Climbing Mount Kenya

After a nearly 8-hour (BUMPY) bus ride back from Kisumu, I had exactly 30 minutes to:

1. buy a wind-proof jacket (done! on sale for 2700 shillings at Nairobi Sports House, even if it was filthy and missing a hood)
   
2. get from the CBD (Central Business District) to Hurlingham (thanks to JatCo taxi, and not thanks to all the mid-day traffic)
   
3. unpack my backpack from Kisumu (hot weather, staying in a full-amenity house)
   
4. repack my backpack for cold Mount Kenya (bitterly cold mountain hiking)
   

Fortunately, Dave was running late ... and when he finally did arrive didn't mind waiting a few extra minutes for me. Unfortunately, in my rush, I erred on the side of including items, failing to adhere to Brady's wise, wise adage, "ounces to pounds" and ended up with quite a heavy pack.

But all the scrambling aside, soon we were on our way with Charles (a fantastic taxi driver if you're ever looking for one in Nairobi) and George (my Naivasha and Mount Kenya guide) on our way to Nanyuki, the base town for the Sirimon Trail up Mount Kenya.

Mount Kenya is the second highest peak in Africa and located only three-plus hours northeast of Nairobi. Given tight time constraints (my flight, Dave's work schedule) we only had time (four days) to ascend and descend along Sirimon, rather than descend along Chogoria or some other longer route, but fortunately Sirimon came highly recommended as a) not too crowded, and b) beautiful for flora and fauna.

Our hiking party contained George (our guide), Patrick (our assistant guide -- primarily responsible for escorting one of us down the mountain if we suffered from altitude sickness), and Samuel (our amazing 24 year-old cook). They arranged everything (from paying our park fees to arranging for accommodations to buying all the food) which meant that all Dave and I had to do was walk and look around, actually a harder task than I anticipated.

I am only recently coming to terms with the fact that I am no longer the a) young b) athlete that I once was. My first five years out of college I could pick up and get into shape with very little effort and barely needed to think about fitness. I've noticed in the last few years that the muscles I took for granted for so long leave me if I ignore them ... which I have been since about mid-spring when I dropped out of the Brooklyn half-marathon after 9 miles.

Add my general lack of being in shape (and assuming I am in better shape than I am) to the fact that we started our hike at 2700 meters and would ascend to nearly 5000 meters, covering as much as 23 kilometers in a day, and that my pack was pretty darn heavy, and that my hiking companions were a 23 year-old former football player who still works out a lot and three Kenyan men in their mid-twenties who climb mountains for a living ... and for the first time of any hike or really any sort of athletic activity I found myself being the pacesetter (read: slowest member) of the group. I really am okay with it. But my new-school-year resolution is to start running again and re-join a gym so I can lift some weights.

Mount Kenya may also have been one of the hardest hikes I've ever done. Unlike Machu Picchu or mountain ranges in the northeast, the hike didn't cover rolling hills that gradually ascended, but rather was a steady climb up. And up. And up. Or at least it felt that way. And the weather on Mount Kenya is famously unpredictable, and we had rain (or hail) for at least a portion of our hike each day (usually in the late afternoon).

But, the scenery made up for it.

Our first day was a 9km hike from Sirimon Gate to Old Moses Camp. No one was there when we arrived, although a 30-year old Irishman named Stephen arrived while we were enjoying the views and and a raucous group of late 30s early 40s expats/Brits on vacation from their wives and families drove up in a car shortly after dark. The hut was simple and efficient -- one long common area with nails to hang your wet clothes, two bathrooms (with flush toilets!), a sink, and a half dozen bunk rooms with at least four bunk beds in each.

The best part of Old Moses were the spectacular views from a small outcropping of rocks just behind the cook tents. It was a lovely place to watch the sunset, and later to watch the stars. That is, until Dave heard a hyena call (I thought it was a bird) just a few meters away in the tall grass. Apparently, hyenas are not only scavengers, but will attack weak prey in groups and are as such rather dangerous to humans, so we had to cut our stargazing short.


The next morning we set out at around 7AM for an 18km hike that would ascend 900 meters to Shipton Camp. This was the tough day for me. But the scenery was incredible along the way complete with really interesting plant life (amazing cactuses and the softest, most serene long grass), constantly changing views of the mountains and peaks, and a landscape not quite like anything I'd ever seen before. At times it felt like I was on an alien planet, the cactuses were so big and omnipresent (Joshua Tree in California is probably the best comparison). The only people we saw on the trail were our friends from Old Moses, but we didn't even see them very often.

This is actually the same plant -- young, old

The closer we got to Shipton, the harder I realized summiting to Point Lenana would be, while only 3km away, the beautiful views of the peaks also made it clear just how much climbing would be involved. Once at the camp, our group from Old Moses quickly became a little family, all sharing a single room with at least 8 bunk beds, as the camp was overrun with hikers either from other trails or who had decided to spend an additional day at Shipton resting and preparing for the summit to Lenana.

Our third day would be the most exciting and rewarding -- waking up at 2AM for a snack before leaving to hike the 3km (but at a steep incline) to point Lenana for sunrise, returning for breakfast, and hitting the road again by late morning to return to Old Moses. I left early, wanting plenty of time to rest and walk slowly up to the peak, but George kept pushing me to walk faster, so we were the first to reach the top and spent quite a lot of time in the cold waiting.

Nothing quite beats a mountain sunrise.

The return to Old Moses was definitely easier -- both for the downhill and because George no longer had anything to carry, and so he carried my pack. But I was also excited because Catherine and her sister were supposed to be climbing Mount Kenya and coming up Sirimon that very day -- and I was hoping to see them at Old Moses.

Once again small world Kenya came through and through the fog of an inadvertent nap (the huts are extremely cold and I decided to "read" in my sleeping bag at around 4pm after my 24 km of hiking and being up for a solid 14 hours) I thought I heard Catherine laugh. I woke up and listened hard ... but all was quiet. I couldn't quite motivate to get out of my warm sleeping bag, until suddenly our door burst open and Catherine and her sister were ushered in by her guide and the hut proprietor.

Screams and hugs ensued when I called her name from deep inside my sleeping bag ... we weren't sure we'd see each other again in Kenya. It was an especially nice treat for me to see them as a bit of closure on Mount Kenya, and Kenya itself, before walking that last 9km to the waiting car and a matatu back to Nairobi (and a plane back to New York). Although it was also highly strange to be finishing something Catherine was just starting in Kenya. With the one exception of graduating three years ahead of her from Princeton, I've definitely been following Catherine around -- especially to Kenya.

After summiting Lenana, Dave said, "That is definitely the coolest hike I've ever done." Dave has hiked a lot more than me, but his words ring true -- both for Mount Kenya and my time in Nairobi.

A Day in the Life in Kisumu

The day after our Longonot hike, I woke up early to catch a 7AM Akamba bus to Kisumu. I was heading to Western Kenya to see a different part of the country and to visit friends of Catherine’s, Fred & Betty, who run a guest house out of their home in the Tom Mboya neighborhood of Kisumu.

The ride was beautiful, passing through Kericho’s tea farms, rolling hills, forests, rivers, and even some kind of parade (complete with marching bands and banners).

Staying with Fred & Betty allowed me an opportunity to step outside of the NGO/expat bubble and tag along on a day in the life of Fred and see a very different Kenyan city.

We started our day confronting one of the top of mind issues for most Kenyans, petrol. Petrol (gas) prices have been rising fast, a driving force behind Kenya’s TK inflation rate. The first gas station we arrived at was out of petrol, but as we were driving out Fred stopped short at the sight of a hawker with two love birds in a cage.

“Parrots!” he exclaimed gleefully. Fred and Betty have a large birdcage in his back yard, and Fred had been in the market for parrots for some time. A quick negotiation in Swahili and 700 shillings later, Fred was the proud owner of the love birds.

Unfortunately, while we were trying to unwrap a piece of hair from one of the bird’s legs and fix some things in its tiny, temporary cage, one love bird escaped. Fred looked so sad it broke my heart … but rather than dwell, we pushed forward with our day setting out on an exploration of Kisumu town, a combination of running errands with Fred and doing touristy things for my benefit. I cheerfully told Fred that I was sure we could find the hawker and buy him more parrots.

Kisumu was created in 1901 as the end of a colonial railway line to transport the colonial spoils across Lake Victoria. The rail station is still lively with loud, tropical music piped out onto the platforms where two guards sat and several men were working the tracks with pick axes to remove rather large weeds from the rocky terrain. However, train service was suspended a few months back for money trouble.

While all of Kenya has struggled since January’s election violence, Kisumu was an area especially hard hit, long a stronghold of Raila Odinga’s Luo tribesmen. We passed by several burned out buildings as we drove through town, although honestly at this point it was difficult for me to understand what destruction was a result of the violence and what was a result of poverty and neglect.

Fred and Betty helped me understand however, explaining which roads were completely impassable (the two biggest, and many of the smaller) and showing me which buildings had been on fire, which buildings were owned by Kikuyus and therefore targeted by looters, and which buildings were safe, either because of effective infrastructure or Luo ownership. This video is from the Nation Media Group, Kenya's largest and most respected news organization.

From Catherine’s blogs it seems that the impact of the violence was severe, so I was glad to see it looking back to what I can only presume is closer to normal. At our first stop, a carpenter’s shop (a shack along the side of the main drag through town with a partially finished bed out front), I attracted about a dozen boys aged 4 to 8 who proceeded to run screaming from me any time I made eye contact or took a step towards them, but would slowly creep closer and closer to observe me closer immediately once I stopped looking. As is often the case with Kenyan children, they were fascinated by my whiteness (I am unequivocally white in Kenya), calling me mzungu and chanting over and over, “How are you?”

After showing the carpenter a picture on Fred’s computer of the bird cage he would like built and drawing some crude dimensions in a notebook, we continued on our way.

In order to be able to conduct official business with the bank, Fred required a stamp with his business name and address. Fred had provided the name and design earlier in the week but needed to “pick” the finished product. (In Kenya, pick is almost never used with a preposition – taxis pick you, you pick groceries while you are running errands.)

Back in the center of town, the most western looking part of the city with large commercial buildings, mostly housing banks, Fred and I approached a row of micro-entrepreneurs set up at small tables lining the pavements (sidewalks). After the shoe-shine guy we stopped at a table where a man was handling what looked like recycled tires and small scraps of wood. The stamp store, of course. Fred selected a piece of wood, and the proprietor affixed the small piece of rubber with Fred & Betty’s hotel name to the bottom. Ksh75, and a day, and Fred and Betty are official!

Around the corner from the stamp store was the petrol station where we had found the man with the parrots the day before. So we returned to try to find some more. The man was not there, but of course the other hawkers (selling locks and other assorted gadgets on a blanket next to the convenience store) knew exactly who we were looking for, and in typical Kenyan fashion, immediately jumped on a bike to go find him and deliver Fred’s message.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, there is a strong code of conduct that often fills the role that formal rules play in the US. This young man could not have jumped on his bike more quickly when we expressed interest in the birds -- even though the transaction did not involve him -- because there was a deal to be done and it was his obligation to make it happen. He brokered the entire deal (and likely got some compensation from the bird hawker for it) including transporting the parrots, handling the negotiating, and collecting the money. In a curio market, if you are talking to one vendor, generally you won't be approached by another until you've completed your first transaction. And outside of business it happens as well. Adults will feel entitled and comfortable scolding and directing children other than their own, and sometimes even adults.

But I'm realizing that this informal structure, while often surprisingly effective and efficient, has its failings. Fred had to instruct the carpenter several times on the construction of the birdhouse before finally saying, "Just rebuild it," turning what he thought would be an afternoon's project into a project over multiple days. A lack of effective formal structures certainly contributed to the inability to prevent and control the post-election violence, and most certainly has hampered the government's ability to rebuild post-violence. Informality only works insofar as the participants are willing to be involved and play their roles, and often in the face of violence or temptation, it is easy for the citizen to opt out. Just today I learned that a friend was mugged in downtown Nairobi, at dusk in the middle of acrwded street, and no one helped.

Modernization, increasingly complicated, dispersed, and diverse populations mixing in ways that are new and different breaks down a lot of the fabric and traditions that keeps informally organized societies functioning. I think the US confronts many of the same challenges, but they are no easier for being more obvious in Kenya.

Small World

Apologies for the prolonged lack of communication; my travels post-Acumen left little opportunity for email or blogging, but provided ample photo opportunities and blog fodder!*

The first stop on my post-Acumen travel was Mount Longonot, a crater near Naivaisha with 360 degree views of the Rift Valley, and pretty universally recommended by people who have spent time in Nairobi. In imagining the crater, I definitely did not anticipate the steep mountain walls I would have to climb, expecting the meandering paths in American mountains, or the depth of this old volcano.

Longonot was also a trial run for hiking with Dave, a volunteer consultant with TechnoServe with whom I was talking about climbing Mount Kenya, Africa's second highest peak. It was good practice, both to test how Dave and I would get along and to test my leg strength on the slopes and lung strength at 2,700 meters before ascending nearly 5,000 meters over four days to Mount Kenya's Point Lenana.

Dave and I first met at the entrance to Hell's Gate National Park on my solo trip to Naivasha almost a month ago:

My first day in Naivasha, armed only with a surprisingly accurate hand-drawn map from Catherine indicating general leftish and rightish directions through open fields that used zebra and giraffe as landmarks, I was determined to find Crater Lake (an appropriately named lake within a crater that is green in color and home to thousands of pink flamingos.)

My plan was to approach the crater by way of Lake Naivasha, hiring a boat to drop me on the opposite shore from my hotel (Fish Eagle Camp) and walking through a forest and up the crater to spectacular views. On this trip, and many other times in Kenya, I often thought of Bert Hubley, my 8th grade science teacher, while appreciating the abundance of bird life and the opportunities to look up at the night sky. In particular, the boat trip allowed me to observe whole flocks of cormorants and other water fowl flying, swimming, and fishing.

Erroneously convinced that the hike had to be relatively straightforward and wanting to avoid getting ripped off I refused a guide, a choice I regretted after taking a wrong turn and nearly missing the crater entirely. Fortunately, an elderly American couple (who have been living in Kenya for 40 years) passed me on the road and gave me a lift to the appropriate trailhead, allowing me at least a glimpse into the crater if not the opportunity to hike around it.

This experience at the crater made me decide to hire a guide to bike with me in Hell's Gate to show me the way to and through the gorge located some 15 kilometers inside the entrance. My gorge guide, George (a 26 year-old Kenyan who would later become my guide for Mount Kenya), not only saved me from an angry ostrich during our bike ride (apparently when they fluff their feathers and run at you, they are quite dangerous no matter how awkward and ridiculous they look) but actually carried me (on his shoulders!) at one point where the gorge crossing was particularly tricky.

On our way out of Hell's Gate, a group of mzungus who were in the process of renting bikes stopped me and George. They had all kinds of questions for me, verifying what they likely suspected were biased opinions of the proprietor of the bike rental shop - how was the ride, how far was it, is a guide necssary, etc. For a moment, the group considered hiring George , but ultimately couldn't agree on a rate, allowing George and I to continue on our way.

The next day, back at work, Amy and I made our way to Westlands for a meeting at TechnoServe. It was a follow-up meeting with Yvonne, whom we had met before, and a new VolCon (volunteer consultant). It took us a few minutes, but just before the meeting began, Dave, the new VolCon, and I realized that we had met the day before - Dave's first day in Kenya - at that Hell's Gate bike shop. The following weekend while I was in Lamu, I ran into one of the women from that group, Nicole, and found out that Jelena, the other woman from the bike shop, was a classmate of mine at HBS.

These kinds of coincidences were not uncommon in my time in Kenya. One of the challenges to really getting a sense of Nairobi was how easily the expat community, and in particular the venture fund/market oriented development expat community incorporates and supports people like me. From Acumen to TechnoServe to Root Capital, there were no shortage of 20 to 30 somethings who graduated from some well-known college and likely were in or shortly out of graduate school spending anywhere from two months to a year in Nairobi exploring the social enterprise space.

The availability of this network was both incredibly comforting and helpful (there was never a shortage of travel or dinner companions) and risky (it could have been very easy to never venture outside of the little expat bubble potentially limiting one's ability to actually see what is going on.)

While I didn't strike a perfect balance, I'm quite grateful for my time alone in Naivasha, Lamu, and Kisumu (more on this to come) as well as the camaraderie and friendship I found in the Mara, at Longonot, on Mount Kenya, and, of course, in Nairobi. I am excited to follow this crew's movements throughout their careers and the world and hope that it will be that kind of source between primary and secondary for keeping up with what is happening in the world of development and social enterprise.

*In the spirit of full disclosure, I am now back in the US, but will be working through my backblog over the next few weeks.

Six Weeks Later

It's hard to believe that six weeks at Acumen are over. I'm blogging this entry from Java House, Upper Hill, which was the very first place I went when I arrived in Nairobi (to have lunch with Catherine and Jon) and (as often seems to happen) that first visit simultaneously feels like ages ago and days ago.

My time at Acumen was short. Short like a Coro field placement. And like a field placement I'm struck by how much I was actually able to learn and accomplish in such a short time, and disappointed that I'm leaving just as I've sorted out what kind of opportunity I've had at my fingertips, and just as I know enough to take fuller advantage of it. But most of all, I'm amazed at how an opportunity that came about almost accidentally ended up being such the right thing in ways I could have never anticipated. I think it might have been life changing, in the way that my Project 55 internship at Oxfam America was life changing, fundamentally broadening my perspective and altering my outlook on what possibilities exist for what to do with my one precious life.

Looking back, the experiences are similar to my first day on any of my field placements or my first day of anything (school, work): look around, listen, and try to understand.

The Acumen Fund East Africa office currently employs two full-time people (a country manager and portfolio associate) with a part-time administrative assistant and an Acumen Fund Fellow also spending variable amounts of time in the office. These employees work in a single brightly painted room (perhaps 15-20' x 10') with three desks, two of which are pushed together to create a two-person work station.

Except, for the summer (or in Nairobi's case, winter), the office routinely housed eight people -- six people around the two-person work station pictured above (now pulled away from the wall to create more seating space) in addition to the two at the single person work station.

Even with all of these extra bodies, the office was always busy. The team is simultaneously searching for new potential investments (developing the pipeline), evaluating the pipeling (doing due diligence), presenting potential investments to the investment committee, developing knowledge on each of Acumen's five sectors (health, energy, housing, water/sanitation, and agriculture), and developing knowledge of the local market (East Africa, not just Kenya).

(Acumen Intern, Amy, fielding two calls at once)

So despite the juggling of responsibilities the office was always lively, to say the least.

My first few days were full of heady idealism about the power of these ideas to change the world ... excitement that I still carry, but the subsequent weeks demonstrated where theory meets practice and the compromises that often result. But rather than sowing discouragement, this realization helped me to think about what kinds of roles I may be interested in the future (probably not pure theory, despite how tidy and satisfying it might be) and showed me that the social venture space, while maturing, has not yet been solved. While this uncertainty might have frustrated me as recently as a few years ago, now it excites me. Rather than seeing all the reasons why it won't work, I'm starting to see the possibilities for what has potential to work. I'm actually enjoying the tensions inherent being in the middle of this kind "messy" work and the thoughts they provoke. I'm much more comfortable with the idea that there is not one "right" solution, and that an approach involving a portfolio of entrepreneurial options, some of which will fail, is at a minimum a great way to test what might work.

Acumen's blended model (business and social impact) allowed me the opportunity to live out parts of my heart, mind, and life that have to date been compartmentalized. I was allowed to really dig deep and use skills acquired at HBS that I never anticipated needing again while satisfying my passion for and experience in social justice work. I'm not sure I believed this combination was possible before, and I'll admit (again) that it was intoxicating, even while I was still deciding how I felt about the blended model. And, learning about NGOs in Kenya pushed me to truly consider some of the harshest criticisms levied against non-profit and government systems that for so long I've defensively discounted.*

But more profound is the change that I know I've undergone as a person, but can't articulate neatly.

All summer I've struggled with the idea of primary v. secondary source information. There's an inefficiency to requiring primary source information, but a depth and relevance that you lose with secondary sources. I can read about Africa in the news, in books, through Catherine's emails and blog posts ... but I could never fully understand it without coming here myself. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm both unsurprised and frustrated at my need to go and see with my own eyes the same observations that others have made before me in order to internalize them. But, I do know that the simple act of coming to Kenya and spending a chunk of time here has affected me deeply, as a person who sees the world through the lenses of her past experiences, one of which now includes six weeks embedded in a culture and context quite different from her own, one of which now includes first hand experience with the challenges of international poverty.

Which leads to my greatest regret. I think I spent far too much time in the office. I didn't create enough opportunities in the field and was either too exhausted or too timid to venture out and take full advantage of living in Nairobi - whether that was exploring the city or the region or the country. There's still a bit of time, in which I will relish being an observer and trying to soak in as much as I can, but hopefully it's a lesson I've learned for the last time and can finally internalize.

Coming here and doing precisely this may be one of the best decisions I could have made for myself. I don't yet know what to do with what I've learned about development, Kenya, or myself, but I know that I'm better for the knowledge and the experience.

* Before any of my dear friends and allies in the nonprofit and public arenas pillory me for my conversion to extreme capitalism, I have not decided yet where I stand ... but am more rationally thinking about the underlying arguments. I'm still a moderate, believing that these sectors each have their place, but not one can address the issues we face alone.

Radio Silence

Friday is my last day at Acumen. In the invariable craziness that accompanies wrapping up projects (and the particular craziness that accompanies trying to debug a financial model when you weren't quite as diligent an RC student as you later wish you were) I have not, and likely will not, have time for proper blog entries.

I hope to pick up again next week, although I will be traveling through Western Kenya and (hopefully) climbing Mount Kenya, so internet may be intermittent.

In the meantime, there are some new photos on Flickr of my trip two weekends ago to Naivasha and my trip last weekend to the idyllic little island called Lamu off the coast of Kenya and just south of the Somali border.

My time in Nairobi has sped by, almost too fast! While I'm looking forward to returning home, I'm definitely going to miss it here. If you're ever planning a sojourn to Kenya, give yourself more than 8 weeks.

A Matter of Informality

Last weekend I took my first solo trip since arriving in Nairobi. I jumped on a "luxury" matatu, which meant that there were only nine seats in the back instead of twelve, and there was none of the usual squishing and sitting on each others laps, at 8:04 ... and proceeded to wait.

Matatus on their way hardly stop at all, but a matatu at the start of its trip waits until it is full. Not almost full, not full enough. The entrepreneurs in Nairobi have an exceptional handle on their margins, marginal rate of return, and cost structure. The monetary value of time is uncertain, the cost of petrol is concrete (and high).

Waiting can be hard for me. Invariably I begin to wonder if I should have boarded a different matatu, if my timing was off, if I had time to buy the paper ... But waiting is a fact of life in Nairobi. Meetings never start on time, there are no schedules, everything is sawa sawa (ok, fine, all good). Knowing it is inevitable, knowing that as much as I may yearn for efficiency it will be unattainable, makes it just barely bearable.

Finally at 9:13, we start to drive! For 15 feet. And then pull over. Inexplicably. This is becoming a little much for me. But I try to settle back into The Saturday Nation and relax.

It must have worked, as I don't know what time we properly departed, but two roundabouts later (Nairobi is full of roundabouts) I was sure we were on our way. I settled back into a comfortable pattern of reading the paper and looking out the window when without warning we pulled into a police station. I generally have difficulty hiding my emotions, but I must have looked a combination of nervous, impatient, and frustrated because the mid-twenties young man sitting next to me said nonchalantly, "Oh, they must be stopping us to do a frisk." He barely directed the comment to me, but it was clearly for my benefit. No one else in the matatu even seemed to notice.

So Fred and I began to chat the friendly way you chat with strangers who happen to be your travel companions. He sells internet and grew up in Nakuru, near Naivasha where I was traveling. I asked him if he would tell me when to get off the matatu; he laughed. And then he asked me how I liked Nairobi, what was different about Kenya compared to America.

This is a question I get asked with some frequency, and I never know quite how to answer. I'm not sure I had ever really reflected on it, and it is hard to not focus on the trivial or negative. (The internet is slow ... I can't drink the water ... there aren't traffic rules ... or sidewalks ... the smog is thick ... most people are black here and I'm considered white ...) All of these things are true, but they don't matter, not really. I wanted to give Fred a good answer, a real answer. And as I tried to figure out some pattern behind everything I'd seen, some logic that would be easier to hold on to, I had my Aha moment.

It's all a matter of formality, with America being far more formal than Kenya. Not formal in the sense that people follow specific etiquette around table manners or wear suits -- in these respects I find Kenya to be more formal. I mean formal in the sense of established and/or defined by rules or regulations.

• The economy is informal -- most businesses are micro-enterprises and as such are too small for the government or any other entity to concern themselves with them.
  
  
• Prices are informal -- even when prices are written, which is not all that common, the expectation is that you will bargain. My friend Rohan managed to bargain at the foreign exchange counter at the airport!
  
  
• Schedules are at best guidelines -- as I mentioned before there are no timetables for public transport, meetings don't start on time, and even highly busy people don't schedule meetings or activities more than a few days in advance.
  
  
• Communication is even informal -- everyone communicates by cell phone, which often means texting or "flashing" (calling and hanging up) whoever you're trying to reach. I may have voicemail, but I'm not certain and no one else seems to have it.
  
  
• Even laws are informal -- negotiation and bribery is certainly a part of formal government and police processes, and whatever traffic laws exist are ignored, with everyone driving both defensively and aggressively at the same time.

What fascinates me about all of this informality is, oddly, how efficient it often is, especially if you stop considering time as a precious resource.

I thought I was on a matatu that would take me into Naivasha town. Instead, it dropped me on the side of the road 4 km from Naivasha. Almost immediately, a man approached me on his bike and offered me a ride to town, for 50 shillings. (I paid 30, which was probably 20 too much.) It all ends up working itself out, and for a reasonable price ... just not the way you were expecting it to.

In some ways, it is the extreme of a libertarian state, and the way that you compensate for the lack of regulation is a) knowing what you need to know -- ie what price is reasonable, where you are going, etc. and b) working through relationships. Nearly everything is arranged through referrals (from taxis, to hotels, to tour operators, to food stands), and rather than just emailing a friend with the website of your favorite spot, you call the hotel for them and negotiate them a rate.

It may be good for me, because I have no choice but to let go and not have everything planned out in advance. But, it probably will stress my parents out. Don't worry, mom & dad, in a system like this without formal rules, there is also a much greater sense of shared values and community self-policing. Vendors obey informal codes of conduct, and once a potential customer starts talking to one person, no one else tries to encroach. If they do, they are quickly held aside by any number of other vendors because the proper thing to do is to wait quietly to the side for your friend to introduce you. Two men started to fight in Naivasha town, and other men intervened. I think this is the same code of conduct that ensures that when I ask a Kenyan for directions s/he is likely to shepherd me through to my final destination. So even though the formal system is broken, the informal system is alive and well.

Matatus

Matatus are important enough part of life in Nairobi, that it feels appropriate to spend a little more time talking about them here. For your reference, you can just see the backs of two matatus toward the left side of the road in the accompanying picture. One is purple, and just to its left is a white matatu with a yellow stripe.

For the unfamiliar, a matatu is a shared taxi that travels along the same routes as the public bus routes or other well traveled paths. The matatu itself is a van – not a large van by American standards, and yet most matatus, or at least the regulated ones, have a yellow stripe on the outside of the van and list how many passengers the car can hold. Usually it is fourteen.

To clarify, fourteen is the legal capacity – or, the number of seats and seatbelts in the vehicle. This includes two people in front (including the driver) and four rows of three seats. I’ll remind you, this is not a large van. There is just barely enough room for my knees when I sit, all five feet two inches of me, and what passes for an aisle towards the back is a small gap between the second and third seat in the row. Narrow enough that I have to turn sideways to fit.

I make the distinction on legal capacity because more often than not, the matatus exceed their legal capacity. Frequently, two or three people sit in front, in addition to the driver and similar cramming happens in the back rows. Often people are told to sit in the “aisle,” or rather, park the outer edges of each butt cheek on the edges of the second and third seat. Or, as has often happened to me, the matatu door-man will give up his seat and sit on the lap of the patron who takes it, or instruct another passenger to sit on the lap of someone near the door.

The door-man has a critical role. He leans out the open door of the matatu shouting the fare, the route, or the number of seats available while waving a cardboard card with the route number handwritten on it. He also controls when the matatu starts and stops by banging on the roof when a passenger wants to get off, or when he confirms passengers want to get on.

Although, stopping is a relative term. Frequently, the matatu actually stops, but this is more a result of traffic than a decision by either the driver or the door-man. The matatu only slows when it picks up and drops off passengers. And if it isn’t crowded, or if there aren’t many people getting on or off, the van often won’t stop at all, trusting that you’ll break into a jog as you jump out of the (slowly?) moving van.

You can barely see out the sides of the van, as the windows are small and usually partially obstructed by colorful curtains, which generally match the décor of the matatu. Décor is serious. Whether for age or for added height, whatever once lined the ceiling has been removed and replaced by what appears to be something between oil cloth and particularly sturdy contact paper. It’s like living inside the book covers I made for my textbooks in junior high with stickers and quotes and color schemes that clearly reflect the personal tastes of the owners.

I have yet to figure out if the names of the matatus are linked with their décor. I suspect not. The matatu’s name is plastered on the front windshield, and sometimes repeated on the back, in those letters I would often see on back windshields in LA, spelling Jesucristo es mi Señor. Names vary widely and include Condoleeza, Makaveli, Brooklyn, Ferrari, and Secret.

But for all this craziness, matatus are wonderful.

The music is always blaring, and usually pretty amazing. From Tanzanian gospel to hip hop, the bass is pumped up and the beats are captivating. As you surge and stop through Nairobi traffic squashed between your fellow passengers, warm and slightly stifled with a limited range of vision, you're lulled into a peaceful daydream ... at least until it's time to climb over everyone else to jump out.

Eyes Wide Open

Earlier this week as part of the due diligence I am performing for one of Acumen’s investments, I had the opportunity to visit one of the local missionary hospitals, and specifically the eye unit within the hospital.

Although I’ve read about eye units many times – there are countless missions in Africa and India addressing various sight robbing conditions through a multitude of different models and methods – I didn’t really understand why they were so prevalent.

It was complete myopia on my own part. In developed economies there is a lesser incidence of preventable blindness, a natural consequence of better nutrition and medical care, not to mention plentiful eye doctors with a variety of early interventions for those of the fortunate who face sight threatening conditions despite all the advantages.

Consider, for example, retinal surgeons. There are two in Kenya and five in all of East Africa. The missionary hospital I visited contracts one of these surgeons and his clinic is booked until mid-November. Retinal surgery is generally an urgent matter; waiting an entire season often means that your condition is inoperable by the time your appointment comes around. Especially since your diagnosis likely came very late, only after your vision is impaired enough to make a potentially day-long trip, loss of whatever income you would normally earn, and a cost of $3 (remember, this is a population living on just dollars a day) to see a doctor who may or may not be able to help you worth it.

And that is if you even know about the doctor. With 90% of the population without health insurance, and 80% of the population living in rural rather than urban areas, most people rely on personal networks to find out about those two retinal surgeons in a population of 38 million.

Two of the patients to be seen were young men, boys really, each of whom was blind in one eye from an earlier retinal detachment that went untreated. Since each boy could still see through their other eye, no one thought to send them to a doctor … until the second retina detached. One boy came from the far Western edge of Kenya, the other came from Mombasa, in the Southern part of Kenya. One has a good chance of seeing again, but the younger one, a boy maybe 10 years old, has only a slim chance.

The only part I thought I understood was that in a society without excess resources, in a community where people live on just dollars a day, in a community where everyone must contribute to the household the loss of sight is a profound burden.

But I didn’t fully appreciate its reality. Every eye patient had an escort: a spouse, a child, a parent, a guide to help them navigate the matatus and chipped pavement. Everyone sat patiently while the doctor asked questions and explained conditions. And I could feel the anxiety rising up in myself, imagining sitting in front of a doctor nervous to learn if my significant loss of sight was permanent or temporary, and what sort of treatment my eyes would receive if there was anything to be done.

At the clinic outside, a waiting area four times the size of my apartment in New York had been filled with people since daylight. It was raining, and I was told it was an easy day. The patients and their aides sat on long benches under a high roof in this open-air room nestled between the operating wards, an administration building, and the various diagnostic and consultation rooms. To be allowed to wait, you had to call a month or two in advance to secure an appointment.

And inside, the doctor saw patient after patient, with almost no pause in between, sometimes providing good news but often explaining just how much of the patient’s sight would not return, outlining the ongoing care (involving more trips to the eye clinic) to salvage what sight was left. And recognizing that this is one tiny sliver of what is going on, I am starting to understand why I so often read about eye clinics.

Game Driving

Traffic was not nearly as bad as I was expecting at the Mara this weekend.

The light traffic conditions began with our flight out of Wilson Airport, a smaller, lesser known airport than Kenyatta International, where anyone can check you in, you don't need ID, and your boarding pass is a laminated, color-coded slip of paper that the "gate attendant" (or the woman who checked you through security) recollects and reuses.

Fortunately, our 16-seat plane was nearly empty, as the space allotted to each person is quite tiny. The requisite safety and alimentary advisories came from the pilot who twisted around in his seat and leaned his head through the opening to the cockpit, which incidentally stays open for the entire 45-minute flight, before handing the closest passenger a tupperware full of mints and informing us that there was water in the back of the plane -- just ask the last passenger to pass some forward. There didn't seem to be any pressurization system, but apparently we didn't need one as we never got very far off the ground, offering great views of the changing landscape below.



Writers tend to describe Africa as vast and red, conjuring particular images of heat in an arid climate and triggering a primal emotional reaction. For this and other reasons, I expected the land passing below me to look different -- more like the deserts of Utah than the rolling hills of Nebraska. But it ended up being a mixture of the two. The topography was unlike anything I'd seen before, somehow flat and jagged all at once, with gentle hills suddenly rising into mini mountains that abruptly ended in table tops or falling into short, steep canyons, and just as frequently cut by a snaking river as a deep, dry crack in the earth.

But while the earth looks like clay with deep reddish undertones, the landscape itself is painted in gentle, calm shades of pale yellow and green. The Mara inspired feelings of peace and calm, not the suspenseful anticipation or danger of an animal planet documentary on the circle of life in the safari.

The plane made a few stops -- each safari/hotel operator has their own "landing strip," or patch of cleared dirt in the middle of the Mara frequently visited by game, as evidenced by the occasional zebra or piles of manure on the runway. And as we flew from resort to resort, you could see the tracks in the tall grass where safari operators had driven as well as various groups of game animals and cows.


Rather than waste precious daylight hours driving back to the camp and checking in, our driver suggested that we undertake our very first game drive straight off the plane. Almost immediately he saw a cheetah. Apparently all the other mzungus besides us could also see the cheetah, because their cars were parked in a neat semi-circle around a patch of grass. I was starting to feel concerned because I could not see anything at all. Our guide so desperately wanted me, one of only two in our group for whom it was a first safari, to see the cheetah he took painstaking care to describe her position. Which, in effect, I heard as, "See that blade of grass next to that other blade of grass in the 10,000 square kilometers of grass in front of you? She's right there."

what I saw

what, apparently, our guide saw

But while we waited patiently for the hidden picture to emerge from the grass, we saw an enormous bull elephant across the horizon. We zoomed off to see him (he was the biggest animal I've ever seen in my life, and graceful) and I think he changed our luck. When we went back to check on the cheetah, she decided to get up out of the grass and look around. Eventually she even sat up and moved. From then on our trip was a nonstop animal party.



The first game drive was only an hour or so given our late arrival to the Mara, and yet we saw the aforementioned cheetah and elephant as well as a serval, two lions, and a variety of birds and DLTs (deer-like-things) that no one seemed to consider worth a second look. And, an incredible sunset over the plains.


Our second day far exceeded the first. We were in the truck at 6:30AM with boxed breakfasts and no sooner had we started driving when we came across three female lions and six cubs, lazing about with full bellies after a zebra kill. Once a few other cars discovered us and our pride of lions, we decided it was time to move on. More elephants (this time a herd, complete with babies and adults), some wildebeests and zebras, a common waterbuck, and another cheetah -- all more or less in the same 100 square-foot area.

A bit more driving and we found hyenas and vultures finishing off a wildebeest kill. More zebras, more wildebeests, and two beautiful, big male lions lazing about under a shade tree, hippos, giraffes, and cape buffalo. We even saw a leopard, a treat because they are quite shy, and were able to watch her leave one tree, move through some tall grass where we heard her kill and eat a mongoose (so identified by the other mongoose that fled while bouncing away screeching), before she eventually slipped through the grass to perch in the branches of another tree.

But, Rafael, our loyal guide, came through for us again on the third day. As I mentioned in my last post, the great migration of wildebeest has begun. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that the majority of the wildebeest were still feasting on the tall grass in the Serengeti in Tanzania, with just some groups moving across the Mara. Nonetheless we requested to see a river crossing and a crocodile kill.

When we arrived at the river crossing, wildebeest had already begun to gather, and a crocodile was lurking by the bank. A lone wildebeest on the opposite bank (our bank) was bleating hoarsely, trying to call the herd over and attempting to reconnect with a lost child or other member of the family. A few zebras joined, and while those waiting on the banks paced up and down, moving to the water and back, a steady, seemingly endless line of wildebeest flowed from the horizon kicking up dust and adding to the masses gathered and waiting.

For more than an hour, nothing happened. A wildebeest or zebra would approach the water and drink. Or a group would even run to the banks only to turn and run back. Rafael explained that as soon as one crossed, thousands would follow, but it could be hours before or any animals crossed, if they crossed at all.

Finally, after two small excursions away from the crossing and our boxed breakfast, the crossing began. As Rafael predicted, all it took was one brave wildebeest to take the plunge and soon a solid line of wildebeest followed her in, swimming across the river in neat lines and running up the bank past the collection of safari vehicles bearing witness. The crossing took twenty minutes or more as thousands of wildebeest streamed past us.



Despite our excitement for the crossing, we worried about the two crocodiles we had seen, and likely more we hadn't seen, that were laying in wait just below the surface of the water. The first kill was excruciating. One wildebeest began wailing, short panicked cries as it appeared to get pulled downstream. This went on and on for what felt like minutes but could have only been seconds while the rest of the wildebeest continued to stream right past. Eventually the crocodile, who had been dragging the wildebeest downstream from underwater, surfaced opened its mouth and clamped down on the screaming wildebeest's muzzle before pulling its head under. And that was the kill. Crocodiles suffocate or drown their prey and then keep the meat under water, twisting the meat away from the carcass by spinning in opposite directions from a partner holding the other side of the kill.

As the flow of wildebeest slowed, more and more lone animals were returning to the crossing, calling out for lost mothers, brothers, or friends. They call once or twice standing facing the line of running animals, before eventually turning and going along with the crowd. Rafael told us that in the confusion and chaos of the crossing many families get separated, and it can take days for family members to reunite, if they do at all. All in all, it was a beautiful and interesting sight, but also mournful, as the wildebeest showed their humanity.

In three days, we covered four of the Big Five game animals (elephants, lions, buffalo, rhino, and leopard), saw a few kills at various stages, as well as babies and aged animals. Our last event of the weekend completed our tour of the circle of life -- hippo sex. No life without death, no pleasure without pain. Hakuna matata.

** Given that I took 2 gigabytes of photos this weekend and the fact that my internet connection is rather slow, more pictures will likely be appearing in this post in the next few days. Check back if you're interested, and look out for a link to the best of the Mara pictures in the photographs section of the blog**

On photographs

For those of you who have requested pictures, I finally have some to share. The occasional picture or two will still appear in posts, but if you are interested in more, I am choosing my favorites and sharing them on Flickr, in a set called “This is Kenya.”

Many of you know that this summer has been full of travel and I realize I have not yet shared photos or thoughts on those. You can also find my collection of travel photos on Flickr, but they come with a warning. The trips to Spain, Germany, and London happened in the weeks immediately preceding my trip to Kenya, so those albums are completely unprocessed. And I take a lot of pictures. My advice is to wait … I’m getting to these projects bit by bit.

Permanent links to both the collection of travel photos and the highlights from Kenya can also be found at the top right corner of this blog’s home page … or really any page of the blog.

The establishment of photo processes is quite important and timely, as this afternoon I am flying to the Maasai Mara to watch The Great Migration, or as I like to think of it, 1.5 million (!) wildebeasts stuck in traffic. I've never been so excited about traffic!

More to come on that next week …

Adventures in Cookie Baking

Recently I have found that I simply cannot stop thinking about chocolate chip cookies.

Perhaps The New York Times is to blame, or perhaps it is homesickness for something quintessentially American and comforting, but once the idea surfaced, I couldn't get rid of it without baking!

Fortunately, Catherine, having lived here for eight months already, had flour, vanilla extract, baking soda, salt, and sugar so all I had to buy were eggs, chocolate chips, and butter.

Except, there are no chocolate chips in Nairobi.

So I channeled my inner Ruth Wakefield and started chopping up chocolate bars.

Catherine’s apartment came furnished, so I poked around and found a mixing bowl, but soon discovered there were no measuring cups of any kind. This is problematic as I'm very loyal to Toll House's cookie recipe. Here's the revised recipe:

• 1.25 cups* flour
• .5 teaspoon** baking soda
• .5 teaspoon salt
• approximately 20-25% of the tub of margarine/butter substitute I bought
• sugar to a bit below the line in the "working glass"
• brown sugar to a bit above the line in the "working glass"
• .5 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 3 dark chocolate bars

Perfect. Mix all the ingredients more or less according to the Toll House instructions, except instead of electic beaters use a big spoon.

Just leaving baking and eating! Except that our kitchen also seems to lack:

• cookie sheets (the broiling pan that lives in the oven will do)
• any sort of calibration for the oven
• spatula (ornate metal salad tong/grabber thingies might work)

Eventually, after a few batches with burned bottoms or completely undercooked centers, I managed to produce some respectable cookies ... and were a big hit among my friends and colleagues.

Unfortunately, a few days later while moving around in the kitchen I hear a hissing noise. I checked the refrigerator to make sure that the door was firmly shut, poked around the oven, but couldn't find the the source of the sound. I was in a hurry, so left without investigating further.

That night, I could still hear the noise, and upon pulling the stove away from the wall saw that the hose connecting the gas source to the stove was leaking. And it smelled! I wasn't too concerned about safety ... I mean gas dissipates quickly in air, right? And our kitchen window was open ... But I was at least a little concerned, and quite concerned about the wastefulness of the gas leak.

Time to channel my inner MacGyver to fix the gas leak with the materials available in a furnished Kenyan apartment: one band aid from Catherine's 5 year-old first aid kit, two hand sized plastic bags from the green grocer. I thought about gum and duct tape, but a) did not have any, b) was worried about making a mess.

The band aid was a miserable failure (of course), but squeezing all of the air out of the plastic bags, wrapping them tightly around the hose, and then double knotting them worked surprisingly well!

I don't know if my cookie baking caused the leak (I certainly hope not) but I'm grateful that my cookie-baking adventure did not end in real disaster. And that our landlord came and fixed the gas leak.

*1 cup = the volume in Catherine's drinking glasses, which look like Crate & Barrell "Working Glasses," the 21 ounce size.

** 1 teaspoon = the size of a very small spoon in Catherine's drawer

Tea Farming Upcountry

As my first taxi driver informed me upon arriving in Kenya, most people in Nairobi don’t consider the city home. They have immigrated to the city for work and when they say home they mean the land their family owns outside of the city where they go for holidays, and where they plan to retire. This weekend, one of my colleagues was kind enough to take me upcountry to her home, an hour and a half northeast of Nairobi on the way to Mount Kenya, in a Kikuyu region near Murang’a, high in the mountains and incredibly beautiful.

The contrast to Nairobi was stark. I’ve grown accustomed to seeing 10-12 matatus a minute whiz by belching out black exhaust along side the buses and cars doing the same. Of course, the cars and buses are there for all the people, 1.5 - 3 million depending on where you define the city boundary, hawking fruit and jewelry or walking to or from work or the market.

But outside of Nairobi the road emptied, with no traffic to speak of and people concentrated in small clustered communities along the way up the hillside. As we put more and more distance between ourselves and the cars around us, the air became cleaner and clearer and urban development (from multiple story buildings or branded commercial activity to the small one-man kiosks that sell fruit, baked goods, and mobile phone credit) gave way to fewer, simpler structures (single story stores with a more permanent feel than the kiosks) and varied, lush green vegetation clinging to hillsides accented with brightly colored flowers against the backdrop of deep, red earth.

The further we drove the more beautiful the land became, but still I wasn’t prepared for the farm. Pictures don’t do it justice, but even in the cold, damp mountain mist the sight of acres and acres of tea rolling down the sides of a canyon took my breath away.

Mama David, so called because her eldest son is David, runs this farm more or less on her own in a region where it is still unusual to see a woman driving a car. She is a remarkable woman in her early 70s but looking and acting like a woman 20 years younger. (She inherited good genes from her mother, born circa 1896 who still lives on the farm with Mama David.) She built her house, a sprawling single story construction, in typical Kenyan fashion starting with a very basic set of rooms in the 1970s, and slowly, decade by decade adding more “when there is some extra money or some stone available.”

After snacks and warm drinks, Mama David took us out on the land. Farming in Kenya is labor intensive as basic technological aides are either not available or too expensive to be practical. All the labor on the land is done by hand, save a drip irrigation system. We passed a group of workers preparing some land to be planted and stopped to talk with three tea pickers.

Tea picking is especially labor intensive. Tea grows on waist-high plants that almost look like bushes, but the pickers seemed to move through them quite easily. The part to be harvested is at the very top of the plant – two leaves and shoot – and should be picked while the leaves are still light green and tender.

With hands moving like propellers, tea pickers quickly and precisely grab the tops of the tea plants and throw handfuls of tea backwards into large baskets strapped to their backs every ten seconds or so. When full, the baskets weigh about 30 kilograms, and a good picker can fill about three in a days work.

Full baskets are brought to the tea house where they are emptied onto long, flat stone benches for inspection and weighing. The tea is then bundled and shipped off to an auction, where tea manufacturers buy in bulk from any number of regional farms.

The tea pickers come to Mama David looking for work, and in exchange for their labor they get paid per volume of tea (Ksh 5 per kilogram) and are housed on the farm tea shacks, a single room per family. Mama David’s farm appeared to have about a dozen basic but well constructed units for the workers and their families.

Many children have school on Saturdays, but today a group of about a dozen children ages two to twelve were watching the mzungus with curiousity. Play stopped immediately once we were spotted and the children began cautiously following us. Some shy smiles emerged, but the group was very quiet. Mama David explained that some of the children were quite clever, telling them in Swahili, “There’s a doctor among you, you know … who will it be?”

The children don’t learn English until fifth standard, and the oldest among them was just in fifth standard now. So communication without Mama David was nearly impossible. But the children stood obediently for a picture, and melted into laughter and delight when they saw their faces on the screen display, poking and pointing and each other and the camera.

Our colleague explained on the way home the importance of encouraging the children to believe in the possibilities of their lives, because their circumstances are quite difficult. Besides the visible impacts of poverty - the tall, barefoot boy who seemed to be growing too fast for his clothes to keep up, living in a tea shack and sharing access to the water pump and common latrine - there may come pressure to leave school and help the family by illegally picking tea. There are strict laws against child labor, but children will sneak into the fields and help their families if necessary.

According to the World Bank, more than 40% of Africans live on less than $1/day.* A good tea picker is able to earn Ksh500 (or approximately $8) per day, which would put him solidly in the Kenyan middle class, except that his earnings must also support his family. Depending on the tea picking or other economic contributions of his wife and the size of their family, the tea picker navigates a thin line between poverty and extreme poverty, much of which is dependent on forces outside of their control, like weather and crop yield. It's therefore not surprising that children become a source of income security or insurance.

And it's not surprising the general disdain for the middleman** I encountered. The tea farmer's life is more secure than that of the pickers, but not easy or flush, with thinning margins in a cost and labor intensive business that some think is not sustainable in the long-term. It's hard to imagine a solution that would allow both farmers to maintain a viable business without also disrupting the source of income on which the tea pickers rely. So, for now, it all continues, with thin margins all around, and an uncertain future for all.

* World Bank, "Annual Report - Population Living Below $1 and $2 a Day," World Bank website, accessed July, 2008.
** I realize the figures in this article contradict that data we collected on the farm, but I do not know which is more accurate, and therefore am leaving them unreconciled.