videos that will also give you a good feel for what it's like (made by Keely and Felix):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBOGFmIKrFA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq4xCmsQPrU
First, you make a rough sketch of your drawing (in pen) on the cotton cloth. Using a stilus filled with hot wax you then cover (with wax) those areas that you would like to remain white. With a sponge and dyes, you create the main background colors. Then, in a process that you repeat again and again, you put wax on the colors you want to preserve and add dye to those areas that are exposed. In the end you cover the entire picture with wax, crack the corners, and rub in some black dye to add a beautiful lightning-bolt pattern of black wrinkles to the edges.
It was a sprint to the finish because the sun was rapidly setting and we needed it at each stage to dry the wax layers. We all finished just as the last rays of sunlight disappeared.
Enjoying a few hours of twilight, we sat on the porch at the Mount Meru Game Lodge and Sanctuary and watched zebra, birds, and ostriches roam the beautiful landscape just meters in front of us. This lodge was once an orphanage for abandoned animals and is now just a place for visitors to enjoy their company.
Lala salama! (good night!)
Welcome to Arusha! Well, not quite. We actually flew into Kilimanjaro airport because Charly still needed to get a Tanzanian visa, which isn't possible at the Arusha ariport. As we stepped onto the runway, we turned around and around looking for the famous peak, but clouds covered any view we may have had of Kilimanjaro and its snowy peak. No matter, we were soon greeted by the sunny Keely who gave us a warm welcome to Tanzania.
Keely is an Acumen Fund Fellow and one of Charly's mentees. She has spent the last nine months in Africa: eight months in Arusha, working with AtoZ manufacturing company, and the last month in Nairobi working with ABE and other prospective Acumen Fund investments. We are very lucky to have her as our guide because she won't be here too much longer. Keely has just accepted a job offer in Geneva to work for a new SME (small and medium enterprise) spin off of Blue Orchard, a microfinance investment fund. She will complete her work as an Acumen Fund Fellow at the end of August and will head home to California for the first time in three years! But she'll be back soon enough in mid-September to climb Kilimanjaro with her sister and mother before starting her new job.
[On the spot, Alex and I vowed to someday organize a synchronized job change--the perfect occasion to climb Kilimanjaro and maybe another peak as well!]
It was just about noontime as we rolled into Arusha and we stopped by The New Safari hotel to drop off our belongings in our room before heading to lunch. It seems Keely had already visited our room, leaving us each a Tanzania Care package: sanitary hand wipes, a notebook, a hand carved wooden pen, and a Keely-guided Tanzania itinerary for the next 2.5 days! It isn't hard to imagine why Charly and Keely work so well together :)
It's Sunday, so there's really only one place that's open for lunch--a nearby hotel restaurant. Keely invited her good friend Tom to join us and give us a quick crash course in Swahili. With a bit of Tangawizi (a strong sort of ginger ale), the Swahili began to flow and I could barely keep up writing down all the new words as Tom took us through greetings, numbers, and other useful phrases. Tom is actually Masai, but his family (39 members in all!) now lives in town. Although his father has several wives and tons of children, Tom and his siblings have been raised as Christians and will only take one spouse, which is the growing trend among the new generation of Arushans.
With a "twende?" ("shall we go?"), we left the hotel restaurant and Keely took us to Via Via. Via Via is a nonprofit restaurant and one of the few restaurants in Arusha that still has a thatched roof because the locals defended it during a period when thatched roofs were outlawed in Arusha (due to fire hazards). The restaurant, of course, was closed, but we walked past the main building out to the back lawn. Down on a small stage area, a man had laid out all his batiks, large and small, in the surrounding grass. This is another of Keely's friends: Felix. He is a local batik artist and has a studio just down the street. This afternoon, he organized a batik workshop for us. In addition to those batiks he laid out, he also had a binder with even more of his work--amazing landscapes, whimsical abstracts, and drummers and dancers clad in brightly colored skits and head scarves.
With much more than just a little guidance, we each designed and made our dream batiks. Charly made a large baobab tree next to a smaller acacia, both silhouetted against a Serengeti sunset. Alex went for a landscape scene of Ngorongoro. And I designed an image of a drummer and dancer jamming to an African beat. The process of batiking has many steps. I will describe the basics, but really, it's best to do it yourself, so if you're interested, let me know because I'd love to do it again! Here are two links to videos that will also give you a good feel for what it's like (made by Keely and Felix):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBOGFmIKrFA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq4xCmsQPrU
First, you make a rough sketch of your drawing (in pen) on the cotton cloth. Using a stilus filled with hot wax you then cover (with wax) those areas that you would like to remain white. With a sponge and dyes, you create the main background colors. Then, in a process that you repeat again and again, you put wax on the colors you want to preserve and add dye to those areas that are exposed. In the end you cover the entire picture with wax, crack the corners, and rub in some black dye to add a beautiful lightning-bolt pattern of black wrinkles to the edges.
It was a sprint to the finish because the sun was rapidly setting and we needed it at each stage to dry the wax layers. We all finished just as the last rays of sunlight disappeared.
Enjoying a few hours of twilight, we sat on the porch at the Mount Meru Game Lodge and Sanctuary and watched zebra, birds, and ostriches roam the beautiful landscape just meters in front of us. This lodge was once an orphanage for abandoned animals and is now just a place for visitors to enjoy their company.
Lala salama! (good night!)
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
July 7, 2007 - Ethiopia
With a bit of help from our REST friends, we haggled our way onto the early flight to Addis Ababa even though our tickets were booked for the afternoon. Alex was not doing well and we needed to get back to Addis so he could rest in the hotel before our trip to Tanzania tomorrow. After a night of fever and throwing up, Alex was pale and had fits of shivering. We'd already given him Cipro and Advil, so it was just a matter of waiting for the anti-bacterial to take effect.
The plane ride was a bit of a challenge, but once we reached the Hilton in Addis, Alex slept the rest of the day. I went in and out of our room intermittently to go to the gym and eat meals but it wasn't until around 8PM that we had Alex back on his feet. The three of us enjoyed a drink and snacks on the top floor of the Hilton overlooking the peaceful city of Addis with all its blinking lights that sprawled across the rolling landscape.
With a bit of help from our REST friends, we haggled our way onto the early flight to Addis Ababa even though our tickets were booked for the afternoon. Alex was not doing well and we needed to get back to Addis so he could rest in the hotel before our trip to Tanzania tomorrow. After a night of fever and throwing up, Alex was pale and had fits of shivering. We'd already given him Cipro and Advil, so it was just a matter of waiting for the anti-bacterial to take effect.
The plane ride was a bit of a challenge, but once we reached the Hilton in Addis, Alex slept the rest of the day. I went in and out of our room intermittently to go to the gym and eat meals but it wasn't until around 8PM that we had Alex back on his feet. The three of us enjoyed a drink and snacks on the top floor of the Hilton overlooking the peaceful city of Addis with all its blinking lights that sprawled across the rolling landscape.
July 6, 2007 - Ethiopia
Although the Ethiopian government is making a huge push to extend the electricity grid to rural villages, you can still drive past countless villages without electricity. In most instances, a high voltage power line passes straight through a village without a transformer anywhere in sight.
In Tukul, a village we visited today, several solar panels have sprouted from the rooftops, announcing the early arrival of electricity. The person responsible for installing and repairing each panel is a woman villager. Three years ago, she went to Barefoot College in India and was trained to become a solar engineer. Barefoot College is an organization that recruits poor, illiterate villagers from around the world and trains them to become solar engineers. Grant money given to Barefoot College goes to purchasing solar panels, battery packs, and wiring that the engineers bring back to their home village to install on all the homes.
Dogs barked at us and chased our car as we pulled up to the Tukul village solar workshop. From what I could see, the building operates jointly as a workshop and the village's public phone booth. In one room, a few girls sat around an old landline phone, just chatting with each other. When we came in, they opened the door to the workshop for us. Embarrassed giggles rose into the air as they noticed a package of condoms on the floor of the phone booth. One girl kicked it beneath the desk as we walked past them into the other room.
There was a wall of shelves behind a nice big work bench. Voltmeters, ammeters, wires, and solar lanterns lay neatly in boxes along the shelves. Everything was in its place, but for the solar engineers, who were nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, a villager told us that the woman engineer had gotten malaria, so we decided to visit her home and wish her a quick recovery.
Although she was very weak, she was eager to show us an article that was published about the project and a picture of herself back in India. When she had first returned to Ethiopia, she worked with a partner engineer, a handicapped man who was also trained at Barefoot College. As it turns out, he did not perform his tasks very well and the woman decided she could not work with him, so he ultimately went to a different village.
On the whole, the project has been challenging for her. Although she is able to install all the solar systems, the villagers have not been willing to pay for her work and she has not yet stepped up to report them to the government. I hope that as time goes on and more solar engineers are trained from villages across Africa, they can start to work together to initiate new projects and support each other.
With lunch on the horizon and Alex feeling a bit under the weather, we went back to the hotel for lunch and Alex decided to spend the afternoon in our room to take it easy.
Unfortunately, he had to miss the best part of the day - a manufacturing site visit. A manufacturing site visit!!! As you can imagine, it was a dream come true. I am very interested in manufacturing and just took Professor Dave Beach's ME 219 course last quarter, looking at manufacturing in the U.S. Now we were going to an Ethiopian company called Bruh-Tesfa ("a brighter future") to see drip irrigation system manufacturing.
It was a small manufacturing plant with two polyethylene extrusion machines - one for HDPE and one for LDPE (high and low density). The LDPE is extruded around a slow-release tube that ensures a certain water drip speed. It is essentially a tube that has a maze of channels that the water must pass through before it drips out. By exchanging the size of the die, they can easily make drip tubes of all different diameters and spacing intervals. Bruh-Tesfa is a social enterprise. They sell their product to farmers as cheaply as possible, but still aim to break even and eventually hope to earn a profit (though not at the expense of the farmers). Recently, they have also started producing plant nursery products - plastic wrappers to protect seedling trees. I caught video of the entire manufacturing process and can't wait to put together an editted video to share!
The afternoon rain started to pour as we bid our farewells and went in search of a present for Kahsai's son, who is graduating from Kindergarten tomorrow. We settled on a soccer ball and pump and also bought some chocolate for his daughter, Dina, to be fair to them both. Just as were finishing our purchases, the president of the University of Mekelle called Kahsai. Our plans to meet with the president this afternoon were still on and he had just finished his meeting with the student senate so we started to make our way over to the university.
The University of Mekelle is just a few years old and is housed in a former military outpost. This means two things: 1) it sits on top of a beautiful hill overlooking the city (a very good strategic location), and 2) the older buildings are very ugly.
The president invited four students from the senate to stay and chat with us. I loved it because I was eager to hear from the new generation of Ethiopian leaders--what are their plans, their hopes, their fears? There were two law students, one electrical engineering student, and a vetrinary sciences student. They were all just as interested to hear what I thought about Ethiopia - my expectations about their country as compared with what I've actually seen. After a week in Ethiopia, I can honestly say I am very hopeful for their country. I see a healthy, supportive government, entrepreneurial people, excitement and tree-planting for the millennium, and great efforts like REST working on the ground on development issues. It is hard to believe we are already leaving tomorrow for a new country and a new culture. We feel like we've really gotten to know Ethiopian history and culture - at least we like to believe we have! In reality, we know very little, but we certainly know enough to be dangerous :)
Although the Ethiopian government is making a huge push to extend the electricity grid to rural villages, you can still drive past countless villages without electricity. In most instances, a high voltage power line passes straight through a village without a transformer anywhere in sight.
In Tukul, a village we visited today, several solar panels have sprouted from the rooftops, announcing the early arrival of electricity. The person responsible for installing and repairing each panel is a woman villager. Three years ago, she went to Barefoot College in India and was trained to become a solar engineer. Barefoot College is an organization that recruits poor, illiterate villagers from around the world and trains them to become solar engineers. Grant money given to Barefoot College goes to purchasing solar panels, battery packs, and wiring that the engineers bring back to their home village to install on all the homes.
Dogs barked at us and chased our car as we pulled up to the Tukul village solar workshop. From what I could see, the building operates jointly as a workshop and the village's public phone booth. In one room, a few girls sat around an old landline phone, just chatting with each other. When we came in, they opened the door to the workshop for us. Embarrassed giggles rose into the air as they noticed a package of condoms on the floor of the phone booth. One girl kicked it beneath the desk as we walked past them into the other room.
There was a wall of shelves behind a nice big work bench. Voltmeters, ammeters, wires, and solar lanterns lay neatly in boxes along the shelves. Everything was in its place, but for the solar engineers, who were nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, a villager told us that the woman engineer had gotten malaria, so we decided to visit her home and wish her a quick recovery.
Although she was very weak, she was eager to show us an article that was published about the project and a picture of herself back in India. When she had first returned to Ethiopia, she worked with a partner engineer, a handicapped man who was also trained at Barefoot College. As it turns out, he did not perform his tasks very well and the woman decided she could not work with him, so he ultimately went to a different village.
On the whole, the project has been challenging for her. Although she is able to install all the solar systems, the villagers have not been willing to pay for her work and she has not yet stepped up to report them to the government. I hope that as time goes on and more solar engineers are trained from villages across Africa, they can start to work together to initiate new projects and support each other.
With lunch on the horizon and Alex feeling a bit under the weather, we went back to the hotel for lunch and Alex decided to spend the afternoon in our room to take it easy.
Unfortunately, he had to miss the best part of the day - a manufacturing site visit. A manufacturing site visit!!! As you can imagine, it was a dream come true. I am very interested in manufacturing and just took Professor Dave Beach's ME 219 course last quarter, looking at manufacturing in the U.S. Now we were going to an Ethiopian company called Bruh-Tesfa ("a brighter future") to see drip irrigation system manufacturing.
It was a small manufacturing plant with two polyethylene extrusion machines - one for HDPE and one for LDPE (high and low density). The LDPE is extruded around a slow-release tube that ensures a certain water drip speed. It is essentially a tube that has a maze of channels that the water must pass through before it drips out. By exchanging the size of the die, they can easily make drip tubes of all different diameters and spacing intervals. Bruh-Tesfa is a social enterprise. They sell their product to farmers as cheaply as possible, but still aim to break even and eventually hope to earn a profit (though not at the expense of the farmers). Recently, they have also started producing plant nursery products - plastic wrappers to protect seedling trees. I caught video of the entire manufacturing process and can't wait to put together an editted video to share!
The afternoon rain started to pour as we bid our farewells and went in search of a present for Kahsai's son, who is graduating from Kindergarten tomorrow. We settled on a soccer ball and pump and also bought some chocolate for his daughter, Dina, to be fair to them both. Just as were finishing our purchases, the president of the University of Mekelle called Kahsai. Our plans to meet with the president this afternoon were still on and he had just finished his meeting with the student senate so we started to make our way over to the university.
The University of Mekelle is just a few years old and is housed in a former military outpost. This means two things: 1) it sits on top of a beautiful hill overlooking the city (a very good strategic location), and 2) the older buildings are very ugly.
The president invited four students from the senate to stay and chat with us. I loved it because I was eager to hear from the new generation of Ethiopian leaders--what are their plans, their hopes, their fears? There were two law students, one electrical engineering student, and a vetrinary sciences student. They were all just as interested to hear what I thought about Ethiopia - my expectations about their country as compared with what I've actually seen. After a week in Ethiopia, I can honestly say I am very hopeful for their country. I see a healthy, supportive government, entrepreneurial people, excitement and tree-planting for the millennium, and great efforts like REST working on the ground on development issues. It is hard to believe we are already leaving tomorrow for a new country and a new culture. We feel like we've really gotten to know Ethiopian history and culture - at least we like to believe we have! In reality, we know very little, but we certainly know enough to be dangerous :)
Monday, July 9, 2007
July 5, 2007 - Ethiopia
We drove into downtown Hawzien this morning in search of the Millennium Village Project (MVP) office. Hawzien is the location of a huge farmer's market that takes place every Wednesday and draws Ethiopians from far and wide. It is also the site of a national tragedy. On June 22, 1988, it was air bombed by the Derg government during a market day and 2500 Ethiopians were killed. We drove past a stella that was erected in the main plaza in honor of those who died...a rather sobering reminder of the not-too-distant past.
Today is Thursday and as we drove down the main street, I saw the remains of yesterday's market. People were still gathered to socialize and sell off a few bags of leftover grain. Pulling the car to the left, our driver parked right beside a huddle of women bargaining for some bags of grain, and we climbed out to an exchange of curious glances.
Tucked away from all the marketplace hubbub, in a courtyard off the main road, we found the MVP office. Out of all our site visits in Ethiopia, I think I can fairly say that we were all anticipating the visit to the MVP perhaps the most. Back in the states, we had read both praise and criticism of the prject and we hoped to see for ourselves what impact the MVP is having. In particular, I saw that the MVP has two big opportunities to be very successful and mainly two potential pitfalls. As an organization operating in countries throughout Africa, the MVP has an exciting chance to create a high level "development method" (a systematic approach for tackling development issues), with each regional staff tailoring the program to their local context. Basically, adding additional villages or replicating the program should not require re-inventing the wheel. Secondly, the name recognition and significant donor backing that Jeffrey Sachs and his team have received place the MVPs in a unique position to pave the way with new, innovative development solutions that can then be adopted by the government after five years, when the MVPs pull out.
That said, two major apprehensions I have are: 1) will the MVP be able to pull out in five years and leave behind a sustainable impact? and 2) Can the MVP, though it was initiated from far-away Columbia University, operate in a way that is truly bottom-up?
As we approached the MVP office, we were greeted by a somewhat perplexed staff. Unfortunately, they had been expecting us to arrive yesterday and the person given the task of showing us around had already left on another assignment.
Nevertheless, they agreed to hst us today and all six staff members and the four of us (Charly, Alex, Kahsai, and I) gathered around a table in the main office. On the whole, the staff looked a bit nervous and unsure what to say since their representative had left. However, once we introduced ourselves and each staff member began talking about his or her deparment, they became more comfortable and confident. In particular, I was impressed by the two women staff members, one who is head of Gender Activities and the other is director of the MVP's Education Activities. The MVP operates in five main areas: health, infrastructure, agriculture, water and sanitation, and education.
The allocation of the MVP funds is determined by the Columbia research team with 30% dedicated to health, 20% to infrastructure, 15% to agriculture, 15% to water and sanitation, and 20% to education. As Kahsai later shared, he said that he could not even imagine operating within these parameters. REST knows exactly what each kebelle has stated as their priorities and how the wereda have prioritized each kebelle to receive funds. It is these wereda priorities, rather than mandates given by USAID or Oxfam America, that determine the allocations of funds donated to REST. With the MVP's strict allocation of funds, I believe it will be more difficult to impliment a bottom-up development approach.
We finished our tea and headed out into the field. Our first stop was a nursery that was originally planted by the government and is now run by the MVP. This stuck me as somewhat strange, as I would have imagined the MPV to start a nursery and the government to then step in. However, it was exciting to see how the MVP uses the nursery as a training ground for farmers and identifies entrepreneurial farmers who are willing to set aside parts of their limited farmland for growing fruits and vegetables (higher value crops). In particular, the MVP shows them tricks of the trade for getting such crops to grow in the dry Ethiopian soil. We saw one apple tree that had been bent over to get it to grow side shoots, and papaya trees that had two small perferated clay pots on either side - a low tech drip irrigation system.
We didn't stay long because the day is short and our main objective was to see Koraro--the first and most reknowned village the MVP is working in. It is very remote--an hour by car when it is dry and inaccessible when wet. Although REST has done some work there in the past, it is not a priority of the wereda because they know it has very little hope as a good investment. They feel it is better for those villagers to move because Koraro is more resource poor than other areas and as a market center, it could never compete with Hawzien. We were surprised to see that the hospital in Koraro is expecting surgery equipment when some of the more basic immunization facilities were rather disorganized and dishevelled.
However, I was impressed by the MVP's involvement with Koraro's school. The MVP has initiated a school food program, where participating households donate 10 percent of their crops to the school in order to provide students with breakfast. We visited one Koraro home with a woman head-of-house. She was as proud to inform us of her involvement in the school food program as she was to show us her well-kept household (which was beautiful despite moving things around in preparation for DDT spraying).
As the afternoon rain moved in, we rolled out, stopping in a tiny bar for a round of farewell drinks with the MVP folks.
It was time for us to drive to Mekelle before nightfall. However, during our stay at the Gheralta Lodge, we had made the mistake of flipping through the pages of a book about the ancient Christian churches of Ethiopia. There was one curch we just couldn't pass up: Abreha wa Atsbeha. Literally carved out of stone, the church makes a cave inside the mountain! It was built during the rule of the twin kings Abreha and Atsbeha whose remains are believed to be housed in the recesses of the church. Overall, the church contains 44 stone columns and a beautiful dome, though most of it is now covered in a layer of soot (the evidence of a long-ago fire).
Although it was rather expensive to obtain the entry ticket to visit the church, the experience was well worth it - particularly meditating beneath the charred stone walls as the pitter patter of rain drifted through the church's magnificent blue wooden doors.
We celebrated our eventual arrival in Mekelle by sharing a wonderful meal with Kahsai and his family (a beautiful wife and two adorable kids) and Teklewoini (REST's founder and CEO). Dina, Kahsai's 11-year-old daughter, is a very outspoken and intelligent young lady. We had fun discussing global citizenship, America, and her plans of becoming a scientist of the planets.
We drove into downtown Hawzien this morning in search of the Millennium Village Project (MVP) office. Hawzien is the location of a huge farmer's market that takes place every Wednesday and draws Ethiopians from far and wide. It is also the site of a national tragedy. On June 22, 1988, it was air bombed by the Derg government during a market day and 2500 Ethiopians were killed. We drove past a stella that was erected in the main plaza in honor of those who died...a rather sobering reminder of the not-too-distant past.
Today is Thursday and as we drove down the main street, I saw the remains of yesterday's market. People were still gathered to socialize and sell off a few bags of leftover grain. Pulling the car to the left, our driver parked right beside a huddle of women bargaining for some bags of grain, and we climbed out to an exchange of curious glances.
Tucked away from all the marketplace hubbub, in a courtyard off the main road, we found the MVP office. Out of all our site visits in Ethiopia, I think I can fairly say that we were all anticipating the visit to the MVP perhaps the most. Back in the states, we had read both praise and criticism of the prject and we hoped to see for ourselves what impact the MVP is having. In particular, I saw that the MVP has two big opportunities to be very successful and mainly two potential pitfalls. As an organization operating in countries throughout Africa, the MVP has an exciting chance to create a high level "development method" (a systematic approach for tackling development issues), with each regional staff tailoring the program to their local context. Basically, adding additional villages or replicating the program should not require re-inventing the wheel. Secondly, the name recognition and significant donor backing that Jeffrey Sachs and his team have received place the MVPs in a unique position to pave the way with new, innovative development solutions that can then be adopted by the government after five years, when the MVPs pull out.
That said, two major apprehensions I have are: 1) will the MVP be able to pull out in five years and leave behind a sustainable impact? and 2) Can the MVP, though it was initiated from far-away Columbia University, operate in a way that is truly bottom-up?
As we approached the MVP office, we were greeted by a somewhat perplexed staff. Unfortunately, they had been expecting us to arrive yesterday and the person given the task of showing us around had already left on another assignment.
Nevertheless, they agreed to hst us today and all six staff members and the four of us (Charly, Alex, Kahsai, and I) gathered around a table in the main office. On the whole, the staff looked a bit nervous and unsure what to say since their representative had left. However, once we introduced ourselves and each staff member began talking about his or her deparment, they became more comfortable and confident. In particular, I was impressed by the two women staff members, one who is head of Gender Activities and the other is director of the MVP's Education Activities. The MVP operates in five main areas: health, infrastructure, agriculture, water and sanitation, and education.
The allocation of the MVP funds is determined by the Columbia research team with 30% dedicated to health, 20% to infrastructure, 15% to agriculture, 15% to water and sanitation, and 20% to education. As Kahsai later shared, he said that he could not even imagine operating within these parameters. REST knows exactly what each kebelle has stated as their priorities and how the wereda have prioritized each kebelle to receive funds. It is these wereda priorities, rather than mandates given by USAID or Oxfam America, that determine the allocations of funds donated to REST. With the MVP's strict allocation of funds, I believe it will be more difficult to impliment a bottom-up development approach.
We finished our tea and headed out into the field. Our first stop was a nursery that was originally planted by the government and is now run by the MVP. This stuck me as somewhat strange, as I would have imagined the MPV to start a nursery and the government to then step in. However, it was exciting to see how the MVP uses the nursery as a training ground for farmers and identifies entrepreneurial farmers who are willing to set aside parts of their limited farmland for growing fruits and vegetables (higher value crops). In particular, the MVP shows them tricks of the trade for getting such crops to grow in the dry Ethiopian soil. We saw one apple tree that had been bent over to get it to grow side shoots, and papaya trees that had two small perferated clay pots on either side - a low tech drip irrigation system.
We didn't stay long because the day is short and our main objective was to see Koraro--the first and most reknowned village the MVP is working in. It is very remote--an hour by car when it is dry and inaccessible when wet. Although REST has done some work there in the past, it is not a priority of the wereda because they know it has very little hope as a good investment. They feel it is better for those villagers to move because Koraro is more resource poor than other areas and as a market center, it could never compete with Hawzien. We were surprised to see that the hospital in Koraro is expecting surgery equipment when some of the more basic immunization facilities were rather disorganized and dishevelled.
However, I was impressed by the MVP's involvement with Koraro's school. The MVP has initiated a school food program, where participating households donate 10 percent of their crops to the school in order to provide students with breakfast. We visited one Koraro home with a woman head-of-house. She was as proud to inform us of her involvement in the school food program as she was to show us her well-kept household (which was beautiful despite moving things around in preparation for DDT spraying).
As the afternoon rain moved in, we rolled out, stopping in a tiny bar for a round of farewell drinks with the MVP folks.
It was time for us to drive to Mekelle before nightfall. However, during our stay at the Gheralta Lodge, we had made the mistake of flipping through the pages of a book about the ancient Christian churches of Ethiopia. There was one curch we just couldn't pass up: Abreha wa Atsbeha. Literally carved out of stone, the church makes a cave inside the mountain! It was built during the rule of the twin kings Abreha and Atsbeha whose remains are believed to be housed in the recesses of the church. Overall, the church contains 44 stone columns and a beautiful dome, though most of it is now covered in a layer of soot (the evidence of a long-ago fire).
Although it was rather expensive to obtain the entry ticket to visit the church, the experience was well worth it - particularly meditating beneath the charred stone walls as the pitter patter of rain drifted through the church's magnificent blue wooden doors.
We celebrated our eventual arrival in Mekelle by sharing a wonderful meal with Kahsai and his family (a beautiful wife and two adorable kids) and Teklewoini (REST's founder and CEO). Dina, Kahsai's 11-year-old daughter, is a very outspoken and intelligent young lady. We had fun discussing global citizenship, America, and her plans of becoming a scientist of the planets.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
July 4, 2007 - Ethiopia
This morning, we took just a short drive from Aksum to Adua, arriving at the regional (wereda) REST headquarters at “hour 3” (according to the Ethiopian clock, which spans from 1 to 12 as soon as daylight begins and from 1 to 12 for the hours without sunlight). At the village (kebelle) level, REST simply works through the existing village governing societies, and then plays a larger coordinating role at the wereda level, where it has one non-voting seat on the regional decision-making council. Beneath the wereda level, REST has initiated watershed councils that are made up of all the kebelles within a watershed. Watershed councils cross town and political borders and make much more sense environmentally speaking. The kebelles in each watershed now coordinate with each other to submit their list of priorities (indicating whether they want irrigation systems or water delivery systems and what types of technology they prefer) to the wereda council, the wereda council makes a priority list of the order in which each kebelle should receive water systems. REST looks at the wereda priority list, compares it to the donations they have received (usually from Oxfam America, USAID, or A Glimmer of Hope), and begins matching donations to each kebelle. Before implementing a project, REST goes back to each kebelle to ask if their number one priority was correctly represented on the wereda priority list. About five percent of the time, their needs are actually a bit different, so REST tells the wereda to update the priority list.
Today, we had the chance to speak with one of the wereda-level REST coordinators named Hiwod. We only chatted very briefly because he was very excited to show us an actual watershed that REST is working with. On the way, we stopped by DECSI (Debit Credit and Savings Institutiiion), a spin-off microfinance organization that originated as a REST project. It is now the beginning of the rainy season, which meant that the line of farmers seeking loans for new seedlings stretched out onto the street. Haile, the bank manager, currently has 5,000 clients with only a 3 percent default rate and he offers one of the lowest interest rates I have ever seen at a microfinance institution: 12 percent! or even 9 percent for the poorest of the poor (which is government subsidized). We also had a chance to stop by the shop of one woman who has used DECSI loans to expand her once tiny shop to a booming store with much larger inventory and greater variety of goods. Unfortunately, she wasn’t there at the time, but her son didn’t mind chatting with us and we quickly got a sense of her entrepreneurial spirit.
But let’s get back to REST. REST is currently operating in 4 out of the 46 watersheds in Tigray. After driving 45 minutes across roads that simply don’t exist once the rainy season settles in, we arrived at one of those four watersheds.
Starting at the top of the watershed and making our way downwards, we saw how REST implements a holistic approach to watershed recovery. In the watershed we visited, the community’s main concern was the river bed that ran through the center of their community. The once-shallow river that meandered through their valley is now a gully of rushing water that divides the community in half during the rainy season. As their population has grown over the years, the villagers began cutting down more and more trees in order to make room for farmland. The inevitable consequence is soil erosion and lower water retention in the hills. REST began in the upper region of the watershed, replanting indigenous species. Within the water channel itself, they took both an engineering and a biological approach. At 10-meter intervals, the villagers installed Gabian baskets and all along the river bed, they planted elephant grass (in order to curb erosion). Just three weeks ago, the villagers even began building a ford across the river in order to connect the main village and the primary school during the rainy season.
As REST analyzes the problems of a particular watershed, there is never just one solution. In addition to Gabian baskets and elephant grass, they look at installing mini and micro dams, bore wells (for drinking water), river diversions, hand dug ground water wells, catch basins, fruit tree nurseries (to introduce higher value crops to the villagers), and ponds. REST has gained so much traction among the people that within weeks, dozens of farmers are replicating the hand dug wells themselves (which REST also has to watch out for…that the kebelles are properly managing their scarce water resource)!
As far as Alex and I are concerned, Wednesdays and Fridays are the best days of the week for food in Ethiopia. These are fasting days and no one eats any meat or animal products on these days. We enjoyed a lunch of some Enjera and spaghetti (the one Western food you can find anywhere thanks to the brief Italian invasion) and then headed towards Hawzien.
Tonight, we are staying at the Gheralta Lodge. It was recently built by an Ethiopian-born Italian gentleman whose wife says that the lodge is an “old man’s project.” Having spent the first seventeen years of his life in Ethiopia, it is clear that Ethiopia has a special place in his heart… enough so that he lived in a tent for six months as he directed the construction of the lodge! As a native Ethiopian, he was very particular that the buildings be constructed using some of the traditional Ethiopian styles: the ancient art of Tigrayan masonry is combined with modern glass windows and European furniture.
After traveling throughout Ethiopia, he chose this very strategic location, near Hawzien. The rolling land butts up against the base of a mountain that juts into the sky like a skyscraper city above the desert plains below. The mountain is home to three ancient Christian churches that attract both pilgrims and adventurers alike. The most beautiful church is the most inaccessible (so if you’re planning to go, be sure to bring your climbing gear!).
We were excited to learn that the business is run by young Tigrinians who are trained in cooking and lodge management. They can even learn English during their time off with the on-site English teacher. A very innovative and beautiful lodge and we are sad to have to move on so early tomorrow morning (we’ll just have to come back!) :-)
This morning, we took just a short drive from Aksum to Adua, arriving at the regional (wereda) REST headquarters at “hour 3” (according to the Ethiopian clock, which spans from 1 to 12 as soon as daylight begins and from 1 to 12 for the hours without sunlight). At the village (kebelle) level, REST simply works through the existing village governing societies, and then plays a larger coordinating role at the wereda level, where it has one non-voting seat on the regional decision-making council. Beneath the wereda level, REST has initiated watershed councils that are made up of all the kebelles within a watershed. Watershed councils cross town and political borders and make much more sense environmentally speaking. The kebelles in each watershed now coordinate with each other to submit their list of priorities (indicating whether they want irrigation systems or water delivery systems and what types of technology they prefer) to the wereda council, the wereda council makes a priority list of the order in which each kebelle should receive water systems. REST looks at the wereda priority list, compares it to the donations they have received (usually from Oxfam America, USAID, or A Glimmer of Hope), and begins matching donations to each kebelle. Before implementing a project, REST goes back to each kebelle to ask if their number one priority was correctly represented on the wereda priority list. About five percent of the time, their needs are actually a bit different, so REST tells the wereda to update the priority list.
Today, we had the chance to speak with one of the wereda-level REST coordinators named Hiwod. We only chatted very briefly because he was very excited to show us an actual watershed that REST is working with. On the way, we stopped by DECSI (Debit Credit and Savings Institutiiion), a spin-off microfinance organization that originated as a REST project. It is now the beginning of the rainy season, which meant that the line of farmers seeking loans for new seedlings stretched out onto the street. Haile, the bank manager, currently has 5,000 clients with only a 3 percent default rate and he offers one of the lowest interest rates I have ever seen at a microfinance institution: 12 percent! or even 9 percent for the poorest of the poor (which is government subsidized). We also had a chance to stop by the shop of one woman who has used DECSI loans to expand her once tiny shop to a booming store with much larger inventory and greater variety of goods. Unfortunately, she wasn’t there at the time, but her son didn’t mind chatting with us and we quickly got a sense of her entrepreneurial spirit.
But let’s get back to REST. REST is currently operating in 4 out of the 46 watersheds in Tigray. After driving 45 minutes across roads that simply don’t exist once the rainy season settles in, we arrived at one of those four watersheds.
Starting at the top of the watershed and making our way downwards, we saw how REST implements a holistic approach to watershed recovery. In the watershed we visited, the community’s main concern was the river bed that ran through the center of their community. The once-shallow river that meandered through their valley is now a gully of rushing water that divides the community in half during the rainy season. As their population has grown over the years, the villagers began cutting down more and more trees in order to make room for farmland. The inevitable consequence is soil erosion and lower water retention in the hills. REST began in the upper region of the watershed, replanting indigenous species. Within the water channel itself, they took both an engineering and a biological approach. At 10-meter intervals, the villagers installed Gabian baskets and all along the river bed, they planted elephant grass (in order to curb erosion). Just three weeks ago, the villagers even began building a ford across the river in order to connect the main village and the primary school during the rainy season.
As REST analyzes the problems of a particular watershed, there is never just one solution. In addition to Gabian baskets and elephant grass, they look at installing mini and micro dams, bore wells (for drinking water), river diversions, hand dug ground water wells, catch basins, fruit tree nurseries (to introduce higher value crops to the villagers), and ponds. REST has gained so much traction among the people that within weeks, dozens of farmers are replicating the hand dug wells themselves (which REST also has to watch out for…that the kebelles are properly managing their scarce water resource)!
As far as Alex and I are concerned, Wednesdays and Fridays are the best days of the week for food in Ethiopia. These are fasting days and no one eats any meat or animal products on these days. We enjoyed a lunch of some Enjera and spaghetti (the one Western food you can find anywhere thanks to the brief Italian invasion) and then headed towards Hawzien.
Tonight, we are staying at the Gheralta Lodge. It was recently built by an Ethiopian-born Italian gentleman whose wife says that the lodge is an “old man’s project.” Having spent the first seventeen years of his life in Ethiopia, it is clear that Ethiopia has a special place in his heart… enough so that he lived in a tent for six months as he directed the construction of the lodge! As a native Ethiopian, he was very particular that the buildings be constructed using some of the traditional Ethiopian styles: the ancient art of Tigrayan masonry is combined with modern glass windows and European furniture.
After traveling throughout Ethiopia, he chose this very strategic location, near Hawzien. The rolling land butts up against the base of a mountain that juts into the sky like a skyscraper city above the desert plains below. The mountain is home to three ancient Christian churches that attract both pilgrims and adventurers alike. The most beautiful church is the most inaccessible (so if you’re planning to go, be sure to bring your climbing gear!).
We were excited to learn that the business is run by young Tigrinians who are trained in cooking and lodge management. They can even learn English during their time off with the on-site English teacher. A very innovative and beautiful lodge and we are sad to have to move on so early tomorrow morning (we’ll just have to come back!) :-)
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