Within these communities, each individual dwelling (politically correct euphemism for shack, hovel, etc.) may be no worse than those in the poor communities in Swaziland, but the impression is very different. In these settlements, there are thousands and thousands of tiny makeshift dwellings packed tightly together housing hundreds of thousands of people. Some of the South African settlements are larger than the largest cities in Swaziland, and several together would contain more than Swaziland’s total population. Today, some of these former townships offer tours and overnight stays, but we had seen enough from a distance. Even from a distance, it makes a visceral impression that you don’t easily forget. I was angry at the former apartheid government and its supporters who had forced the residents into these conditions, and I tried not to despair about how difficult it will be to get everyone out of these settlements. I frequently had to remind myself that major change comes step by step and that lots of little steps add up over time.

After an uneventful flight, we drove to our Cape Town hotel and only got slightly lost along the way. Our hotel was in a community called Bantry Bay and, as might be expected, had a very nice ocean view. This part of the coast, near the tip of the continent, is a mixture of cliffs and small beaches. Our hotel was perched on a steep slope that rises up to Lion’s Head, one of the distinctive mountains surrounding Cape Town. After unpacking, we went out for dinner along the Victoria and Albert Wharf, a beautifully developed, modern, tourist, and shopping area.

Cape Town is called the mother city of South Africa because it was the original European settlement. It is also southern Africa’s most attractive and cosmopolitan city. With its wonderful geography, some people think it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Many people will also tell you that it feels much more like Europe than Africa. One of the reasons for this is that in Cape Town, “Africans” are not the majority, and the population is much more racially diverse than other African cities. However, I need to explain this statement and the quotes around Africans. It has to do with approaches to racial classification and previous discrimination.

Historically in the United States, anyone with any African ancestors was referred to as colored, Negro, black, or African-American with all of these terms being synonymous but acceptable in different eras. Even people who had mostly white ancestors were categorized (and often discriminated against) using one of these terms. The rules of racial discrimination were different in South Africa. Instead of having basically two racial groups, black and white, South Africa has historically had three: white, black or African, and a third group called colored. The whites were pure white; the Africans were pure black; and the coloreds comprised everyone in between, including people of Asian as well as mixed-race background. Because of the history of the various races that came or were forcibly brought to Cape Town, and because of a generally more liberal populace, Cape Town has a high percentage colored population. In Cape Town, coloreds, not “Africans” comprise the majority. Cape Town’s cultural diversity plus the long history make it a very interesting city. For example, one of the sights we visited was the Jewish museum. This modern facility employs a wide variety of exhibits and media to chronicle the history of the Jews in South Africa, including their contributions to the community and the economy and their opposition to apartheid. In fact, it was a Jewish firm that gave Nelson Mandela his first job as a lawyer.

In addition to Cape Town’s historical, cultural, and topographical sights, e.g., Table Mountain, there is also the Cape Peninsula to visit. This is the peninsula that goes from the city of Cape Town down to the Cape of Good Hope. Cape Town has many similarities with San Francisco, e.g., water on three sides, hills/mountains, cool weather, and fog. The Cape Peninsula has a lot of similarities with the Monterey and Big Sur areas and makes for a nice oceans-hugging drive. If you start down the peninsula on the west, you’re driving along the Atlantic, and if you come back up on the east, you’re driving along the Indian Ocean. Even though the Cape of Good Hope is not really the most southern point in Africa, it is the most southwestern point and still considered the dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Right next to the Cape of Good Hope is Cape Point, a little farther south but not as far west. At Cape Point, you can walk or ride a funicular up to the top of the point for a great view. When we arrived, we were told that the funicular was closed for maintenance, and we would have to walk. Overhearing some other tourists, we quickly realized that there was no maintenance going on. The funicular was closed because it was being held for Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, who was visiting South Africa. As we neared the end of our climb up the walkway to the top, we saw the cavalcade of flashing lights coming down the road to Cape Point. Soon after, Vladimir Putin emerged from the top of the funicular, surrounded by guards and attendants. He was the shortest person in the group, but also the most intimidating. His steely visage was complemented by his wardrobe and muscular physique. He was dressed in a dark sport jacket and slacks with a black turtleneck that gave him the ominous look of a mafia don. Although he is short, you wouldn’t want to pick a fight with him. He has the build of a martial arts instructor and probably the skill as well. He looked briefly at the view, got back into the funicular with his entourage, and quickly the cavalcade left. We walked back down to our car and drove back up the east side of the cape, visiting a colony of “jackass” penguins along the way. Although now properly called African penguins, their braying sound makes it obvious how they got their name.

Business Finance and Other Challenges

Before our short vacation, Mpendulo and I had visited the Swaziland Investment Development Company (SIDC) to confirm their position on MPE Timbers. In our previous meeting, they had said that there could be money available to invest in a restructured company, but it wasn’t clear to me how much and under what conditions. SIDC had mentioned their interest in a new partner and some new management, but once again, it wasn’t clear as to how firm these interests were. Although we had found Dave, a possible new equity investor for MPE, Brian wanted to pursue the alternative of getting funding only from SIDC. If this could work, the existing shareholders could preserve their equity. If not, bringing in Dave would mean that existing shareholders, while receiving some compensation, would lose all their equity in the company.

The meeting with SIDC clearly answered my questions. I had prepared a long list of questions to gently probe our contact about their interests and direction. It wasn’t necessary. After answering my first question, Mr. Dlamini (slur the “d-luh-mee-nee,” the ancestral name of a large portion of the Swazi population) elaborated that SIDC was not interested in getting deeper into difficulty with MPE. They wanted a way to reengineer the situation and turn it into a favorable investment. To them, this meant getting an equity infusion from a new partner, preferably someone from the industry who would take an active role in management. If these conditions were satisfied, then SIDC might be willing to make an additional investment but only in a restructured company with high prospects for success. It was a short but pleasant meeting. All of our questions were clearly answered, and we knew what our path had to be going forward.

On our way back to the office, I planned my phone call to Brian. I had to make the situation clear, but I wanted to retain a sense of optimism and generate enthusiasm for working with Dave. I really thought Dave would be a good partner and would deal fairly with the existing stakeholders, giving them a chance to recoup their investments and make some money.

The call with Brian was long, as expected, but it went well. As often happened when conversing with Brian, I spent a lot of time listening as he recapped six years of plans, dashed hopes, struggles, and excuses for failures. However, after hearing how the meeting went with SIDC, Brian quickly grasped that he was not in a good negotiating position. Basically, he knew that Dave was his only hope for salvaging anything from MPE. So we began talking about what Dave’s conditions would be and what Brian would want out of the deal. As we talked, a scenario emerged that could be agreeable and beneficial to all sides. Both Brian and Dave believed that Brian could contribute a lot in getting the plant and the company running. However, after many years of working for himself, Brian was not interested in a long-term management position in a company where he didn’t own significant equity. Instead, he suggested the possibility of setting up his own sales company in South Africa selling treated poles coming from Dave’s plant. This type of scenario could fit with Dave’s preferred mode of operation, which was to have arrangements with independent responsibility, risk, and rewards but also including incentives for mutual success. Brian agreed to talk to Robert and explain the situation to him. I agreed to meet with Dave and explain their interest in moving forward. At the end of the day, I was feeling good that we had some direction and perhaps even momentum.

I continued to crank through some more numbers for MPE. Although not an Excel wizard, I could put together some pretty good spreadsheets. At least they clearly showed the important factors and consequences of various scenarios. I even graphed the cash flows over time resulting from alternative decisions. I wanted to make it as easy as possible to see what the choices were and what the outcomes could be. I also wanted to make it easy to see the effects of changing assumptions. My primary beneficiary was intended to be Dave. He’s a lawyer with a great intuitive sense of business, but not a numbers person. I wanted him to understand and be comfortable with the story the numbers told.

I met with Dave later in the day. I brought him up to speed on events and loaded him up with spreadsheets to review. I suggested to Dave that the next step would be to get all of the relevant parties together for a one-to-two-day meeting to begin working through the details of a start-up plan and a deal. He agreed, and I asked Mpendulo to schedule the meeting for two weeks in the future. Although I knew most of the work was still ahead, I was feeling good that we at least had a strategy. As I later told Wendy, “Although there are still 101 tactics that have to go right, at least we have a direction.” On Monday, after returning from Cape Town, I learned that Mpendulo had scheduled the two-day meeting among Brian and Robert from MPE Timbers and Dave to start on Tuesday but that it had been postponed until Wednesday because Robert and Brian had uncovered two new prospective investors, and one was actually visiting the treatment plant site that day. I was shocked that two potential investors had suddenly emerged, so I called Brian to see what was going on. Evidently, Brian and Robert had been talking more about Dave’s initial conditions for a deal, specifically that Dave would end up with 100 percent ownership, and they really didn’t want to agree to it. Independent of how much they might be compensated, they wanted to retain at least some ownership. Something in their discussion must have motivated them to try harder, and somehow they discovered their new financing candidates. One was the investment arm of a trade union group in South Africa. Robert had gone to college with one of the officers. The other was the Investment Development Corporation (IDC) of South Africa to whom Brian had been introduced by a friend of a friend.

Brian indicated that Robert had already taken his friend, from the South African trade union group, to see the plant and would probably want to stop by our office and talk with us in the afternoon. They were both still planning to meet with us the next day. Later, Robert did bring his friend to our office and wanted me to present my assessment of the project to them. This was something that I wasn’t really prepared to do. Since we had only one prospective investor, I hadn’t seen the need to pull together a formal report; although I had done a lot of the necessary financial analysis. So we met in our conference room, and I talked informally about the attractive characteristics of the project and said that I was working on the formal report. This seemed to be enough for today, but it was clear that I had to start some serious writing.

These developments totally changed the nature of the meeting that we needed to have the next day. I called Dave and asked him to come to the office tomorrow afternoon. Mpendulo and I would meet with just Brian and Robert in the morning. We still needed to get a lot of details on the start-up plan, but we also needed to plot out how they wanted to approach the various investors.

On Wednesday, it became very obvious that I had to quickly issue TechnoServe’s version of the MPE business plan and funding request. Brian had met with the representative of IDC of South Africa, and he was also interested in getting our report. I committed to getting out the report by the end of the next week, which meant finishing it early in the week so that it could go through internal reviews and revisions. I also needed additional information from Brian to finalize some of my financial numbers. He committed to deliver it the next day.

Throughout the morning meeting with Brian and Robert, Mpendulo and I got our questions answered on the start-up plans. In the afternoon, we brought Dave in to talk about our original topic, the conditions for a deal. Dave was still opposed to less than 100 percent ownership, but he said that he would be willing to consider some shareholding for Brian and Robert, if he didn’t have to invest too much. The higher his necessary investment, the less he was willing to consider other shareholders. So everyone wanted to see my report and particularly the financial analysis that showed the required investment under various scenarios. We also discussed the most important risks remaining to start up the company. In addition to resolving the various sources of financing and ownership, the major risk was that MPE had not secured a sufficient long-term supply of poles (timber). There were lots of forests in close proximity to the MPE plant, but MPE had to get a commitment from one or more of them to supply poles. Robert agreed to work on this, and Dave said he would look into it as well with his contacts in the industry. Without the commitment for a supply of poles, I agreed with Dave that the risk of the deal was unreasonably high.

Overall, we had some good meetings. We weren’t moving ahead as quickly as I had hoped, but there was activity, and it was generally positive. I would write my report. Brian and Robert would show it to the new potential investors, I would send it to Dave, and then we’d go from there. Assuming that one of the investors would commit to the funding, we still had to resolve all of the other issues, which weren’t trivial. Several of the issues were deal killers if they remained unresolved, but I was hopeful. Once we got a lead investor, I thought the rest would be possible, but certainly not easy.

The following week, I finished the MPE Business Plan and Funding Request and sent it to Leslie for review and approval. To simplify my task, I had decided not to duplicate the materials that MPE had already produced that went into depth on the market and the particulars of their business. I focused on the big strategic and other critical areas, foremost, on the financial requirements and opportunity. Once the business got going, it could generate great profits, but in the short-term it would require a lot of capital, and there were still a number of serious risks. I put all of this into my document and hoped I hadn’t skewed it too far in one direction or the other.

Two days later, I incorporated comments from Leslie and Mpendulo and sent the document as a draft to Brian and Dave. Brian sent the report on to Robert and both of them planned to meet with the investors from South Africa the next day. Later Brian called and said he thought the document was fine as written, so I gave him permission to take “DRAFT” off the document and to present it to the interested investors.

On Sunday, Brian called to let me know that he would be going to England that evening to check on the health of his mother, who was in her eighties and diabetic. He had gotten a call from his sister requesting that he come visit and help make decisions about his mother’s condition and care. His mother had been living independently but had been having difficulty with her health and taking care of things in general. It was time to have her move to a retirement home.

Brian also wanted to let me know that the meeting with the union investors had gone well and that activities should continue whether or not he was able to return quickly from England. In three weeks, the union representatives would be coming to Swaziland to visit the plant and to meet with us in our offices. They wanted to hear an outside opinion on the project. I told Brian not to worry. We would be ready, and we would take care of them. Again, I felt a great sense of responsibility and wanted to present the situation appropriately. I wanted the deal to go through because it would generate jobs and economic growth, but I wasn’t supposed to be a salesman. The business could be very profitable, but that wasn’t guaranteed, and there were serious risks. I wanted to be enthusiastic but very factual, so began planning my presentation.

Finally the date for my MPE performance arrived. Robert had brought the trade union representatives from South Africa to our Swaziland office to hear the project overview. I think they understood my unusual position. Although I was promoting the project, I had the credibility of a third party. They evidently trusted that I could maintain the proper balance between the two roles. The conflict of interest was obvious, except that I would not benefit personally from a deal. Given that, I guess they saw that I could maintain my integrity.

Overall, the session went well, but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t really know the roles and responsibilities of the people who I presented to, but I think they were probably from the governing board of the union rather than investment professionals. They were intelligent and knowledgeable, but they weren’t financial experts and a lot of my presentation was about the financial aspects of the project. When contemplating an investment of nearly a million U.S. dollars, it was important that they understood all the aspects of the investment, both the business itself and the financial aspects of the deal. Robert had explained a lot about the business basics and the union team had already visited the mothballed MPE facility. My role was primarily to explain that we thought this business had good market and profit opportunity and what the required investment and expected financial returns could be. I also needed to back up my opinions with our analysis.

I had done some very thorough analysis, showing alternative scenarios for different rates of plant expansion and various financing approaches with different mixes of debt and equity. Although somewhat challenging, this was basic financial analysis and consequently the easy part. I knew what I was talking about but struggled with how to explain it and not make people’s eyes glaze over or put them to sleep. This was always a challenge in my consulting career. After doing extensive analysis on a company’s operations and coming up with many detailed findings and recommendations, how do you boil it all down into a crisp presentation that senior executives will listen to while sitting still.

The fact that this presentation was mostly about finance, an esoteric topic for many people, made it especially challenging. Most people, even some experienced business people, don’t understand why a company that will be profitable from day one needs financing. They don’t understand the difference between profits and cash flow. They don’t understand why an increase in an asset like accounts receivable can make a business run out of cash. The problem was that understanding all of these was important to understanding the MPE investment. A business can be very profitable, but if its customers don’t pay their bills for two months, the business will need a lot of cash (financing) to operate. I tried explaining all of these things, and in the end, it went very well, but I felt a lot of pressure throughout because the MPE team was depending on me. And this was with a very friendly audience. Fortunately, they wanted to understand, and in the end, I thought they did. The next step was just waiting as they discussed the opportunity with their colleagues and bosses, who would make the final decision.

While I was waiting on MPE, I focused on Tasty Meals. Before going to the Reed Dance and Cape Town, I had met with Phiwa who had brought me up to date on his progress. He was in the process of securing several small plots of land to grow Tasty Meal’s own maize. The plots were numerous and small because Phiwa had to be opportunistic to rent good land at an attractive price. We worked on Tasty Meals’s requirements, month by month, for planting and harvesting, and they looked promising. The bad news was still that once they planted the maize, it couldn’t be harvested for at least three (maybe four) months. The good news was that after the maize began producing, they didn’t need that many hectares of growing land to get them into the plentiful season. This would limit the expense but was still money that Phiwa and Tasty Meals didn’t have.

After spending most of our time on the supply, we talked about increasing sales. I told them what the sales and marketing plan would have to look like, and we began to explore ideas about increasing sales. I reemphasized that an important part of our activity had to be going from ideas to developing a real plan that would be actually used when mealies became available.

When we got back from Cape Town, Sonnyboy was also back from his honeymoon, so we visited Tasty Meals together. The first thing we heard from Phiwa was that absolutely no mealies were available at any reasonable price, so they had shut down production. Although they had been able to tentatively contract to rent land to grow their own maize (and pay at harvest), they had no money to pay for seed, fertilizer, etc. They were trying to tap all of their friends for short-term, high-interest loans, but so far they hadn’t been successful.

One great thing about Phiwa was that he could put aside these short-term, critical concerns and focus on the long-term business plan with the confidence that somehow the business would be successful. Maybe it came from growing up in Africa and achieving personal success in the past despite tremendous odds. I didn’t know what he was feeling inside. Despite the fact that his business was about to die and he was going to lose all of his investment and the collateral he had pledged against the loan, outside he seemed relatively relaxed and was able to focus on the analysis and planning. I admired his attitude and fortitude. It reminded me of some of the dedicated entrepreneurs I have seen in Silicon Valley.

I continued to work on the sales and marketing plan with Phiwa and one of his salesladies, emphasizing that they had to be very specific about where the sales were coming from and how they would make them happen. They had to justify the future sales numbers based on extrapolating their experience to date. Numbers in a spreadsheet without support were not going to be acceptable, especially since the business had never achieved breakeven volume. I explained that their first deliverable had to be a detailed spreadsheet of all the sales through the various channels with supporting backup that showed why they were confident in their estimates. Tasty Meals’s second deliverable had to be the marketing plan that supported the sales numbers. If they needed signs to support sales in small shops, it had to be in the marketing plan. If they needed specialized racks and displays for the supermarkets, it had to be in the marketing plan. And there had to be a person and date assigned to get things done. The less money available, the better a plan has to be. Tasty Meals had no money available, and getting more would be difficult, so we had to have an excellent plan. They realized that they had a lot of work ahead.

When I met again with Tasty Meals, they confirmed that they could rent enough land to supply themselves with mealies year round, but they still didn’t have any money to commit to planting. In the good news category, they had made great progress on the sales plan. Several women who had been selling the mealie bread were visiting shops throughout the country to evaluate their sales opportunities. Then the women were projecting sales for each store, based on their prior experience with similar stores and their conversations with the owners. The numbers were good with solid logic behind them. More importantly, the projections would generate a good profit for the business, and the women weren’t finished. They felt they needed another week to go through all the possibilities in the whole country. The short-term news was negative, but there was hope in the long-term. Phiwa took us out to lunch, and we briefly forgot about the threat that was looming over him.

Later that evening, we met with a food-processing expert who had come from the United States to meet with a number of bakeries. Many bakeries had problems with their products drying out and going stale. This expert was recommending the use of defatted soy flour to help extend shelf life. Shelf life had been a problem for Tasty Meals as well, so we thought the consultant might have some ideas. As he explained to us, Tasty Meals didn’t have a problem with their product drying out and becoming stale. Tasty Meal’s problem was that the product was moist and would readily allow the growth of mold. Although Tasty Meals had tried various preservatives in the recipe, nothing seemed to work in concentrations that didn’t spoil the taste. The expert suggested that a dilute solution of preservative could be sprayed on the outside of the product rather than mixing it into the batter. In this way, the preservative would go only where it was needed, on the outside of the product, and it would be so dilute as to not impact taste. We all thanked the consultant, and Phiwa committed to trying it out. This would make it easier to sell the product in smaller shops and in more remote areas that would have slower turnover and less frequent deliveries.

As I tried to help my individual clients, I kept thinking about the whole office and how we could quickly make a visible impact. From my business school and consulting days, I remembered the standard mantra of strategy—focus. My perception was that our office had not been focused on a limited number of industries to support. This was understandable since the Swaziland office was new and hadn’t yet had time to do a complete analysis of which industries had the most promise. However, I thought that we had done enough analysis of enough sectors that we could at least begin to focus. I volunteered to facilitate an off-site planning session with the intent of focusing our efforts and getting tangible results quicker. This was an activity I had done many times in my career as a management consultant, and I felt quite comfortable taking the initiative. I also felt that it would be a team-building exercise for the business advisors as they shared their activities and plans with each other.

The objective for the full-day session was to position all of our existing and potential projects (representing subindustries) into a two-by-two matrix based on the magnitude of the benefits that the project would produce and the speed at which those benefits could be achieved. Then we would concentrate our resources on the projects that would deliver the most benefits quickly. Since we didn’t think that there would be many projects with large and rapid benefits, we also decided to pursue a portfolio of other projects. Some of these projects would produce very large benefits but might take three to four years to achieve. Other projects would generate smaller benefits but could be accomplished quickly. We would choose a few of each.

At the end of the day, we had categorized all of our projects. We had decided which ones we would pursue and which ones we wouldn’t. We had also determined the levels and types of resources we would need to pursue these projects and agreed on some hiring plans. Overall, it was a really good day. Next, the business advisors needed to develop their more detailed plans and decide what benefits they would commit to delivering and the timeframe for achieving the results. But none of this was imposed from above. It was generated by the business advisors themselves, and consequently was more motivating. I felt good about the day, and even if we didn’t see radically different results right away, I felt that it gave us more focus and the results would come.

TechnoServe in Maputo, Johannesburg, and Nairobi

We spent the next weekend and the following Monday in Maputo, Mozambique. Leslie and her husband, Stuart, had a one-year-old son, Charlie. Since they had lived most of the past four years in Mozambique, they decided to have Charlie’s birthday party in Maputo with friends. We decided to ride along and avoid the $300 charge for a special waiver to take our rental car into Mozambique. We also decided to avoid the chance that our car would be vandalized in Maputo and that we would have to pay the hefty deductible on the insurance. The drive to Mozambique was pleasant and seemed quick because there were four of us chatting. We went through a new, less trafficked border post and there was no one in line at immigration. The best part was that our unused visas from our previous attempt to go to Maputo were still effective, so we didn’t have to pay again.

Much of the drive was through lightly populated areas, especially in Mozambique. The small settlements we saw in the rural parts of Mozambique appeared cute and quaint. The grass houses looked neat and clean, almost like dioramas in a museum. The appearance and the warm emotion they generated in us were deceiving. These houses weren’t built with grass and other natural materials because they make a great house. The people living in them didn’t have anything else. These people were much poorer than those living in the awful-looking shacks in the South African townships, but who can say that one or the other is better off ? The people in rural Mozambique probably didn’t worry too much about crime, and they lived amidst pleasant scenery. On the other hand, they probably didn’t have good access to schooling and had little hope that they or their children would ever have a better existence. The daily struggle in the townships was probably much more threatening, but at least the people in the townships had some small chance that things could get better for them or ultimately their children. I was very thankful that I wasn’t in either place.

As we drove through the outskirts of Maputo, we began to see the informal settlements that surround the city, just like Johannesburg or Cape Town. Somehow they didn’t seem quite as bad or as big, but they were still upsetting. As we got into the major part of Maputo, we began to understand the mixed messages that we had gotten about the city. Leslie and Stuart had commented about the lovely beach area with its fish market and ocean views. Maputo also has movie theatres, interesting restaurants, and nightclubs, which are limited or nonexistent in Swaziland. But we had also heard lots of stories about the crime and the decay in the city. Through the weekend, these competing themes dominated our feelings.

On the way into the city, we stopped for a nice cup of Portuguese coffee. However, in choosing where to get our coffee, the primary criterion was being able to closely observe and protect our parked car. As we arrived at the home of Leslie and Stuart’s friends, where the party would be, their security guard led us through the gate in the high fence, topped with barbed wire, which surrounded their house and garden. As we went through the yard and into the house, we passed the large diesel generator that was used when the power went off. There were no overt threats or serious inconveniences, just little hints from the surroundings that we were in a very different place.

On Sunday, Wendy and I walked around the more interesting parts of the city, some of which were in the older and more run-down sections. The area right around city hall was actually quite attractive and clean, but only a few blocks away, the sidewalks deteriorated and so did the buildings. Some were just broken shells that looked like they were bombed out twenty years ago and were now just strewn with trash. We thought that these buildings might actually have been bombed out during the long civil war. However, we were told that the civil war never actually reached Maputo. These crumbling hulks were just the result of poor construction, neglect, and urban decay.

Although we were walking a recommended route from the guidebook, Wendy and I frequently felt uncomfortable. The good news and the bad news was that in almost every block, there was at least one building with a security guard standing outside. These guards provided a deterrent to petty burglars, but not to serious criminals. We heard several stories of people being robbed by thugs with guns while an unarmed security guard could only watch. In defense of the city, our feelings were probably worse because it was Sunday, and there were few people around many of the areas we traversed. And we didn’t feel hassled by aggressive panhandlers or hawkers. However, we did have a locally provided map with clearly marked “NO GO” areas on it, which we carefully avoided.

After probably a four-mile walk through the downtown area, we decided it was time to go back to our modern hotel overlooking the beach. We had already decided to go to a famous fish restaurant farther up the coast for dinner. When we emerged from the five-mile cab ride, we were underwhelmed by the décor of the famous restaurant, to say the least. The interior had concrete floors and furniture of 1940s diner style. It seemed clean but was definitely without ambiance. At first, we took a table outside on the open porch, but when a thunderstorm began, we quickly moved inside. The wonderful food made up for the lack of décor. We both had the biggest prawns we’ve ever seen in our lives. I had four with tails about ten inches long. They were simply and delightfully prepared, and it was like eating four small lobsters. On the menu, they were only quoted at “market price,” and so we panicked when the waiter told us that each plate would be a million metacais. I quickly did the math and realized that they would be expensive, but less than $40 per plate. It was a great meal, and on the cab ride back to the hotel, we got to watch a spectacular lightning show over the Indian Ocean.

The cab, like all of the ones we took in Maputo, was pretty run-down. And it seemed that all cabbies drove around on empty. I think they bought gas only when they got a fare, and once our driver actually had to stop at a gas station immediately after he picked us up. When we arrived back at the hotel, I wanted to tip the cabbie, but only had the exact change or a larger bill that was three times the fare. I asked him if he could change the larger bill. He checked his cash and all that he had was the fare that I had given him on the trip to the restaurant. I pulled out my exact fare and Wendy was able to dig through her cash and find enough for a decent tip, but it gave us an idea of how much he was earning.

On Monday morning, we visited the TechnoServe office in Maputo and met with Jake, the country director. Jake had been the country director since TechnoServe started in Mozambique nine years earlier, and he had overseen some outstanding projects. TechnoServe had played an important role in revitalizing Mozambique’s cashew industry, and they had begun to develop the domestic poultry sector. Jake was excellent in articulating the TechnoServe approach to development and of giving examples of how it had been carried out in Mozambique. It was really great to hear the success story of a mature office. In Swaziland, TechnoServe had only been operating for seven months and so couldn’t demonstrate a lot of results. I was always asking why we couldn’t focus more and get results quicker, but then I’d remind myself that development is really hard and often takes time. Sometimes it felt like pushing a rope, but the Mozambique story was reassuring. After our meeting with Jake, the driver from the Maputo office took us to the border, and Kiki, the driver from the Swaziland office picked us up and drove us back to Mbabane.

Maputo was interesting and energizing, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes because we were nervous or concerned. It definitely had features, like a social scene, that made it attractive to volunteers in their twenties and early thirties, but we were definitely more comfortable going back to our much-less-exciting life in safe and predictable Mbabane.

Only a week and a half later, I visited the TechnoServe offices in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Nairobi, Kenya. Seeing the TechnoServe Maputo office had been wonderful, and I wanted to observe more mature offices. It was a good week to go because Wendy was going to Nairobi for a Junior Achievement pan-Africa conference, and from Swaziland, you had to go through Johannesburg to fly to Nairobi. We flew together to Johannesburg and met in Nairobi to fly home to Swaziland.

Though Johannesburg was the headquarters for TechnoServe in South Africa and the regional African headquarters office as well, it was not a big office. It had four full-time employees, two part-timers, and a volunteer. Most of TechnoServe’s employees worked in the field, very remote from Johannesburg. The office was in an attractive area of the city and was surrounded by a ten-foot wall with a massive electronic gate. This type of protection was common and perceived as necessary for homes and small office buildings in Johannesburg. In fact, most walls surrounding homes and buildings were topped with either rolls of barbed wire or an electric fence. The TechnoServe office wall did not have this, and maybe that’s why it had experienced four break-ins within the last month. The office was moving to a different location in the near future.

Both Johannesburg and Nairobi were known for their crime, and it continues today. It is usually in the background as an offset to the attraction of living in a large city with all of its excitement and amenities. Only occasionally, when a friend gets robbed or carjacked, does it reach top of mind. Usually, it just stays in the subconscious as you remember to lock your car doors, hide your computer, and keep cash separate from the credit cards and passport that you really don’t want to give away if robbed. However, I thought this tension seemed to wear on people. Maybe some people got used to the fear or ignored it, but I thought for most people, it just created a higher baseline of stress as they went about their normal activities. They also seemed to frequently question whether this was really how and where they wanted to live. It was funny how fans of both Nairobi and Johannesburg thought that their city was only somewhat dangerous but were afraid to venture out in the counterpart. Fans of each side insisted that the other city was much more dangerous. In fact, one young woman told me how civilized robberies were in Nairobi. If you cooperated and handed over your money, you had nothing to fear. However, she didn’t trust that a robbery would go so smoothly in Johannesburg.