A Life Less Ordinary

Kenya Study Tour Overview

Twenty five students made up of Foster MBAs as well as other UW grad programs arrived in Nairobi, Kenya on March 14^th. Over the course of two weeks we explored Kenyan business, culture and life. With the guidance of three knowledgeable and enthusiastic student trip leaders, we visited a variety of companies – from start ups to giants like Winafrique (renewable energy) and KenCall to Unilever, Safaricom, Barclays, Kenya Airways, and many others. We had a chance to meet amazing business leaders with degrees from Stanford Business School and from all other parts of the world.

We drove all over Nairobi to see what life was truly like in the developing world. This included a company and site visit with Jamii Bora, Kenya's largest microfinance firm. The leaders of the organizations afterwards took us to Kibera (one of the two largest slums in Kenya) where we got to see microfinance funding at work and lifting people from the streets into sheltered living. We also saw a school and an orphanage in a village outside of Nairobi which gave us a good perspective on the value that education has in Kenya, considering it has a 70% literacy rate.

In addition to businesses that we visited in Kenya, we also had plenty of cultural experiences. For example, we visited Karen Blixen's house (the subject of Out of Africa), saw the Bomas of Kenya (where traditional Kenyan tribal dances including Barack Obama's were performed), learned and visited an elephant orphanage, fed giraffes at the giraffe center and of course we went on a three day safari. A part of the group also spent one morning on a hot air balloon ride over the African savanna seeing the sunrise and wild life early in the morning. Many of us also got to try our hand at bargaining at city markets where we gifts like masks, sculptures, paintings and jewelry.

Overall, this was a once in a lifetime experience. The feeling from the trip was that most of us could have gone on a safari on our own, but we could not have gotten an inside glimpse into a very hopeful and young economy in the developing world. This is definitely the best part of business school for me – getting to take advantage of opportunities like this one.

March 23, 2010 – Powerpoints in Kenya Corporations Need Work

by Helen

On Tuesday we went to the United Nations. While UN is based in Geneva and New York, Nairobi houses the UNEP – environmental protection division of the UN. It also has a room where the UN body can meet in its entirety, though it very rarely does.

The presentation itself was pretty terrible to be honest. While this has been true of most presentations with powerpoint used as a tool, the UN stood out for sending people to talk who were not able to answer any questions or sound even remotely credible.

Here was my major takeaway as illustrated below:
Q: How do you measure success of your programs?
A: Well they are all a good idea and people want them.
Q: How do you decide to terminate a program if its unsuccessful?
A: We only terminate programs if there is a way.
Q: How do you track your work?
A: We don’t.
Statement: 150 species a day go extinct in the world.

Q: Well, do you know how many new species are born/created a day?

A: No.

In all fairness, I have never been a super fan of the UN because it is for the most part so ineffective and has no enforcement mechanisms, however, this was especially bad I thought.

I was discussing with my classmate that it will definitely never be profitable to “save endangered species.” So what UNEP needs to do is to make an argument for saving species. Be it putting a cost on our plan and estimating it out while talking about air and water and energy, or in some other meaningful way. UNEP is the only international body that can come close to having the capacity to do it. Instead the leadership is spending establishing education programs and not tracking any result or impact they are having.

I hope we were just sent poor speakers and there is more to the UNEP then what was presented, but if nothing else, UN needs to start thinking about metrics more than just “good ideas.”
In the afternoon we went to visit Eastern African Breweries – EABL. That visit was good – we toured a factory and saw how beer is made. Two people on our trip have been tracking our beer consumption and we as a group of 25 people have consumed over 600 beers over the course of two weeks. We proudly reported those numbers to the corporate headquarters.

Winafrique and Venture Capitalism in Kenya

by Helen

After Jamii Bora, we visited Winafrique, a startup in Kenya that focuses on selling a combination of solar, wind and diesel energy to companies on a small scale. The company visit was very different and very good because we have not seen a lot of start up companies run by young, energetic people who recently graduated. The major customer of Winafrique is Safaricom and they in total have 8 good clients out of 14 total clients and they’ve done 300 proposals for work. The culture of the company reminded me a lot about the company I worked for at Meridian – small, nimble, adapting, etc.

The visit clearly showed the great need for venture capital in the country and how little of it there is. The visit to WInafrique made for an interesting juxtaposition as compared to the visit to the slums. There are many opportunities in Kenya for businesses, many opportunities to employ people and many resources that need to be taken advantage of. Kenya also has an opportunity to skip “industrial revolution” and move on to more sustainable technologies that are introduced now and build the infrastructure with that as opposed to with all the harmful development that we as humanity established in 20th century.

Anyway, definitely lots of opportunities in Kenya especially considering the 70% literacy rate and the underemployment that is rampant.

Monday – 3.22.10 – “Charity can never get people out of poverty”

by Helen

On Monday, we had a very impact-full visit to Jamii Bora, a microfinance organization that was started by 50 women beggars in 1999. It is the largest microfinance organization in Kenya. To be honest, I did not really know what a microfinance organization was until earlier this week. Basically, the idea with Jamii Bora is that it gives a small loan to people (starting at $10) in order to start a business. There are lots of detalis with Jamii Bora, for example, you have to save $10 in order to get $20 to borrow. The money you save is the collateral in case you default on your loan. The interest is tiny – along the lines of .05% and Jamii Bora does not turn anyone away. So if you are HIV + or have a sick kid, or you are an alcoholic, the organization does not deny you a loan if you can bring in collateral to prove that you can save.

As a result, Jamii Bora started many other initiatives, like health insurance programs, alcoholism education, etc. The women at Jammii Bora were the first to realize that if a woman’s child is sick, she will pay for his illness before she repays her loan. The default rate on the loans at Jamii Bora is 10%.

On Monday, we had a very powerful presentation by the staff of Jamii Bora. A couple of things struck me – the organization focuses heavily on moving people away from the notion of charity and giving people handouts. The leaders believe that an individual has to feel ownership for the money they receive because they are more likely to then repay it as opposed to spend it non productively. Jamii Bora also has business education classes to help people with basic accounting and leadership development so when they are ready to hire people to work for them, they know how to keep books.

There were amazing speakers who talked to us about their stories and how Jamii Bora helped them. They were former criminals, beggers, women who were forced into prostitution, etc. and are now relatively successful in Kenya with businesses and incomes.

After the official visit, we were taken by Jamii Bora to Nairobi’s largest slum. Most of Jamii Bora’s clients reside in that part of town so they wanted us to see the work that they are doing with our own eyes. That experience was one that I will never forget. The smells, the open sewers, the endless “houses” made of old metal pieced together to provide a roof, people doing laundry in dirty run off water, and so many other images were a first for me.

We spoke to one woman who used Jamii Bora money to buy coal in bulk and then resell it. She makes 150 shillings in profit a week (about $2). Another woman sells chicken head and neck fried to people. She also takes care of her grandkids because her kids are unable to do so. She makes about 250 shillings a week ($3 approximately) .The most interesting thing about her is that she said that she used to live in poverty but now she has “this” and is almost ready to move into subsidized housing (provided by Jamii Bora). True poverty to her means sleeping on the streets wrapped in toilet paper. When we asked how people use the bathrooms, they said that it’s calling using a “flying toilet” so using a plastic bag and then disposing of it in mostly non designated locations.

I wish I was a writer so I could truly describe what I saw and the vastness of it. There are 2 major slums in the city of Nairobi, and a million people live in those slums. There are children born every day and diseases are rampant. There are 2 schools and a hospital run by an NGO in the area. And yet, life goes on. I can’t say that I felt an overwhelming feeling of despair. People living in the slums still have a roof over their head and they are very proud of that. They dream of getting their children out of there and therefore talk a lot about the fact that they are able to send them to school. No English was spoken in that neighborhood, so we had translators with us. Lastly, the other idea that was hard to swallow is that we saw the “success” stories of Jamii Bora. It puts it into perspective of what the failures are.

I guess I walked away feeling very fortunately to have been born in the place where I was because there is no way children that are born in the slums deserve the life that they inherit, nor is it fair how hard they have to work to get out of there.

Jamii Bora provides some solutions and reaches out to help, but the country has a long way to go to get its urban poor on its feet.

Kenya Post 2 – “What a waste of an elephant!”

by Helen

First day in Kenya was quite eventful. On Monday we started out the day by moving rooms that have windows facing the garden rather than the road. So from Monday and on, I get to hear birds rather than car crashes. Definitely a nice change. We then proceeded to go to a very nice mall so we could get cell phones, ATM access and do other housekeeping stuff in preparation of the rest of the group arriving later that night. I was a little confused at the beginning because it was a very nice mall that made me feel like I was in the Middle East or even Europe. There were some interesting moments though – for example, there was a huge fake elephant in front of one of the stores but it had an armed security guard in front of it. We asked if we could take pictures, but he said no. He also didn’t smile. As a classmate on the trip exclaimed , “What a waste of an elephant!” We agreed that we should offer marketing services to the store manager so he could better utilize his resources for marketing his company. Then we went outside and saw that there were kids jumping on this huge trampoline and I took a picture of that, which apparently was also a security risk. Who knew! We also weren’t allowed to join in the fun because we were too “adult.”

Later that day, we went to the market. This was one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve had in a long time. The aggressiveness of the people trying to sell me anything I wanted and didn’t want was amazing. The most interesting thing to me was that the vendors were willing to give you free stuff in order to entice you to buy. I totally fell for that one, however, the deal I made on the gift that I bought was so good that he vendor tried to take the free necklace away from me because she realized that she gave me something valuable. I realized that too though and we settled on a fair price of 300 shillings – my tour guide tells me it was worth about 1500 shillings. (Conversion rate is $1= 75 shillings). Through lots of enticing and yelling “hey sister” and bargaining on a piece of newspaper, I was thoroughly exhausted and overwhelmed. At some point, one vendor tricked me into giving him my hair scrunchy as an exchange for anything I wanted of his offerings, but as it turned out, this was just a ploy to start talking to me and getting me to buy stuff. The hardest part about all of this was my inability to walk through the market and look at the goods and even further, total inability to be left alone even if I wasn’t looking at anything. I constantly got followed, my hand got grabbed, the vendors would come up and say “remember me?”, etc. I was glad that I got out of there spending approximately $40. I thought it could have been much worse.

Later that night we relaxed over a couple of Tuskers and ate at the hotel restaurant where I could hardly keep my eyes open. I went to bed at 8:30pm and slept through until 5am.

Next Entry – company visits to Kenya Airways and Unilever, as well as my rant on pricing by Unilever.

Kenya MBA Spring Break Study Tour

by Helen

We arrived to Nairobi on Saturday night after 20 hours of travel time. On the first leg from Seattle to Amsterdam we watched lots of movies and ate food. I saw the Blind Side and Up in the Air. Both great movies to watch on a plane. I'm also making a concerted effort to keep a journal and a blog up while traveling. The journey from Amsterdam to Nairobi was uneventful. I slept most of the way in a very crowded plane.

Once we got in, we were met by GAP Adventures, which I loved since I've had a great experience with them in the past. The parents of our tour leader also came to the airport to greet us which was really nice.

Later that evening we settled into our hotel - we are staying at Hotel Boulevard. It's a nice place - has all the basics. The only think that I have noted that is a slight pain is the lack of ability on the hotel's side to make 2 keys per room and the in and out electricity that we experienced last night. I definitely felt very prepared for that because I somehow managed to pack a headlamp that might the darkness totally fine.

I woke up this morning at 4am to a sound of a crashing car - I think there was an accident. I forced myself to go back to sleep, but Nairobi is definitely a far cry from the jungle noises that I woke up to in Central America. However, the roads are notably better than in Belize. There are also no cracked windows on car windshields and in general I haven't gotten this feeling of "oh, i'm in africa" yet. Though we haven't left the hotel yet either.

Water is a pain of course. Brushing your teeth with bottled water does put a damper on things, but it's not the first time for me so it isn't really phasing me. The mango juice at breakfast is pretty fantastic and reminded me that I should buy that more when I'm at home.

In one hour we are going to go and explore Nairobi, get cell phones and in general tour the area. Tomorrow we begin our company visits.

I will try to keep this blog updated as much as I can.