Dwindling Blog

Mr. Chepkurgor needs to talk to the Masai warrior we met at the mara. That will set his head straight about Chelsea.

Anyway, since I'm done with teaching AITI, there's not much to post on here anymore. I might post a Kenya or AITI related link once in a while. Thanks for reading.

Strathmore Group Photo

This was taken after our graduation ceremony at Strathmore.

Last Day

Today's my last day in Africa. I'm in Zanzibar waiting to make a connection through Nairobi, back to Boston via London. I might take a layover in Europe for a few days but am still on the wait list for a later London-Boston flight.

It's been a great time. Teaching was both challenging and rewarding. I've really enjoyed living in another country for a longer period of time, rather than just visiting. I'd like to thank a few people who made it a pleasurable experience: Manish Gaudi, the AITI president, Mr. Khaemba and Mr. Mwanga from Alliance High School, Bett Benjamin and Catherine Ngugi from AVU, Farnaz Haghseta from OCW, Tobias from Strathmore, Eric Mibauri from AITI and Eric's family in Meru, Jack Costanza and Frank Tilley from CSAIL for donating computers, Matt Papi for helping configure Linux on the donated machines, the Stanford MBAs who sent us sample business plans for our entrepreneurship component, Timbuk2 for donating bags to our team, and everyone else I forgot to mention.

Also a big thank you to all the donors to MIT-AITI who made this possible and to the AITI officers.

Congratulations and thanks to all of our students at both Strathmore and Alliance.

Finally, thanks to the AITI-Kenya team: Bilha Nyambura Ndirangu, Curtis van der Puije, Robert Leke, Zahir Dossa, and Marta Luczynska.

Zanzibar

I made it to the beach in Zanzibar. It's amazing. There's no water or indoor bathrooms where I'm staying, but they have an internet connection. Last night I went to the full moon party and had a blast. I'll be here for another night before I go to Zanzibar town, and then back to Boston.

Graduation

We finished our courses at both Strathmore and Alliance and held graduation ceremonies. It was a lot of fun, and we goofed around with a lot of students afterwards. Team Meja won the business plan competition with their Kenya Creations business plan. Their idea is to export high-quality Kenyan crafts to the American and European markets, while guaranteeing fair compensation for the craftsmen. They won a cash prize of $200 dollars that we hope they'll use as seed money.

We couldn't agree on a second place team, so split it between the Home Boyz and Conscociatus. The Home Boyz had a plan for building clean pay bathrooms in Nairobi. Their presentation was hilarious, especially when they discussed their two-tiered pricing structure for "long haul" and "short haul" visits. Conscociatus planned an online directory specializing in Kenyan businesses. It is very hard to find any information on Kenyan businesses on the internet, as most don't have web sites. Even just basic information like phone numbers or addresses is hard to find online. Each team received a $65 cash prize.

The OCW students also presented their final projects. They were given an open-ended design project and encouraged to build on existing open source software projects. One group came up with a nice GUI network chat room combined with a media player. Another group designed an MP3 player capable of mixing tracks. There were also some database projects, other media browsers, and a statistical simulation package.

Zahir gave a great, funny graduation speech about some of our episodes around Nairobi. Prof. David Sperling also gave a fantastic speech about the impact of the MIT-AITI program and how its self-empowering philosophy should be a model for other development programs. Strathmore's Dean Clementine gave a short speech poking fun at each of the MIT lecturers. I was "always composed" and "very serious", but "would relax when you gave him a Tusker Beer".

We took a lot of pictures with the Strathmore students which I'll post when I get a decent internet connection.

We also installed an OCW mirror at Alliance high school. Zahir installed another one at Aga Khan university earlier in the week. I think the Alliance students will make good use of it, especially since they can work through almost all of MIT's first year courses.

We're all going back to Mombasa for the rest of the week. I'm going to go on to Zanzibar and will likely spend the weekend there. It should be very fun and relaxing.

Homeboyz, Longombas, and Kleptomaniax

We tried to get one of the Homeboyz to be a guest entrepreneurship speaker on the last day of class, but it fell through at the last minute. He said he didn't want to deal with Strathmore's dress code, but that was probably just an excuse to back out. It was a bit of a longshot to try to get Kenya's biggest rap producers to come speak at a university that sells Opus Dei books at the front desk.

That night, we had dinner at the Carnivore. I'm not sure how many types of animals I ate. I know there was some ostrich, camel, and warthog in there. There may have been some giraffe, zebra, or other game as well. It was tasty stuff.

Afterwards we went to a record release party for the Longombas and the Kleptomaniax that was being held at Carnivore's club. The Kleptomaniax have a hit song called "Swing" that we've heard about two billion times since being here. We invited our Strathmore students to join us, and subsidized part of their cover charge. It was a blast. Apparently, the place was packed with Kenyan hip-hop celebrities. Of course, I wouldn't have recognized any of them, but we've heard some of their songs.

Last night, the Alliance students came over to our apartment for Kenchic chicken and to watch some movies on our LCD projector. We played them some American music videos and showed pictures of MIT and Boston. They sang us the school fight song before leaving.

Lunchtime

Here's a lioness and half a gnu from Maasi Mara. I posted a few other lion pictures below.

Shorties got my back

These kids go to school at the Laare catholic church in Meru that houses the community computing center. They weren't as serious as they look.

Social Events

We've invited the Strathmore students to the infamous Carnivore night club tomorrow night for a strictly non-university-sanctioned event. We're also having the Alliance students over to our apartments on Saturday night for Kenchic chicken, swimming, and movies. We hired one of the Strathmore business plan teams, Veritas, to organize the event.

We also have a secret guest lecturer coming to speak at Strathmore tomorrow. If all works out, I think the students will greatly enjoy it.

Business Plan Ideas

Here are a few of the business plan ideas that the Strathmore students came up with:

• Meja - Exporting fine Kenyan crafts. Directs a portion of profits to community development.
• Mtu Tano - Outsourcing agricultural workers. Provides stable income for workers and simplifies the managament of large farms.
  
• Homeboyz - Providing clean, public bathrooms in Nairobi for a low cost.
• Veritas - Event planning.
• Incredibles - IT consulting.
• Alpha Bizna - Day care provider.

Team Meja and the Homeboyz received the highest investment from their classmates. Combined, they received about a third of the market investment capital. Students who invested in the winning business plan will receive a proportional amount of extra credit. The winning team will receive a cash prize.

Elephant Wins

Marta and I went to Meru the last couple of days to offer technical support for the Laare Community Computer Center, which was set up by another MIT student and AITI member, Eric Mibauri. Meru is the center of miraa production. Miraa, also known as qat is a mild stimulant that is chewed mostly around the mideast. It is especially popular in Somalia, where despite not having a government, they still manage to fly in daily shipments of fresh miraa. It comes in twigs that you have to chew. I tried a little bit when I was in Mombasa, but it tasted so bitter than I was only able to chew a couple of them and didn't feel any effect.

The Laare center is run by a Catholic church. They have since branched out and donated some computers to two girls' secondary schools in the area. Marta and I visited all three and helped service their computers. Unfortunately, power is only available at night, so we basically hung out all day on Tuesday, played with some of the nursery school students, and visited Meru national park with two Fathers.

While at the park, we were driving around a sharp corner and nearly ran into an elephant. We must of surprised it, because it turned around and started to charge the car. The priest who was driving the car quickly threw it into reverse and drove us backwards up the trail until we escaped. It's a good thing, because we were in a little Subaru and in the game of Subaru versus Elephant, Elephant wins.

A hard, hard, hard, hard life

We went to the Maasai Mara last weekend, which is a large national park in on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. There is an annual migration of over a million gnu. They usually reach the mara this month. To keep tourists going to Tanzania, they light big fires on their side of the border that delay the animals from migrating. Regardless, we still saw a lot of buffalo, gazelle, impala, topi, giraffe, elephants and lions.


At night we were sitting around a fire with one of the Maasai warriors. We had been joking with Marta throughout the trip that we were going to trade her with the Maasai and get some cattle as a dowry. (Actually, one person told us Marta's dowry would be worth three cattle, two goats, and a sheep. Bilha was worth a large pot of honey.) Bilha translated our proposition to the Maasai for us and he simply shook his head.

"Marry a white woman? That's a hard, hard, hard, hard life. I would have to go to America and then who would take care of my cows? Besides, she would have to get circumsized."

Ouch.

Maasai Mara

We're going to the Maasai Mara this weekend for a safari.

We wrapped up lectures this week and have posted the final project for Strathmore. They'll be working on it for the next week. They also did they business plan pitches today. It was very lively and interactive, as students were asking each other tough questions on their business plans.

Alliance Parade

We were formally introduced at Alliance yesterday to the entire student body during their parade (assembly). They have this crazy idea of actually letting us work (for four weeks) before going through the formal protocol of presenting us to the student body.

Biz Plans

The Strathmore students submitted their draft business plans today and they look pretty impressive. Each team will do a short "elevator pitch" for their plans on Friday, then will present a longer presentation and submit a final business plan at the end of the course. We are going to have a business plan competition with cash prizes based on these presentations and plans.

As an experiment, we're going to have each student simulate investing among the other teams' companies. The peformance of the company will be based on their performance in the business plan competition. The students who invest in the winning companies will recieve a proportional amount of extra credit in the class (but no cash). Teams won't get any extra points for the amount of investment they receive -- otherwise they could game the system. Of course, teams confident in their own ability can invest in their own plan and get even more credit if they win.

Arrested

We went out on Friday with Tobias, who is on the IT staff at Alliance. We were meeting up with him in downtown Nairobi before he took us out to an African restaurant. While all six of us were walking down there in the evening, a cop yelled at me and asked what I was doing there. I said that we were walking to town and he said that we shouldn't walk by the park after dark.

At this point, he noticed Bilha, who is Kenyan, and started yelling at her in Swahili, saying something to the effect of "What are you doing bringing walking these stupid tourists by here at night?" In the time he spent yelling at us, he could have easily watched us walk to the edge of downtown, since it was only about 200 yards away. Instead, he made us take a matatu. It was probably good advice, but he also sounded drunk and was carrying a machine gun, so I wasn't going to argue.

We met up with Tobias and he ushered us onto another matatu to take us to the restaurant. All six of us got on and took a seat. Then we noticed Tobias was not on board. He had disappeared, and before the matatu drove away we jumped off to look for him. The conductor said that he had been arrested.

Apparently as he was hanging on the side of the van helping us on, the police mistook him for a n unliscensed conductor. A few years ago, the government cracked down on matatus and made the drivers and conductors wear uniforms, install seat belts, and turn down their loud music. Now they fine drivers and publish violations in the newspaper with offenses like "Rude and Arrogant Crew" or "Drunken Conductor".

We found some police and asked where to find our friend. They said to go to the central police station. Fortunately, Tobias called us and said that he was free. He paid the cops off 500 shillings (about 7 bucks) to let him go. It was absurd that they picked him up in the first place, because he was dressed to go out to a restaurant and looked nothing like a matatu conductor.

The cops were just grabbing anyone they could, throwing them in a truck, and trying to extort bribes. It's a sellers market because the alternative is to spend a night in a Nairobi jail. I couldn't believe how fast they got Tobias, though becauase none of us even saw the cops nab him.

We made it to dinner safely and ate fresh roasted tilapia with our bare hands while listening to live music. Including bribing the cops, transportation, and entertainment, dinner for 7 cost about $20.

OCW Demo

Marta and I demonstrated the OCW site at the University of Nairobi, Kikuyu yesterday. The IT staff had failed to install Adobe and RealMedia on most of the machines like they were supposed to. The hadn't even connected most of them. There was also a power outage for about an hour.

We also had to wait for the principal to show up. At least that gave us time to get all the computers working and sit through the power outage. The way it works is that nothing happens without the principal's approval. It would have been a major breech of protocol if, say, we actually started on time and didn't keep 30 professors waiting for three hours.

He finally showed up with an entourage of underlings. Each person made a flowery speech introducing the next up the chain of command. Finally, the principal made his speech and promptly left with his crew before Marta even started the demo. It was pretty ridiculous.

Haircut

I had my hair cut yesterday at a barbershop inside a converted shipping container. It was hooked up with bootleg power and the barber filled a bucket of water to use for each customer. I got a decent haircut while listening to good reggae and being gawked at. I paid about $2.50. That's the mzungu (whitey) price too.