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.