“Oh my god! The back window just shattered. I’m covered with glass. I’ll try to hold my raincoat up to keep the rain from coming into the car.”
In many action movies, there is a car chase scene where the pursuing car shoots out the back window of the fleeing car in front. That’s how it felt for us, but we were being pursued by a hailstorm, not gangsters with shotguns. It didn’t’t matter, in both movies and real life, the tempered glass windows literally explode into a shower of tiny pieces that won’t cut the passengers, but the glass goes everywhere.
“Is there anywhere we can go for protection?”
“I’ll look, but I don’t even see any trees we could pull under. I’ll just keep driving slowly. You look for some overhead protection.”
We drove on at a snail’s pace for the few remaining miles to our cottage, and as we drove, the hailstones got smaller, down to golf ball size. As we got closer to home, I was feeling good that we were safe, but I couldn’t help remembering that I had taken the $2,000 deductible option for insurance on the rental car.
We entered the Emafini grounds and started up the road to our cottage, but our path was blocked by a downed tree. It was still raining and windy. I wanted to get the car into the carport to at least limit the water damage to the interior. We were close to Mark and Liz’s house, so Wendy jumped out of the car and ran up to their door to see what could be done. It was Sunday afternoon, and Mark was home, but he still had on his nice church clothes. He came out in the rain to survey the situation and then quickly disappeared to pursue the solution.
Mark was in his early seventies. He started his career as a policeman and over the years, with Liz, built up their hotel business. He was a very good and practical businessman. In Swaziland, he was considered relatively well-to-do, but he and the rest of his family were very unpretentious and hard-working. He saw our situation and knew what to do. Although there were a number of workmen on the Emafini property, as Mark disappeared over the hill, it was obvious that he was going to take care of the situation himself. Only a few minutes later, Mark re-emerged over the hill perched at the controls of a gigantic front-loader. He looked like a storm trooper from Star Wars piloting one of the huge war machines. From the stories told by his family, he had purchased this massive piece of road building equipment a few years earlier, over their objections. It was used periodically for maintenance at Emafini, but most family members still thought the purchase was unjustified. I didn’t know the story and so was shocked to see this elegant gentleman, in dress shirt and suit pants, skillfully maneuvering this imposing machine. With great dexterity on the controls, Mark made short work of the barrier to our progress. He chose the right points for leverage and, with just a few paths back and forth, pivoted the tree off the road. Then I drove the car up the hill and into our carport.
After I got out of the car, I surveyed the damage. There were approximately fifty dents in the sheet metal body of the car. The back window was gone, and there were bits of glass throughout the interior of the car. The windshield had taken sixteen major hits. The exterior mirrors were gone and headlights were destroyed. Once again, I was thankful that we were safe, but I also knew that I was $2,000 poorer. I couldn’t reach the rental car company by phone, but I knew that when I did the conversation would be painful for all of us. I had gone over five months without even a slight scratch, and then this happened two days before I was to leave. There was nothing I could do, so I laughed.
The next day, we were able to assess the storm damage from a broader perspective. The area where we had been driving was the worst hit. As we drove around town, we saw numerous cars with multiple dents and lines of cars at the glass shops where windshields were being replaced. There was a lot of damage. Sadly, the storm had killed five people. We all felt very fortunate.
The rental car company delivered us a replacement car. Two days later, we finished packing and headed to the airport. The rental agent at the terminal had become friendly with me during our stay and was very apologetic as she handed me the bill, but she had no choice.
We checked our luggage and waited for our plane. We were facing another long trip, but we were going home to family and friends.
As I sat waiting for the plane, I thought back on our experience, and my intellectual musings and conclusions were mixed with emotions. As I remembered my day at the bank with Tasty Meals, I was feeling really bad, but then I remembered my wonderful experience the very next day, and it lifted my spirits all over again.
One additional facet of TechnoServe’s initiative in Swaziland had been a business plan competition called “Believe, Begin, Become” (BBB). The purpose of the competition was to promote entrepreneurship and specifically to promote the start up of small and medium enterprises. In addition to the recognition and prize aspects of the competition, there were also educational and mentoring components. Throughout the competition, the number of contestants got narrowed down as they passed more hurdles and got more training and coaching on developing their business plans. Ultimately, six winners would actually receive cash prizes that could be used to finance the start up of their businesses. Managing all of the BBB activities created a huge load on the office, so everyone pitched in to help. In addition to helping with the many administrative activities, I judged some of the business plans, and Wendy and I both conducted classes as part of the training.
Shortly after Wendy and I returned from our trip to the Junior Achievement meeting and the TechnoServe office in Nairobi, all of TechnoServe Swaziland gathered for the graduation ceremony of the top sixty candidates from the competition. This was held at the most unusual graduation venue we’ve ever attended: a disco club called the House on Fire. “Building” is a loose term for this series of tin roofs and caverns, nooks, crannies, sculptures, and balconies. Various parts were made of wood, rocks, glass, concrete, mosaic, or a combination with fire pits in each “room.” But somehow, House on Fire proved to be a fitting location to celebrate sixty budding entrepreneurs’ completion of five intense weeks of workshops. All of the sixty semi-finalists had met the most rigorous business challenge: creating a bankable business plan that could be funded either by TechnoServe’s prize money or by a local lender. Unfortunately, the graduation of the semi-finalists was quickly followed by the announcement of the twenty finalists, so many people were left disappointed. Although only twenty competitors could go on, all of the men and women had demonstrated admirable perseverance.
Despite our limited involvement in BBB, it led to wonderful experiences for both Wendy and me. For Wendy, the experience occurred after she taught the marketing class. A young man came up to her to ask for any special insight she had on starting a business. She replied that most U.S. entrepreneurs fail at least once in starting a business so to be prepared to be challenged, make mistakes, and perhaps fail. However, ultimately perseverance and belief in yourself would help as much as any classroom learning. He came up to her at the graduation and thanked her for that advice. Wendy hoped that she’d made a difference in at least that one young man’s future.
My uplifting experience came at the Swazi Sun Hotel the day after the bank visit with Tusty Meals when a young man, Thembisa, came up to me and introduced himself. I didn’t recognize him at first, but he knew I was from TechnoServe and said that we had met before at some of the Believe, Begin, Become activities. He had submitted a business plan for a mobile hair salon, basically going to customers’ homes during typically nonbusiness hours to cut, color, etc., their hair. Thembisa had been a semifinalist, but his plan had not been selected to be one of the finalists. He was glad that TechnoServe was doing a follow-up event for the semifinalists who didn’t make it into the finals. Moreover, he wanted to thank me and tell me how wonderful the Believe, Begin, Become program had been for him. Thembisa said that he had been thinking about starting his own business for quite a while. He had confidence in some aspects of his capability to start and run a business but not in others. He said that the TechnoServe program had given him knowledge in areas that he was lacking, and now he had the confidence to go ahead with his business plan. He was very grateful for TechnoServe and thanked God for sending us to Swaziland. I spent some more time with him discussing his concept and urging him to press forward because I knew he could succeed. At the end of our discussion, Thembisa thanked me again for TechnoServe. It was very inspiring, and I felt I had been rewarded more than I deserved.
Looking at the bigger picture, my biggest lesson learned in Swaziland was how much must go right for economic development to happen. Although most free-market economies with the right legal and macroeconomic environment do experience economic growth, it doesn’t have to happen, and it especially doesn’t have to happen fast. Many years ago during the depression, John Maynard Keynes showed that economies can stabilize in suboptimum conditions. When this happens, there has to be an outside intervention to change things and offer an opportunity for improvement and growth. That’s what economic development work is all about, intervening to promote economic growth. However, there’s never just one intervention that’s necessary, and multiple factors must exist for an intervention to lead to sustainable progress. That’s why it’s so challenging and why it requires perseverance.
Of course, Wendy was extremely proud of her and Atiba’s successfully launching the pilot classes of JA Swaziland. On the other hand, she felt that her biggest lessons learned were threefold. Launching a youth entrepreneurship program, even supported by the structure of global organizations like Junior Achievement and TechnoServe, is incredibly difficult in a developing country where taking initiative and risks are not part of the culture. She also had reinforced for her the fact that no project is as straightforward as it might seem, particularly when dealing with partners (such as UNISWA and JA). Finally, it was important to not just accomplish something personally but to build the capacity of the people with whom she worked because that would hopefully last long after her personal involvement. Wendy most greatly enjoyed her mentoring: expanding Atiba’s already strong skills and building the capacity of LULOTE staff who were unfamiliar with international organizations, entrepreneurship, and launching new programs. I had hoped that during my time in Swaziland, I would have enabled one or two companies to start on their path to sustainable success. Clearly I was naive and my objectives were totally unreasonable. I believe I made good contributions to the paths of several companies and helped to develop a number of colleagues, but the real results would depend on the work of those colleagues after I left. It wasn’t what I’d hoped to accomplish, but with a more reasonable perspective, I felt good about what I’d been able to do. I understood economic development better now, especially from the perspective of being on the ground as well as the high-level overview. I’d learned that the economies of developing countries can’t be transformed overnight, but we can accelerate their growth. And if we can increase the annual growth rate of developing economies by only a few percentage points, it will mean that millions of people spend many fewer years in extreme poverty. That’s a realistic goal.
The Interregnum
The trip home wasn’t permanent. Wendy and I were feeling that our time in Africa hadn’t been long enough, and we hadn’t contributed enough. Although we had worked hard, the length of our stay felt more like an extended vacation. We had arranged it this way on purpose because we didn’t know how well we would survive living in Africa. Well, we had survived just fine. It had been an exciting adventure. We’d had many new and mind-expanding experiences. More importantly, we felt good about the work we had done. It hadn’t been a hardship, and we felt as if we were contributing, so we wanted to do more. We weren’t ready to commit our lives to working in Africa, but we were ready to invest an additional year.
I talked again with Simon, TechnoServe’s vice president for Africa, and told him that we would be interested in staying on in Africa, but wanted to work in a different country if there were opportunities. He quickly responded that he had opportunities for both of us in Kenya. TechnoServe’s country director in Kenya was about to leave and go back to the United States. The country director had two deputies. One of the deputies was being promoted to become the new country director for Kenya. The other deputy was being promoted to become the country director for Uganda, where TechnoServe was starting up a new program. The senior management ranks in these two important countries would be thin, and Simon thought we could help. My consulting experience in operations improvement could be applied to enable the new country directors to establish or improve strong administrations. Wendy was excited because she would not only again leverage her youth program experiences, but also apply her interests in women, entrepreneurship, and education as well as her marketing communications and fund-raising skills.
He answered so quickly that I was concerned. I didn’t want to be taken lightly just because we had been volunteers, and more importantly, I wanted to make sure that our roles would be substantial. So I asked for a salary (or salaries). I didn’t specify an amount, and I didn’t care specifically how much it was. I just wanted it to represent a commitment from TechnoServe that they would value our efforts. Simon didn’t hesitate. He said yes, in general, and that we would work out the specifics. In the end, it turned out that it would be easier, with my background and the role that I would fill, for me to get a business visa than for Wendy. So I got a salary, and Wendy remained a volcon with her per diem.
So in January we would be headed to Kenya.
I was in the United States for about a month, Wendy a little longer, but it was a whirlwind tour. We arrived at our home just in time to prepare for the holidays. Our house sitters had kindly gone on vacation for two weeks and left the house to us. We immediately cut a fresh Christmas tree and decorated the house for Christmas and Hanukkah in anticipation of the arrival of our kids, Adrian and Diana, along with Adrian’s dog, Scooter.
The kids were around for eight days and the decorations up for ten. During that time, we attended multiple Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s parties, and then we left for the east coast. First we visited with my family in Washington DC, including my mother, two of my sisters, their families, and some cousins. Then we flew up to Boston to see Adrian, Wendy’s aunt, uncle, cousins, and some friends from college days.
I flew back to California to prepare for my flight to Nairobi. Wendy stayed on a little longer. When I took off for Nairobi, the time in the United States was already a blur.
Kenya
First Impressions of Nairobi
And TechnoServe in Kenya
Flying into Kenya was very different from our arrival in Swaziland. Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport is a large international, if run-down, facility in a capital city of four million people. Like many international airports, it has an endless concourse filled with similar-looking shops selling similar-looking “duty-free” goods. There were long lines at immigration with a longer one at the visa desk. And after I picked up my luggage and exited the customs area, throngs of prearranged drivers with signs were trying to make themselves seen by their intended riders. These were competing for space with the horde of entrepreneurs who were opportunistically soliciting for passengers. This, of course, was occurring right below the sign that said, “Soliciting for Passengers Prohibited.”
Despite experiencing this scene many times in my life, I am always slightly panicked that I will miss my driver or that he won’t be there, and then what will I do? In Nairobi, I didn’t know where I was going; I didn’t have a cell phone to call someone, but that didn’t matter since I didn’t know who to call anyway. The driver just had to be there. On rare occasions in the past, the driver wasn’t there, which could be very inconvenient or somewhat scary depending on the situation. (We were pretty nervous in 1994 when we flew into Hangzhou, China, and our guide wasn’t at the airport. The fact that the woman in front of us at immigration had an altercation with the authorities and was arrested also didn’t help our sense of comfort.) Arriving in a foreign country without easy access to communication and not knowing who to trust for help always worries me, but things usually work out the way they’re supposed to; and when they haven’t, I’ve still survived. Yet, that brief moment of worry always grabs me as I look for my name amongst the dozens of signs being held up. This time, I passed my driver three times before I saw my name. Seeing your own name in a strange place always provides a great sense of comfort.
Although there was more hassle in the arrival, the flight from the United States to Nairobi seemed much easier than to Swaziland. It was considerably shorter. The flight from Nairobi to Johannesburg would have been another four hours, and the flight onward to Swaziland would have been an additional hour plus the layover. However, the difference seemed to be even greater. Of course there was one less stop, and because of the timing of flights, the layovers were shorter. All of this resulted in one overnight during the journey rather than two. I felt much less exhausted. And it didn’t hurt that I had gotten upgraded on two legs of the flight and had an exit row seat with lots of legroom on the third to accommodate my 6’3” frame.
The flight arrived in Kenya at 9:00 p.m., and so the driver took me straight to my initial apartment. I thought the late arrival might be inconvenient, but it turned out very well. Since the airport is southeast of the city center and we would be working and staying in the northwest, the trip between the two had to go directly through the city center. During rush hour, this can be a two-hour ordeal. For us, it was an easy forty-minute ride.
My apartment had been occupied by a TechnoServe volunteer consultant (volcon) who was leaving the next day. It turned out that he came home from a long night of celebrating at 4:30 a.m., took a shower, and left at 5:00 a.m. so I didn’t get to have an extensive conversation with him. I’m not even sure what he looked like because I barely woke up when he came in.
The next morning, I went outside to survey my surroundings. The apartment complex appeared nice but modest. It could easily have been in a middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles, except of course for the high wall topped by barbed wire and an electric fence with a large locked and guarded metal gate. It wasn’t really like a war zone. During the daytime, it was perfectly fine to pass through the gate and walk around in the neighborhood outside the wall, but at night, it was strongly discouraged. There was a lot of crime in Nairobi, and some of it was violent. Even though we were in a “nice” neighborhood, there was no point in taking chances. Philosophically, I didn’t like the implied elitism and isolation, but personal safety trumped philosophy. Practically, it was nice to know I was safe and could concentrate on other things.
Later in the day, I had a beer with Fred, the new TechnoServe country director to whom I would report. He was very warm and really wanted to welcome me. Fred was a big, outgoing man with an effusive personality that immediately engaged me. I really liked our first interaction and felt very comfortable that I would enjoy working with Fred. The next day, I had lunch with Fred, his family and Erastus, who was the newly appointed country director for TechnoServe’s future office in Uganda. Erastus was also a very warm and engaging person. He was not as big as Fred or as effusive, and he was more intense. They were both obviously very intelligent and committed to what they were doing, so it was easy to see why they were selected to be country directors. I was looking forward to working with both of them.
During my first few days in Nairobi, I began to develop impressions and an overall sense of the city. My primary frame of reference was Mbabane, Swaziland. Although Nairobi was a very large city and Mbabane a very small one, they had more in common than either did with any U.S. city. Primarily, they were both in developing countries in Africa with all of the implications. But they also had tremendous differences, which were often the same as differences between large and small cities throughout the world. Mbabane was a small pleasant city that felt very comfortable and safe like many small U.S. cities. Lots of people knew each other, and many were related or close friends. At the one supermarket in Mbabane, it was typical to meet someone you knew. Houses and apartment complexes in Mbabane had some security features, but they didn’t have eight-foot-high walls topped with electrified barbed wire and twenty-four-hour guards. On the other hand, Mbabane had only a few really nice restaurants, no movie theaters, and you could walk through every street in the central city in less than an hour.
Nairobi was totally different. Nairobi was analogous to New York City. There were many nice restaurants, multiple shopping centers, movie theaters, and nightclubs; and Nairobi had an edge. Like New York, it heightened one’s senses. It made my adrenaline flow. Both for self-preservation and for enjoyment, I was more alert. There was more to take in and more to worry about. There were more cars and more people, which moved faster, except in rush hour when traffic came to a standstill for miles. Although people didn’t walk as aggressively as in New York, there was a very different feel from Mbabane. Hawkers were also much more pervasive, not too aggressive, but selling everything. I was familiar with hawkers walking through rush-hour traffic selling flowers and crafts, but I was surprised to see them in Nairobi selling puppies, television antennas, coat racks, pillows, and pruning shears.
Traffic and driving were also very different from Mbabane. Nairobi driving habits were not as bad as Kathmandu or Bangalore, but they were worse than any place in the United States. The matatus (mah-tah-toos) were especially aggressive. Matatus are the small independent vans that substitute for buses and in other countries are called combis or micros. The drivers of these vans seemed to be frustrated race car drivers who felt that a moment’s delay would seriously decrease their income. They were really independent cowboys, and everyone complained about their driving style. While driving in Swaziland wasn’t too unpleasant (after learning to drive on the left), I decided to avoid driving in Nairobi. I knew I could manage Nairobi driving, but I didn’t want to. The combination of the very heavy traffic and aggressive driving would have made it quite stressful and the office and shopping were only short rides or walks from our apartment.
Another factor that influenced my decision was that riding in a taxi with a local driver seemed more secure than driving our own car. Part of Nairobi’s edginess was the backdrop of crime. Most expats didn’t personally experience this on a regular basis, but crime was always in the background. Carjackings happened. Shortly after I arrived, two women were shot dead by carjackers because they didn’t vacate their United Nations SUV quickly enough. I felt safer being in the backseat of a beat-up taxi with a local driver than being a big white guy driving a nice, new rental SUV.
