I had an opportunity to interview the children of my colleagues, Lisa and Rachel. I started with one-on-one interviews with the kids which were a bit awkward beacuse they were camera-shy at first. By the time I got the three of them together for this interview, they were much more gregarious.

By five, Kenyan kids speak at least three languages fluently (English, Swahili, and their family's tribal language). These kids spoke English with each other and at school so, as you can see, their English is perfect.

Meet Adam, Melissa, and Leon.

More photos of the kids at the end of this album.

We were in Amboseli enjoying our safari when Jacqueline called Eric to tell him to rush back to Nairobi the next day to meet Tom and Ann Friedman at the airport. Apparently, after several years of trying to get Tom interested in writing about Acumen Fund, Jacqueline was finally able to track him down on vacation in Tanzania and pique his interest in a piece about social investing and Advanced Bio-Extracts (the Acumen Fund investee where I am working).

Of course as soon as we heard that Tom Friedman was coming, we all shrieked with excitement as we tried to figure out what the schedule would look like and who would attend the meeting. Fortunately, I was able to negotiate a seat at the table as an ABE team member.

I drove to the ABE artemisinin processing facility in Athi River with the CEO, Patrick and a shareholder, Rob. In the car we discussed what Patrick’s main talking points would be and I shared as much as I knew about Tom Friedman. About fifteen minutes after our arrival, Eric, Nthenya, Tom, and Ann pulled up and we began our one hour meeting.

Tom was charming during the meeting and started off with, “I believe the pessimists are usually right, but I know that all positive change in this world has come from the optimists. So, I’ve decided to throw my cards in with them and am in the good news business.” He was interested in learning about ABE’s project, seeing the factory, and hearing about how we have been able to secure social financing from organizations like Acumen Fund.

I haven’t had many run-ins with famous people, so having an opportunity to meet and then correspond with Tom (to provide additional information about the company and review drafts of the piece) was a real thrill. But, most exciting was the see the piece in the New York Times early this morning and think maybe this piece will encourage more people to get into the game in Africa and think about building or investing in companies here.

I have pasted the piece here. Read More...

On Saturday, I spent the day at the house of my colleague, Rachel Okeyo. Rachel and her sister, Pam, cooked a magnificent feast of Swahili, Luo, and Chinese dishes and their hospitality was heartwarming.

Rachel and her family live in a quaint three bedroom house on the outskirts of Nairobi. The house is filled with all the furniture and electronics that any upper middle class family in the U.S. or Europe has, and is tastefully decorated with beautiful masks from all over Africa.

One thing that is different about Rachel's house (compared with upper middle class homes in the U.S.) is that there is no running water inside. Once a week, water dribbles out of the tap behind the house and Rachel stays up all night filling buckets of water so her family will have enough to drink, bathe, clean, and flush the toilet for the week. It's shocking to me that today in Nairobi, an upper-middle class family living in a nice house in a safe neighborhood would not have access to running water. This is a family ready and able to pay for access to water and there is no one to supply it. The government is clearly unable to meet the demand and no private sector player has come in to fill the gap.

Meet Rachel Okeyo in this video interview

This photo shows the water tap behind the house with the small buckets which are used to fill three large buckets to hold the week's supply of water. More photos at the end of the album.

Inspired by Global X's short video interviews at the Skoll World Forum, I decided to embark on a video interview project of my own and get to know some of the people I interact with on a daily basis a bit better.

On Friday, I interviewed three young women who work in the "canteen" - tiny restaurant - at my office. ABE and about five other companies rent space in a large house converted into an office in Muthaiga, on the outskirts of Nairobi. These women bring us tea every morning, serve our lunch, and clean up our dishes in the evening.

In the interview, I asked them to introduce themselves and describe how they think Kenya will be different in five years.

Meet Beldine, Dorine, and Victoria

For the first few months I was in Kenya, I thought that people were not optimistic about the future of their country. I compared this pessimism about the government, corruption, and lack of economic opportunity with what I had seen in India – a rapidly-growing middle class, world-class universities, and a general sense that things were improving for most people. More recently, I’ve seen the optimism in Kenya shine through and have been pleased to observe how many people do have great hope for their country. In 2006, real GDP growth was between 5 and 6% and these high growth rates are expected to continue.

Last Monday, Deepti and I visited Kencall, a call center started in 2004 by Acumen Fund friend, Nik Nisbitt. We showed up around 9 p.m. and saw about 100 of Kencall’s 300 employees talking with customers in the U.S. Nik came up with the idea for the business in 2000 when he was still in the U.S. and decided to try returning to Kenya and see if outsourcing could work in Kenya as it has in India.

Fortunately, Nik was right and Kencall has been able to bring in clients like Infoseek, Dun and Bradstreet, and the U.S. Postal Service. In 2006, revenues were $2 million and Nik expects an increase to $4 million in 2007.

Nik is truly optimistic about the future of Kenya and believes that Kencall will serve as an example to others that it is possible to create profit-generating businesses in Kenya and that East Africa can be competitive with the rest of the world. Listening to the enthusiasm in Nik’s voice and the seeing the excitement of the employees we met on the floor, I walked out feeling truly hopeful about the future of Kenya.



Thomas Friedman was in Kenya last week and wrote this Op-Ed about Kencall. Read More...

Easter is a big holiday in Kenya, and hence, everyone is given a four-day weekend. The timing was perfect as Peter and Shekinah, friends from Thunderbird, and Deepti, a friend from Acumen Fund were all visiting Nairobi. So our friends could see the country a bit, we took a three-day safari to Amboseli. Amboseli is a national park in Kenya on the border of Tanzania and is known for its spectacular views of Kilimanjaro and the numerous elephant families who traipse across the savannah each morning and evening.

An optional activity while on safari in this area is to visit a Masai village. The Masai were traditionally cattle herders and are nomadic people. They have held on strongly to tradition and the men and women wear beautiful brightly-colored cloths and blankets and many still have gaping holes in the ears from which they hang beaded earrings.

While we were intrigued in seeing a Masai village, before going, Deepti and I had a long debate about whether paying $20 each to take a tour of the village and watch a traditional Masai dance was respectful and supportive or if it was cultural exploitation. On the one hand, the Masai seem to have held on to their traditions much more than other East African tribes. This may be because they typically live outside of urban areas and have kept a fairly closed culture by roaming throughout Kenya and Tanzania. But, I also think they must have realized early on that they could increase their income by bringing in tourists if they maintain the look of their villages and traditional clothing. If, then, at the end of the day, the children know the songs and dances of their elders and if they are now able to afford to send their children to school and invest in bore holes for clean drinking water, is it wrong to pay to visit? Should we think of this as visiting a living museum? Should we encourage people to continue using traditional medicines when Western medicine might prevent children dying of malaria or typhoid?

Even after the conversation and a lovely visit to the Masai village (whose people truly did seem happy to host us), I still don’t feel like I know the answers to these questions. If cultural tourism is a way to improve livelihoods while maintaining culture, I’m all for supporting it when it’s organized by the community and done in a way in which the Masai people can most benefit from it.

Photos of Amboseli
Video of Masai dancers
Video of elephants in Amboseli

One of the closing speeches at the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship, held at Oxford University, was Larry Brilliant, CEO of Google.org. Larry’s speech was perhaps the best of the conference, possibly because it has been delivered many times since Davos, or perhaps because he had interesting stories to tell and was aided by a top-notch Powerpoint.

After beginning his talk with the case for pessimism: global warming, HIV/AIDS, malaria, increases in income disparity, Larry continued with his speech with the case for optimism and why he will always be an optimist. Larry spoke passionately about his work eradicating small pox and argued that if the world could come together to end such a horrifying disease, we were capable of anything.

Listening to the speakers at the Skoll Forum, learning about the projects of the Skoll awardees, and meeting a diverse group of practitioners, donors, academics, and students certainly reassured me that there is a case for optimism. As Bill Drayton of Ashoka mentioned, we are now seeing “unlikely bedfellows working together” to address the world’s biggest challenges. At the conference, we saw involvement from a range of players, from GE Capital to Barefoot College and from Nike to IDEI. Plenary speakers were as diverse as the attendees and showed the growing interest in the field of social enterprise. We heard Mohammed Yunus, Queen Rania of Jordan, Peter Gabriel, and Jeff Skoll talk about the new capitalism, the need for the three sectors (public, private, and citizen) to collaborate and for their hopes that social enterprise will become as far-reaching and well-known as microfinance is today.

Blog posts about the Skoll World Forum on Social Edge
Video highlights of the conferece (scroll towards bottom of page)
Article on the forum from onPhilanthropy
Article on the forum from The Chronicle of Philanthropy
My photos from the trip

Last week, Acumen Fund convened the seven fellows in Oxford for a three-day mid-year meeting prior to the Skoll Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. We had an opportunity to tell stories about our work with the investees, discuss our career plans, plan our work for the next three months, and generally reflect on our experiences to date.

On the first day, Nadaa shared that the fellowship had changed her life. I’m sure that we would all agree. Her comment made me remember the taxi driver who said to me as I was leaving New York in November that I would “come back changed.” I’m still not sure exactly what that will look like, but I know it is true.

The fellowship has encouraged self-reflection. Acumen Fund’s culture is self-critical and I think we have all spent a lot of time soliciting feedback, thinking about how others relate to us, and working towards improvement.

In “The Inheritance of Loss”, Sai describes well this process of introspection and the importance of looking at oneself in many ways. “But how did she appear? She searched in the stainless-steel pots, in the polished gompa butter lamps, in the merchants’ vessels in the bazaar, in the images proffered by the spoons and knives on the dining table, in the green surface of the pond. Round and fat she was in the spoons, long and thin in the knives, pocked by insects and tiddlers in the pond; golden in one light, ashen in another; back then to the mirror; but the mirror, fickle as ever, showed one thing, then another and left her, as usual, without an answer.”

More photos from Oxford and London

As a continuation of our weekly book groups during the fall orientation, we were asked to read “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai in preparation for the mid-year gathering at Oxford. As the title would suggest, “The Inheritance of Loss” is a novel about loss, but it is also a novel about love. At the beginning of the novel, the teenage girl, Sai, thinks about love, “Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.”

Spending prolonged periods of time away from my family and friends over the past three years, I can identify with Sai’s assessment. Later in the book, Biju, the cook’s son reflects about his father, “If he continued his life in New York, he might never see his pitaji again. It happened all the time; ten years passed, fifteen, the telegram arrived, or the phone call, the parent was gone and the child was too late. Or they returned and found they’d missed the entire last quarter of a lifetime, their parents like photograph negatives. And there were worse tragedies. After the initial excitement was over, it often became obvious that the love was gone; for affection was only a habit after all, and people, they forget, or they became accustomed to its absence. They returned and found just the façade; it had been eaten from inside, like Cho Oyu being gouged by termites from within.” While I don’t expect Biju’s prediction to come true for me, I do wonder what it will be like to resettle in the U.S. after spending so much time away.

Desai is a spectacular writer. Her descriptions of the natural and political landscapes of India are vivid as are her delves into the emotional lives of the characters. I highly recommend the book, both for the story as well as Desai’s narrative skill.

I was thrilled to see the recent Business Week article about Acumen Fund and even more excited to see the fellows' pictures and bios on the online edition. As we prepare for our trip to the Skoll Forum at Oxford the end of the month, I am reminded of how much I like and respect my fellow fellows. Hard to believe this fellowship is half over and that it's time to start thinking about next steps.

In other exciting news, ABE partner, Sanofi, recently unveiled it's new ARV for treating malaria which is less expensive and requires fewer pills than the current medicine on the market. This New York Times article does a good job explaining the new drug and its implications. ABE is playing a large role in the fight against malaria by increasing the supply of artemisinin which it sells to pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi. Read my full post on the Acumen Fund blog.

I also wanted to share the link for a short film on the use of DDT and indoor residual spraying to eradicate malaria. My friends, Becky, Chris, and Eric of Wanderful World, have interviewed many people in East Africa and Europe about the use of DDT and put together this fantastic video which does a great job outlining the complexities.

Adrien, Eric, and I decided to spend a long weekend in Zanzibar, the exotic island off the coast of Tanzania. While we had to splurge for the plane tickets ($475), it was well worth the trip.

Upon arriving at the Nairobi airport, we were told we had lost our seats. So, we were quite relieved when after a bit of arguing, we were let on the flight. After a 2 1/2 hour flight and an hour drive across the island, we arrived at Evergreen Bungalows around 11 p.m. Fresh fish and cold beer were awaiting us. After dinner, we walked along the beach looking at the stars and marveling at the beauty of the ocean.

Friday morning we took a long walk along the beach and into the nearby village of Bwejuu to buy hats and water shoes. While only partially successful in our quest, it was interesting to see the white sand houses of a Zanzibari village and meet children from the village on their way home from school. Read More...

Eric and I started taking private Swahili lessons from a woman named Rose who was recommended by a friend. Since I arrived in Kenya, I had wanted to learn Swahili but was a bit reluctant because I remembered how much I dreaded my French classes at Thunderbird. To my surprise, I've really enjoyed learning Swahili. We each pay Ksh 500 (about $8) for a one-hour lesson 2 - 3 times per week.

I've been trying to figure out why I enjoy learning Swahili so much more than learning French and identified a few possible reasons:
1. Swahili is pronounced exactly as it is written. Therefore, people always understand what you're trying to say.
2. No one expects muzungus (foreigners) to speak Swahili so people are thrilled when I say anything at all. I practice every morning and evening with my colleagues in the car on the way to and from work. They laugh when I say a new word and try to have conversations with me entirely in Swahili.
3. I'm not sure it's possible to be any more enthusiastic than Rose is. She cheers us on with "vzuri sana sana sana!" (very, very, very good!) and tells us during every lesson how smart we are. It's easy to stay motivated with so much encouragement.

Eric and I were quite pleased with ourselves in Zanzibar last weekend when we were actually able to communicate very basically in Swahili. We'll be speaking fluently in no time!

Just so you don't think my life as a fellow is all pleasure and no work, I decided to write another entry about my work at ABE. Acumen Fund has been working with ABE for the past several months to help them refinance and obtain additional capital for the expansion of their agricultural and artemisinin processing operations.

In addition to developing standard operating procedures and policies and strengthening the company's operations, I have recently been working on the financing side as well. I have spent countless hours struggling with an Excel model and preparing every conceivable scenario to reassure potential investors of the company's viability. It's been interesting to learn about what goes into a due dilligence process and see how much time is required on the part of the investee to respond to the requests of the investors.

Because I don't think I've done a particularly good job explaining ABE's business, I've included links to a short video a created and a photo essay and website developed by my colleagues which I think better illustrate the work that we're doing.

Video
Photo Essay
Website

Keely arrived in Nairobi from Arusha, Tanzania on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday evening, I overheard her exclaim on Skype, “Nairobi is just like New York, Mom!” Since they arrived a couple weeks ago, Eric and Adrien (Acumen Fund colleagues and friends) and I have made the same comment to each other. To explain how we could possibly say something like this, especially when everything you read in the U.S. papers about Nairobi indicates the opposite; I will recount the activities of the past three days.

Friday morning I was picked up by the ABE driver at 7:45 and brought to the office, 20 minutes away. I took a lunch break with my colleague Lisa to pick up some groceries and try on a few clothes at a cute new shop at the mini-mall close to our office. I left the office around 6:30 p.m., got a ride home with the driver (stopping on the way to buy some lilies on the side of the road). After resting a bit at my apartment, I walked over to Eric’s apartment (a block away), with my English neighbor, Matt to have a glass of wine before driving with my colleague, Lisa and her friend to a party across town at Erin and Elana’s apartment. There were about 30 people at the party, and I found almost all of my friends there. We drank some rum and cokes, ate a bit of pita and hummus, and danced to Shakira. We left the party at about 12:30 for Casablanca, a Moroccan-style bar and club where we spent the next couple hours drinking Tusker beer and dancing to hip hop. Home by 2:30 a.m.

Saturday morning, I walked to Eric’s apartment for breakfast and spent the morning running errands in the neighborhood. We returned to his apartment and swam laps in his pool for about half an hour before Keely arrived. After catching up for a bit, we walked a block to Sarit Center to pick up some iced coffee before our one-hour Swahili lesson at 5 p.m. After class, Keely and I went back to my place to get ready and went to About Thyme for dinner, a cute continental-style restaurant with tables outside. We then met my friend, Erica, at the Serena Hotel for a bit of salsa dancing, which was followed by a bit more dancing and another Tusker at Klubhouse, a bar/club designed like a treehouse. Home by 2 a.m.

Sunday morning, Keely and I were out the door by 10 to go to the gym in Eric’s apartment building. For lunch, we went to Java House, an American-style coffeeshop and restaurant, where we ate huevos rancheros and breakfast burritos. Our afternoon included a visit to the giraffe sanctuary followed by a bloody mary at Talisman, a quiet outdoor restaurant in the Nairobi suburb of Karen (named after Karen Blixen, the author of “Out of Africa”. We took our taxi, which had been with us for the day, to the Arboretum, where we met several other friends for the Cape Town Opera’s performance of Porgy and Bess.

To be honest, my life here is not much different, in many ways, than it would be in the U.S. When I lived in Hyderabad, I felt like there were many sacrifices I had to make and life was much more difficult than I was accustomed to. Nairobi is much easier and it truly is possible to build a very comfortable, enjoyable life for oneself here. As always, visitors are welcome!

More photos here.

Before I left for Kenya, I bought a pair of Ecosandals off the internet. Before shipping the flip flops, the Kenyan sandalmaker, sent me an email introducing himself and explaining the story of Ecosandals. I was excited to hear about another Nairobi-based social enterprise and replied to the email asking if I could visit the project. Several emails and a few months later, I had the opportunity to visit the sandalmakers in their workshop and see their homes.

Ecosandals was started by a few Kenya-born U.S. residents and their friends. They managed to get media coverage very early on and started selling their handmade sandals made from recycled tires to the U.S. and European markets, mainly over the internet. After having some trouble keeping up with the demand and delivering on-time, the company refocused their efforts on the local market and downsized from about 30 to 6 sandalmakers.

The sandalmakers are young men and women from the Korogocho shantytown on the east side of the Nairobi. They learn how to make the sandals and take continuing education classes in the evening and eventually earn high school diplomas. The sandalmakers develop business skills and now run the enterprise themselves. Sales are currently low, but the products are great and I see real potential for this company to grow.

I returned home after my visit excited about the project and interested in finding a way to help. After a few additional conversations with Becky, one of the board members, I decided to volunteer a few hours a week and write grant proposals and try to increase sales in the U.S. or at high-end Nairobi shops. With even $10,000, Ecosandals could expand their production capacity and increase sales.

I know that most people are not thinking about buying flip flops at the moment. However, I encourage you to check out the website and order yourself or someone else a pair. The profit for the sandalmakers on each pair is significant and truly does improve the lives of their families and community. To find out more and order sandals, click here.

Picture below of Ecosandals board member, Becky, Director of Sales, Roselyne, and sandalmaker Michael and his grandmother at their house.