Moreover, as a farmer begins to generate a surplus of crops beyond the minimum for subsistence, he can begin thinking about investing that surplus in better tools, equipment, or additional crops that can further improve his economic situation. And the best part of this whole story is that once the markets and the fully functioning value chain are established, they are self-sustaining. They operate on standard free-market principles and can maintain themselves without TechnoServe’s involvement. They continue to be subject to the same threats that challenge any business in a free economy, but they don’t need charity, and that’s what really appeals to me. The economy of the region receives a permanent upgrade, so it can continue to develop from a higher level.
My first field visit in Kenya was to a project that clearly demonstrated the TechnoServe approach in working with banana farmers. TechnoServe and Africa Harvest had been funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to promote banana growing by small farmers north of Nairobi. Africa Harvest is known for its development and promotion of improved banana plants, so it was chosen to help the farmers access, plant, and nurture these plants. TechnoServe’s expertise is in business and value chains, so our focus was on organizing the farmers, training them, and connecting them to reliable markets for their produce.
Although many people believe that successful capitalism just happens, without a push, it can take a very long time. In developing countries, markets are often not efficient or nonexistent, so it’s very easy for value chains to stabilize in suboptimum conditions and not improve. For example, before the Africa Harvest/TechnoServe intervention in Kenya’s banana industry, the value chain operated as follows:
Poor farmers grew bananas primarily as one of their subsistence crops. Sometimes they would produce more than they could consume so would attempt to sell the excess. With no local market for the bananas and no means of transporting them to a major city, smallholders had to rely on random purchases from ad hoc traders. These traders would periodically visit banana farms in a particular area and ask farmers if they had any bananas to sell. If the farmers had bananas to sell, they were at the trader’s mercy in terms of the selling price. If the trader did not buy, then the bananas would not be sold and would ultimately rot. When the farmer had bananas for sale, the trader would eyeball them for quality and weight and would offer the farmer a price. Usually, the farmer accepted.
Although it sounds as if the traders had the upper hand on the farmers, the system was bad for everyone. The traders could find themselves driving through a rural area with very bad roads, expending their time and fuel money, and finding no bananas for sale. They could also find that the available bananas were only of poor quality and not readily saleable in the urban markets at a good price. All transactions were opportunistic. Supply, price, demand, and frequency of transactions were all random. And the most important fact to note about this situation was that none of the small participants involved could change it! Economists call this a market failure. No one had the resources to rationalize and improve the value chain. Without outside intervention, this value chain could have continued in its inefficient state indefinitely. Free markets are great, but sometimes they fail.
TechnoServe’s first step in changing this situation was overcoming a psychological hurdle. In this region, most everyone grew bananas because they were easy to grow and a good source of nutrition for their families. Since everyone grew bananas, many farmers could not understand how bananas could be grown as a reliable and worthwhile cash crop. They didn’t think about the four million inhabitants of Nairobi only fifty miles away who had no farmland. And if they had thought about those potential buyers, it would have seemed a dream that they could connect with them. As individual farmers became convinced of the opportunity, they were encouraged to purchase the new varieties of banana plants, to plant them carefully, in sufficient quantity, and to nurture them with appropriate water, fertilizer, and pruning. By following good direction, the farmers were able to produce excellent quality bananas in consistent volumes. However, better bananas in larger quantities were not sufficient. Many past economic development initiatives had taught farmers how to produce more and better crops but had not connected them to markets to sell their newfound abundance. Without connection to a market, a farmer just ends up throwing away more produce. This project was different. It attacked the overall value chain problem from both ends.
While farmers were being taught to grow more and better bananas, TechnoServe was also developing the demand side of the value chain. Banana wholesalers from Nairobi were recruited to visit the banana farming area with the promise of consistent availability of large volumes of high-quality bananas. This was attractive to the wholesalers because it allowed them to reduce their costs for finding high-quality bananas. The consistent availability also made the wholesalers into reliable suppliers to their retail customers. As the two ends of the value chain came together, the farmers and the wholesalers agreed on specific market days to meet and conduct their transactions. They also agreed to price bananas by weight and grade (quality level). Certain individuals within the farming community were trained to become official banana graders. After the new system began operating successfully, a physical market building and surrounding fenced yard were constructed for the collection, overnight storage, weighing and grading of the bananas on market days. The whole system, although seemingly incredibly simple, had become a tremendous success.
The wonderful thing was that these were real markets, just like those in the economics textbooks. Supply and demand were matched up reliably on a consistent basis, and this is the most important aspect for farmers who are trying to climb out of poverty. Although everyone involved anticipated that the most important result coming from this project would be that farmers were getting better prices for the bananas, it hadn’t been the case. The most important result for farmers had been the certainty and regularity of income. Farmers now knew that if they produced good bananas, they could sell them. That allowed families to plan their finances rather than being constantly uncertain as to whether they could afford to purchase clothing or pay school fees for the children. Many of the farmers had doubled their income. Needless to say, I was very excited with the project and what it had been able to accomplish.
As part of the banana trip, we got to see the actual market taking place with bananas being graded and weighed. We also visited several banana farms to see their growing techniques including, in some cases, new irrigation systems. The irrigation systems had been purchased with the farmers’ increased incomes enabling them to produce more bananas in the dry season when selling prices are the highest.
As an aside, as we drove around the area, I noticed a large compound with a very nice house at the center. I inquired as to who owned this impressive homestead and was told that it was the local MP (member of parliament). I asked, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, if this person had been wealthy before becoming an MP. Everyone in the car laughed loudly and said of course not.
A few days after the banana trip, Wendy arrived in Kenya and learned what her work for the next year would entail. While about 80 percent of TechnoServe Kenya’s project work related to agricultural value chains, such as the banana project, the remaining 20 percent was focused on more general entrepreneurship and consisted of three specific initiatives: Young Women in Enterprise, a national Believe, Begin, Become (BBB) business plan competition, and a small business growth program called “Upscaling.” Wendy would spend her time in Nairobi working on all three. The projects were a good fit with her interests and leveraged her experience in business plus the lessons learned in Swaziland
The banana trip had meant a two-hour drive each way on relatively bad roads. The week after Wendy arrived, she and I went with the TechnoServe Upscaling team for a three-hour drive each way over worse roads. Wendy was starting to help this team in supporting very small businesses to identify and overcome the barriers that prevented them from growing and creating more jobs. Our first visit was to a small honey processing company. It was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Ndambuki but had really been started by the wife. The husband was a pharmacist, and the couple had owned and operated a pharmacy in a small town for many years. They were not rich, but seemed to have a good and stable income, which put them in a better position than most. The honey business was a recent start-up. The honey business had begun serendipitously when an old acquaintance of the wife had come to town in desperate financial condition. Before moving to town, the wife had come from a not too distant rural area. This rural area was quite poor, and the local farmers were always at the mercy of the weather, which that year had not been good for the crops. Many of the farmers were struggling to feed their families. Fortunately, some of the farmers kept bees, which produced saleable honey. Although this honey had usually been consumed by the families, her friend had come to town to sell what he could to buy staples. The wife bought the honey, primarily out of charity, and the desire to preserve her friend’s dignity. She then had to figure out what she would do with it. Since it was too much to personally consume, she decided to process it and sell it in the pharmacy. It worked and she decided to help more of the struggling farmers by purchasing more honey. She processed and sold their honey, and her husband even developed a cough syrup and other pharmaceutical products that incorporated honey.
Mr. and Mrs. Ndambuki now had an additional small business with only one full-time employee, but both were enthusiastic about it because it had been able to help a number of poor farmers. The business had been able to generate enough profits to provide the small amount of cash required for simple equipment and working capital. While it hadn’t contributed to the couple’s disposable income, it hadn’t been a cash drain. They wanted to expand, and that’s how TechnoServe was helping them. The TechnoServe business advisors had helped them to formally register their company and to develop accurate financial statements. Both of these were always prerequisites for obtaining any kind of financing, which the company expected to need soon for growth. The honey business also needed a strategy if they really wanted to grow. Although they had created a brand and packaging for their honey, like many small businesses we saw, their products were mostly undifferentiated.
Many of TechnoServe’s clients sell mostly undifferentiated raw agricultural produce, which is fine if there is a sufficient market and you’re willing to accept the prices that the market offers. However, trying to sell processed, packaged goods is more challenging. To sell these goods, ultimately a consumer will have to choose your product from a retail shelf, where it usually sits competing for attention with other similar products. How do you get the consumer to choose your product or even get the retailer to put your product on his shelf ? It is very difficult to break into supermarkets with this type of product when they already have multiple competing brands on the shelf. Selling honey wasn’t as bad as trying to set up a bottled water company, but it was still a big challenge.
We advised the honey company not to aggressively pursue supermarkets in Nairobi unless they could really differentiate their honey. Alternatively, we suggested a more regional marketing strategy and perhaps pursuing second-tier stores and informal markets in Nairobi where the potential volumes might be lower and the logistics more cumbersome, but the competition would be less fierce. We also suggested emphasizing the honey-containing, proprietary products that they had developed. We felt these could be differentiated and would face less direct competition. The proprietors thanked us for our advice and, as we left, gave us a bag of mangoes from one of their trees. We also got a sample of the honey-based cough syrup.
As we discussed this business in the car, we concluded that there are a lot of similar small businesses with undifferentiated products. They can typically succeed in a small market with a lot of hard work and personal touch from the owners. Good customer service in a small area combined with personal relationships and supported by hard work allows them to provide enough profits for a decent income. However as those who work in marketing and sales know, to expand beyond this size, these businesses cannot rely solely on the charisma and energy of the owners. At this point they need to have some other distinguishing characteristic and/or unique position in their market if they are to grow. This to me is always the largest challenge to business growth (in any country in the world). I hoped the honey business would succeed and grow, but unless they developed their proprietary products, I saw them quickly hitting a ceiling.
Our visit the next day was to a slightly larger firm with better short-term prospects. The company produced and bottled yogurt for sale to retailers. The company had been started by a young accountant who had waited for it to grow before leaving his accounting job to work full time making and selling yogurt. The company provided twelve jobs. It also benefited small, local farmers by purchasing eight hundred liters per day of their milk output. This milk was pasteurized in a large cauldron in a small shed outside a house that had been the accountant’s home. He had originally set up the business in his home, but when the business grew too large, he and his family moved nearby and let the business take over the whole house.
The yogurt production process was pretty simple and very manual. After the milk had been boiled, it was poured into large containers and the yogurt culture was added, which turned the milk into yogurt. Some of the yogurt had strawberry or vanilla flavoring added before bottling for sale. The bottling process was not what you would see in a large beverage company. Two liter pitchers were filled from the large yogurt containers. The contents of the pitchers were then carefully poured into 300 ml and 500 ml plastic bottles, which would be sold at retail. The bottles received heat seals, which were carefully placed by hand and then affixed with the heat from a common laundry iron. The next step was manually attaching the labels and adding the plastic screw cap. The completed bottles were then grouped into dozens and covered with heat-shrinkable plastic. The plastic was shrunk to fit with an industrial strength heat gun. The employee performing this operation said that the business originally used inexpensive handheld hair dryers, but they wore out too quickly.
The owner said that he had more demand for his yogurt than he could supply, so planned to double his capacity. TechnoServe was helping him to get the necessary financing. I asked about product differentiation. He said that people just liked his yogurt. He thought it might be a little thicker than the large commercial brands. One of his larger competitors was beginning to worry about the competition from our entrepreneur’s increasing sales and thought that his success was due to his salespeople. The competitor hired away all the salespeople at much higher salaries, but it only caused a short-term problem for our entrepreneur, and he kept on growing. He was selling locally as well as to many small shops in Nairobi. It sounded as if the short-term prospects were very good for him. Of course, he couldn’t afford to compete head on with the large dairy products company, but he could potentially grow to a company with fifty employees while purchasing milk from hundreds of small farmers. This was already a success story, and it was growing. It was another heartwarming experience where an entrepreneur’s pursuit of profit was creating opportunity and economic growth, and it helped to reassure us that this was a proven path to helping the poor.
A few weeks later, Fred showed us another success story based on another of TechnoServe’s proven approaches to helping the poor. Fred had been really busy and felt the need to take a weekend break out of town with his family at the Outspan hotel in Nyeri. Fortunately, he invited us to go along and made special plans for us. First of all, he took a circuitous route to Nyeri to show us the variety of Kenya’s terrain north of Nairobi. In this area, the Rift Valley meets the watershed of Mount Kenya and evolves into the plains of northern Kenya. As we drove, the landscape varied dramatically depending on the direction of the view.
Fred also wanted to show us the Nyala dairy, a very successful TechnoServe project that he had initiated many years ago. The “dairy” was actually a collection point for the milk from over five thousand smallholder farmers, each of who had typically less than four cows. The farmers delivered their milk by whatever means they could, such as by bicycle or donkey, to Nyala, where it was weighed and tested for quality before being put into the large cooling tank. Once a day, a large tank truck from a commercial milk producer would pick up the milk from the tank. In this way the farmers were assured of a reliable buyer for their output. Based on their record of milk deliveries, farmers could also access credit to purchase supplies such as feed and veterinary medicines. Dairy programs, such as Nyala, had become a model for increasing farmers’ incomes. Dairy farming is particularly attractive in this respect because, in contrast to seasonal crops, it produces output every day.
It was during the trip with Fred and family, while observing many small towns and varying terrain, that I finalized my concept of the Walleigh Bare Dirt Index of Development, for which I expect to be immortalized in the economic development community. My proposition is that the amount of exposed bare dirt in a community is inversely proportional to its level of economic development. Poor communities have a lot of exposed bare dirt, e.g., parking areas in front of stores, side streets, and even main roads. At the other extreme, the most developed communities, e.g., cities in the United States, have no exposed bare dirt. Every square foot of ground is covered by concrete, asphalt, or deliberately planted grass or shrubbery. There is no bare dirt to be muddy when it rains or dusty when it’s dry. Because poor communities have no money to spend on paving roads and parking lots or planting landscaping, as foot or vehicle traffic increases, the natural vegetation is worn down and bare dirt is produced. As a community improves its economic condition, limited funds begin to go into paving and landscaping, but a lot of bare dirt persists. The amount of bare dirt ends up being proportional to the level of poverty and inversely proportional to the level of development. QED. I’m just waiting for the recognition.
Although Wendy worked on all three Kenya entrepreneurship programs, she spent the majority of her time on Young Women in Enterprise (YWE) sponsored by Nike. This innovative program encouraged young women to become entrepreneurs. It provided training in both urban and rural settings around Nairobi, and participants included both high school students and school leavers (meaning dropouts) some of whom were already mothers. Since the Kenyan economy didn’t generate enough jobs to employ all of the people leaving school each year (either through graduation or dropping out), self-employment was seen as a very viable alternative for achieving an income. The YWE program taught young women interpersonal and life skills as well as about business and concluded with each of them developing a short plan for a business that they would actually like to start. These plans were judged, and some of the most promising were awarded small cash prizes, which could be used to help start the business. The girls in all of the sites had completed their assignments and so TechnoServe teams had been going around to the sites to judge the business plan submissions and award prizes to the best.
As part of her YWE role, Wendy had participated in several of these events around Nairobi, but we had both been asked to participate in an all-day session of judging and awards at our most distant rural site. It was about two hours away over mostly poor roads, some under repair with long diversions over stretches of dirt and gravel. Since it was far away, we had been told to be ready to leave the office by 7:00 a.m., so Wendy and I arrived at 6:45. This being Africa, someone didn’t get the word about the 7:00 a.m. departure, so we waited for her and left at 8:30. We already knew it was going to be a late day, but this would obviously make it later.
After the uncomfortable, but not terrible drive, we arrived at the rural school where we were to have the judging and the awards. The school buildings had local stone walls and mostly dirt floors. The small assembly hall had a concrete floor. All of the windows were just openings in the walls that could be closed with steel shutters. There were no lights in the classrooms. The outhouses were behind the school buildings. The exterior features of the outhouses were unremarkable and the interiors were Spartan, a concrete floor with a rectangular opening.
The TechnoServe team set up our operation as quickly as possible, but we were obviously way behind schedule. There were forty-two girls that we would interview. We had planned to have four panels of judges, but we only had enough of us for three. That meant each panel would have to interview additional girls and that would put us even further behind. We plowed ahead.
The process was that each girl would come into one of the judging rooms, briefly describe her business, and then the panel would ask questions. Evaluating the young woman’s answers and her written plan, the judges would award points based on standard criteria. I had no idea what to expect. Our first contestant had me very worried. She came in, said a few quiet greetings, and sat down. The head judge greeted her and tried to make her feel comfortable, explaining that she could answer in Swahili or English, whichever was easier. Then someone asked her to briefly describe her planned business. She just sat there. After a long pause, the judge tried to coax her a bit, offering a question with a simpler answer. The girl finally uttered a few words. It continued in this way for the next twenty minutes. I’m sure it was painful for her. It was definitely painful for the judges. We hoped that all the interviews wouldn’t be that difficult.
The next girl came in, vivacious and confident. She explained her business and why it was going to succeed. She told us how, if she couldn’t raise all the money she needed, she would start the business in a different way with just a small amount and bootstrap it to a larger size. She had already started an informal business doing essentially the same thing. The contrast between the two girls was amazing. Throughout the rest of our interviewees, the diversity was wide. One or two others were very confident and knowledgeable, but there were girls who couldn’t answer the simplest question about a business plan that they had ostensibly written. We suspected a number had been written by their counselors or older siblings.
At the end of the judging, which finished over two hours late, the panels got together and selected the overall winners. We wolfed down some very late lunch and then presented the awards. Parents and relatives of all of the girls had come out to the awards ceremony as had local government officials and politicians. In addition to the prizes for the best plans, each girl got a graduation certificate. Both the parents and the girls were excited. Many of the attendees couldn’t fit in the small assembly hall, but the open doors and windows allowed us to easily observe from outside. As the awards were given, the audience clapped joyfully, especially the parents of the girls who won prizes. At the end of the awards, one of the students gave a brief, impromptu speech thanking everyone for the training and the associated opportunity. Then, one of the fathers stood up and asked to speak. He was an older man; he looked as though he could have been a grandfather, but his daughter had won one of the awards. He mentioned that he had started his own business many years ago and that it had allowed him to provide for his children and send them to school. He was thankful for his own success, and he wanted to thank everyone for the opportunity that was being given to his daughter and all of the other young women. Although he spoke in Swahili, and I didn’t get the translation until later, you could tell that it was a very moving speech by the standing ovation at the end. After his speech, the ceremony was closed with a prayer, and we were ready to pack up and drive the two hours back to Nairobi. It had been a long but rewarding day.
Over the following two weeks, the scene was repeated in a number of communities around Nairobi including several major slums where most of the girls were school dropouts and many of the teenagers had their own children. After participating in many of these sessions, Wendy had an interesting observation. While the quality of plans and the determination of the girls varied in each location, all of the best plans and the highest levels of determination came from school dropouts in very poor areas. I guess it was these girls who understood the economic facts of life and knew that this was a great opportunity for them to change their own situation.
I hoped that once the excitement died down that many of these young women would be able to build on what they had learned and actually start a business. These businesses wouldn’t be the next Google or Apple, but they could provide a few dollars a day to help feed a family. We had already seen anecdotal examples of success with new businesses, and clearly all of the young women had gained confidence in their abilities that would serve them well as employees or entrepreneurs.
The U.S. Embassy and Other Concerns
In life, if one wants to worry, there are always things to worry about. In familiar situations, we learn over time which risks create real and present danger and which ones can be safely ignored. In new and unfamiliar situations, we don’t have these rules of thumb, and everything seems scarier. It wasn’t clear to us as to whether the apparent upsurge in violence in Kenya was really something that we should worry about, but apparently, the U.S. embassy wanted to do something to respond to concerns raised by the extensive publicity surrounding it. They called a “town meeting” and invited all of the U.S. citizens living locally to come to the embassy. I didn’t think that I was going to get any new or useful information, so I decided not to attend, but their initial invitation and the follow-up message were additional reminders of the somewhat threatening environment.
I had basically forgotten about the meeting until the embassy’s follow-up e-mail arrived. At the meeting, a U.S. citizen had brought up an issue about the location of the embassy’s parking for U.S. citizens going to the embassy for various services. Evidently, the parking lot was a significant distance from the embassy and not particularly secure. The citizen was concerned, and probably asked if anything could be done about this situation. Well, the e-mail response from the embassy indicated that because of safety and liability concerns (my italics), there would no longer be parking available for U.S. citizens going to the embassy for services. They really took care of that problem!
While I had basically gotten over worrying about increased violence from Somali migrants, at this time Kenya presented other opportunities for worrying such as Rift Valley fever, which had broken out in the north. Rift Valley fever is a hemorrhagic fever disease, sort of like a mild form of Ebola (the horrific disease which kills 90 percent of its victims within a few days). Fortunately, Rift Valley fever mostly attacks animals like cows, goats, sheep, and pigs. However, the disease can pass to humans, and more than a hundred people had died. Not everyone who contracts the disease endures a serious case. However, those that do bleed from all body orifices and die within a few days. During the outbreak, the consumption of most meat plummeted and the demand for chicken and fish skyrocketed. Most cases of human infection actually come from contact with live animals, but people were still worried that they could get it from contaminated meat. If you bought meat from a reputable butcher, there was nothing to worry about. My general approach to life is to be optimistic and avoid unnecessary worrying. I didn’t change my eating habits, and I didn’t even get a bloody nose.
On the other hand, we did worry about malaria, and I was reminded why when I went to the office to ask a colleague, Carl, about the project he was working on. He seemed a little out of it, and when I asked about it, he said he wasn’t feeling well. I asked what was wrong, and he said he had gotten malaria, but he’d caught it quickly and was on good medication. He wasn’t concerned.
Nairobi, because of its altitude, is a relatively low-risk area for malaria, and so most people don’t take preventative medication. However, Carl had been to Tanzania and hadn’t bothered to take precautions. Every tourist is seriously warned to take prophylactic medication, but most people who live in Africa don’t. The medications do have side effects, both short- and long-term, and many people don’t want to take them for years on end. Maybe it’s a good gamble if you live in Africa, but for us, there was no question. Wendy and I religiously took the meds. And besides, those other people were missing out on some great dreams. Yes, that’s one of the side effects.
When you’re a tourist in a malarial area, there are two primary types of preventative medication to choose from, malarone and mefloquine. For short vacations, malarone is generally considered the drug of choice. It is probably somewhat more effective, and it has the fewest side effects. However, it has to be taken every day, and when we went to Africa, it was very expensive if you took it for a long period of time. Mefloquine, on the other hand, was also effective, needed to be taken only once per week, and was much less expensive. However, the potential side effects of mefloquine can be quite interesting. One is hallucinations.
Wendy and I didn’t have any daytime hallucinations, but the Tuesday night dreams were exciting. Monday was the day we took our pills for the week, but for some reason, the resulting dreams were most intense on Tuesday nights. Wendy periodically had scary nightmares and talked loudly in her sleep, but my dreams were just weird. I had the usual late to class, didn’t study for the exam, walking around naked dreams, but I also had some unique ones as well. One that I remember concerned not having a date for the senior prom. I was very upset that I hadn’t asked anyone to the prom and was remembering all the girls I had dated in high school (not a long list) and wondering if I should ask each of them. As I was going through this process, I remembered that I was married and couldn’t understand why I was worried about a date. But I still thought I should get a date. My mind tried to reconcile these thoughts, and then I woke up. It was really like going to a weekly festival of strange, short movies.
Although I was looking forward to getting off the medication and experiencing plain old boring sleep, we weren’t going to risk that in Africa. When I was talking to another colleague, David, about Carl’s malaria, he said, “Oh yeah, I had malaria and almost died.” Several years earlier, he had felt feverish and achy, but he was traveling away from home and thought it was just a virus. He hesitated in going to the doctor. By the time he went, just the next day, the malaria had gone to his brain. The doctor immediately told him that he might not survive and put him into intensive care. David was totally conscious and called his wife and told her that he might be dying. He called his brother to discuss his own funeral and burial arrangements and also asked his brother for help in taking care of his wife after he was gone. Fortunately, the doctors pumped David full of medication for several days and he lived. He chuckled as he talked about it, but it was really a close call. Wendy and I paid close attention to the calendar and took our meds every Monday like clockwork.
Carl quickly recovered from the malaria, but he was still feeling bad. He found out he also had an amoebic infestation. Those critters take a week of nasty medicine to get rid of. No, we weren’t in Kansas.
Continuing the unpleasant creatures theme, I had learned what to expect regarding animal encounters in our apartment. I had been surprised several times by geckos scampering up the wall to hide behind curtains or other cover. Fortunately, they seemed quite afraid of me and disappeared before Wendy saw them. In the unusual bug category, Wendy had called on me several times to kill some very large invaders (species unknown). They were about an inch wide, two inches long and appeared to be a cross between a beetle and a cockroach. They moved very fast, but ultimately made a large snapping sound as I crushed them under my size 14 work shoes. Overall, however, Nairobi’s high altitude and dry climate contributed to minimizing insect (especially mosquito) encounters, for which Wendy was especially grateful since she tends to be a mosquito magnet. Whenever they’re around, mosquitoes bite her and not me; I think because she is much tenderer.
While some of nature’s threats, such as malaria, are predictable and can be defended against, for others we can be totally surprised and essentially helpless. One day, I was sitting at my desk, and I felt a strange movement coming up from the floor. It wasn’t quite a shaking; it was more of a rocking. It was a feeling I had felt many times before in California, but I was in Nairobi, Kenya. Could this be an earthquake, here in Africa? Yes it was, and only the first of a number to come. Who knew they had earthquakes in Kenya? Looking at the geology, I guess it’s not surprising. Nairobi is located near the Great Rift Valley and between the extinct volcanoes of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya. All of these would be obvious clues to the most amateur geologist, but it hadn’t occurred to me.
Wendy sat near to me in the office and reacted quicker when she felt the tremor. She instantly positioned herself in the doorway as we are trained in California (because doorways are more strongly reinforced and can protect you from falling debris in a moderate earthquake in the United States (for advice on what to do in a very serious earthquake, especially outside of the United States, search online for “The Triangle of Life”). Although she reacted quickly and followed the guidelines we had been taught, this would have been a problem in a serious earthquake. The doorway in which she positioned herself was capped by a large glass panel, which would have shattered into many sharp pieces and seriously sliced anyone standing below. Fortunately, the first quake only measured 4.4 on the Richter scale, so was only a little wake-up call.
The next quake hit on Sunday night, and it registered 5.4 on the Richter scale, which meant that it was about ten times as powerful. It hit while I was sitting on the toilet in our apartment. Talk about the ultimate in terms of helplessness. The only solution was to let it happen and hope. Compounding the impact was the fact that I was feeling a little tipsy from the few glasses of wine I’d had with dinner. Boy, was there ever a wrong night to overimbibe.
On Tuesday, a 6.1 quake hit near the end of the work day, and the panic started. It was the strongest quake yet, and the fourth in five days. People streamed out of office buildings and were reluctant to go back the next day. At first, running out of buildings seemed to be a foolish reaction, since that was not what we were taught in California, but later we learned that 90 percent of Nairobi buildings were not designed by professional architects or engineers. Maybe running out of those buildings wasn’t a bad idea. I reminded myself that the rules are different in Africa.
As the tremors continued, so did the panic. There had been no destruction of buildings, but this had been the longest string of earthquakes ever felt in Nairobi. Fortunately, the city was 155 kilometers from the earthquake’s epicenter in Tanzania, so the impact was lessened. Rumors circulated about a big tremor that was coming and some people slept outside their homes. As rumors of an impending large quake accelerated, including the quake’s date and time, experts continued to deny that earthquake prediction was possible and the U.S. embassy was forced to issue an official press release saying that it had not predicted a large earthquake on Thursday at 2:00 p.m. Over time, the earthquakes subsided, as did the panic, and things went back to normal.
Getting beyond the concerns with disease, pestilence, earthquakes, and Somali invaders, traditional crime was still an issue. Within a month or two of my arrival in Nairobi, I had pretty much forgotten about the two fatal carjackings. My friends were probably right; these had been an aberration. However, the city still had a long-standing reputation for nonfatal crime and was nicknamed Nairobbery. There were even anecdotes about the old days when criminals would steal your car at gunpoint but then put you in the trunk and politely drop you off near your home before taking off with your car and your money. Anyone who recounted these stories always followed them up with a warning that modern criminals did not adhere to these old ways and were to be seriously feared. Just in case we were getting complacent, we received several messages that definitely put us on our guard.
The first message was from Peter, one of our coworkers, which he sent to everyone in the office. It said essentially, “Please send any e-mail messages to me in care of my personal e-mail account since my computer has been stolen, and I can’t access my work e-mail.” On his way home one night, Peter was accosted as he was about to drive into his yard. As with most homes outside the slums, his property was surrounded by a high fence with a locked gate. Although this generally provides protection, it can also provide an opportunity for thieves. People are vulnerable as they arrive home and exit their cars to unlock their gate, allowing thieves to easily attack, which is what happened to Peter. In some senses, Peter was lucky in that the thieves only took his cash, cell phone, and computer. They often take the car. And of course, the situation can be life-threatening as well. From our perspective, it appeared as if Peter mostly took it in stride and just set about fixing the problems. However, it had to be a harrowing experience. Several days later, he got good news; the thieves had been caught, and he was called to the police station to identify them. Although he got through it without serious physical harm, it must have left a mental scar. Several people at TechnoServe had experienced similar trauma. Erastus told me of an incident, several years earlier when he was confronted by a thief with a gun, and he was certain that he was going to die. In another incident, just months earlier, an expat couple who were our good friends had been forced to lie facedown in the dirt as armed thieves went through their pockets and purse.
The second message, which was e-mailed from the U.S. embassy, just reinforced the ideas.
