Category Archives: Travel and Culture

What Do I think of Nairobi?

The road to Kiserian town from Champagne Ridge in the Rift Valley

When you live abroad, you are, with certain key exceptions, surrounded by people with a similar zest for seeing things differently. This is particularly true for places that are either particularly off the beaten path or destinations for people whose interests reflect your own. Burma a couple of years ago fell into the former category, while Kenya this past year would be the latter.

People ask me all the time what I think of Nairobi. I tell them that I actually don’t really like Nairobi as a city. It is crowded and polluted and major infrastructure problems – terrible roads, horrible drainage – that make the traffic very, very bad. For a good month during the rainy season my commute home from work was 2.5 hours – and that is one way. The government is incredibly corrupt, so things don’t work because the money meant to fix them goes into the pockets of the politicians. As a foreigner, you are often getting ripped off and scammed for this and that. And, as a beach person, being seven hours from the nearest respectable body of water (Lake Victoria to the west, the Indian Ocean to the east) was a bit difficult. Of course, these are incredibly shallow complaints, since Nairobi has everything you could ever want. And it has many comforts that other cities, like Accra, don’t have. But most non-Nairobi-ites (and maybe quite a few Kenyans who live there) tell you that, if they had to live in one place for the rest of their lives, Nairobi probably would not be it.

A morning coffee at the Rangi Saba house, an hour outside Nairobi

That said, the people I met in Nairobi – Kenyan and expat – are among the most interesting I have come across in my three years on the road. Everyone is at the top of their game, and completely into what they are doing. For international development work, it is a mecca attracting the brightest minds from around the world. All of the most interesting and game-changing social enterprises – Bridge International Academies, Sanergy, One Acre Fund, and Mobius Motors, to name a few – are there. Some particularly innovative microfinance institutions, like Juhudi Kilimo, which does asset lending in the form of a pregnant dairy cow, are based in Nairobi. Technology and ICT companies have set up shop to take advantage of the burgeoning mobile and smart-phone penetration and places like the iHub. Journalists flock to Nairobi to make a name for themselves covering some of the worst places in the world, like Somalia and the DRC, which happen to be right next door. All of the impact investors – Acumen Fund, Grassroots Business Fund, and others – are here. International organizations, like the IFC, the UN, and all of the major international development organizations (IRC, CARE, etc.) are based in Kenya. Everyone is there.

The fact that Nairobi is a hub for East and Central Africa creates opportunities, and opportunities attract people. And those people are almost always interesting people. And, usually, when they aren’t interesting people, at least the work that they do is fascinating. That fact that you moved to Nairobi puts you in a self-selecting coterie of people who took a risk in moving to someplace new and foreign. The people tend to have great stories and perspectives from their work and travels. But if not, then at least they are working doing cool work in a field that you most likely know little about. Conversations at parties in Nairobi are more likely to be about maternal health in rural areas or covering instability in the Kivu province of the Congo than about the weather.

A weekend trip to Diani Beach on the Indian Ocean.

Not only do you meet really interesting people who are involved in cool work, but you also meet some real superstars in a place like Nairobi. People who have started companies and are subject-matter experts in everything from mobile money to ICT in agriculture to microfinance to whatever else. I met more TED Fellows in Nairobi than I had in my entire life. They are all here, and chances are, you will meet them around if you stay long enough.

In short, I had a love-hate relationship with Nairobi. I think it is simultaneously mundane and exciting. You become frustrated when you get ripped off on the matatu, and elated when you get to your destination overlooking the Rift Valley or Naivasha. Outside the city, it is stunningly beautiful. But the people are what make Nairobi worth the trip.

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What Do I Think of World Travel?

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On the summit of Mt. Nyiragongo, a volcano in the DRC

Over the last three years, I’ve visited nearly two dozen countries on five of the seven continents. I lived and worked in the Philippines for eight months, Ghana for another six, and Kenya for exactly one year. In addition, I spent around six months backpacking through various a dozen far-flung places like Burma, Uganda, the DRC, and, most recently, Thailand. In fact, as I write this, I am sitting at the beach bar at Ban’s Diving Resort in Koh Tao, where I will spend the next few days diving the reefs and wrecks around this tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand. In a few days, I head to Koh Phangan, which chewed me up and spit me out when I went two years ago. After crashing a motorbike, leaving me with the famous Koh Phangan tattoo on my left leg, I vowed never to return to that terrible place. And yet here I am, a mere six days away from the legendary Full Moon Party, which, with an estimated 10,000 people packed on the beach, I expect to be the wildest party of my life.

Visited 25 states (11.1%)

About a year ago, the Economist published an article about expatriates – people who live abroad. Using a bit of scientific research and the example of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and others, they make the case that expats, as they are called, and former expats, tend to be more creative than their domestic counterparts. As with most of these things, it is difficult to separate correlation from causality, but, either way, on tests measuring creativity, people who have spent considerable time immersed in another culture score higher these tests.

From what I have seen, I think that is, by and large, mostly true. I am not sure whether living abroad makes you more creative or more creative people are more likely to live abroad. But there are logical explanations why this would be the case.

At a wedding in Ghana

For one thing, living abroad, by definition, broadens your perspective. It forces you outside of your comfort zone and makes you look at your own world from afar. You are exposed to a different way of thinking about life and an approach to living. What is important to you and the people you have been surrounded by your entire life may not matter to people raised in a different culture, and vice versa. Family and religion are paramount in the Philippines, while ethnicity is a critical, if sometimes destructive, element of African culture. But even differences between African cultures can be as stark as those between countries on different continents. In Ghana, the sense of what it means to be Ghanaian is clear, manifested in the traditional music, clothing, and food, while the Kenyan national identity is more closely tied to tribal affiliation. In each culture, the answer to the question “Who are my people?” is different. It is shaped by tradition, culture, history, and factors that you might not normally expect would shape the way that people see themselves in relation to others. And the more different ways you see this, the easier it becomes to understand how other cultures that you have not visited rationalize their own decisions.

Trekking in Burma

Through the people you live and work with, you learn first that there are different ways of looking at the world. And the more places you live and work, the more ways of looking at the world you come to understand. With greater exposure to different perspectives, you become more empathetic and understanding of differing viewpoints. Your views don’t necessarily change – they can become stronger as you see things from the other side. Having your perspective challenged is a goodthing.

Living abroad also leads you to try new things. You eat food you might not normally eat, and drink perhaps more or less than you are accustomed to. More often than not, you are introduced to something you like, which reinforces the notion that openness is a virtue. And when the essence of creativity is a willingness to break from the old way of doing things and try something different, the experience you get from living in a place where you are forced to do it every day is undoubtedly good practice.

Tomorrow, I will give a few more reasons why I think traveling makes you a more creative person.

Eating balut, a duck fetus, on the streets of Manila

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How to Break Into Development, pt. 2

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Meeting cool people is important

This is part one of a two-part post on getting involved in international development work. Read part one here.

Trying to answer these questions – at first in vain, and, a few years later, more successfully – helped me so much that I have dispensed this same advice a dozen times since. But I would add a fourth question is to these questions as philosophy is to math. Ask yourself, “What do I want out of this experience?” Because figuring out that question will provide clarity in answering the other three. In retrospect, I wanted an interesting cross-cultural experience that would drive me outside of my comfort zone and give me the opportunity to give back. Choosing multiple, shorter-term gigs (defined here as less than a year) allowed me to go broad, but not deep.

I like being exposed to new things, and I wanted to learn as much as I could about as much as I could. This explains why I had three jobs in as many years – something that would otherwise be a question mark in the eyes of someone reading my resume. In the span of 30 months – roughly the same amount of time I spent at my previous job as a consultant – I lived in three countries (Philippines, Ghana, and Kenya) and worked in three different industries (microfinance, agriculture, and education). This stands in contrast to many people I know out here, who chose to specialize very early on and have no interest in deviating from that path. There are benefits to both, and you have to decide which is best.

I would also be lying if I said the opportunity to travel to exotic locales did not factor into the equation for me. In West Africa, there are fewer opportunities for independent travel. In Ghana, where you are surrounded by post-conflict, conflict, and sometimes pre-conflict countries, backpacking is not for the faint of heart. In contrast, in the Philippines, which as many people living below the poverty line as Ghana has people, you can easily fly to Thailand for a weekend for less than $100 roundtrip.

Once you have figured out what you want, the key is to network. This industry, more than just about any other, is about connections. That is because the organizations you want to work with are often located many thousands of miles away across large oceans that you may or may not have crossed. And the quality that people are looking for more than just about any other in a candidate is a local address. You really need to create a list of each organization you would like to work with and being combing your network for introductions. It is possible to find interesting opportunities on job boards and listservs, but, as a rule of thumb, the easier a job is to find, the more competition it will have. Usually, the best ones and, more often than not, the easiest to get are the ones that are not advertised that you hear about from your friend.

Of course, the best way of all is to figure out where you want to be, book a flight, and just go. On May 18^th 2011, I remember sitting at a bar on the beach, drinking a beer, trying to mentally prepare myself for flying to Kenya in a few hours with a handful of job leads, a few former Kiva Fellows as my network, and a sublet in a city I’d visited once before. I had given this piece of advice before, but felt a bit hypocritical for having never taken it myself. So I decided to do it and see how it worked out.

I set up a few potential opportunities with companies that interested me – a solar lantern manufacturer, a BPO hybrid non-profit focused on the poor, and Bridge. I met with the CEO of Bridge the first day I arrived and proposed doing a pro-bono project, analyzing all of their payment data and trying to draw some conclusions about how parents in the communities where we worked actually paid their school fees. That work turned into a three-month consultancy, and continued for the next year. My last day was last Friday, and the longevity of the role validated the decision to make that leap of faith.

S o now, I can speak from experience when saying that the most direct way to find the job you want is to show up. And if it doesn’t work out, then find something else. But simply by being there, you will have a leg up over other candidates.

In the next few posts, I will discuss my thoughts on what works in development and, more importantly, why.

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A Meta-Travel Writing Piece, pt. 2

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The beach in Koh Phanang off the southern coast of Thailand.

The other day I talked about the need to really draw your reader in with a short anecdote about something that could never happen in their lives right now, but could if they did what you are doing. Another key to enhancing the reader experience is to include language that makes your movements seem just a little bit crazy. Look at what Levin does in this paragraph:

So I hitched a van ride from Puerta Princesa to El Nido, a tiny, dense warren of dive shops that clings to Bacuit Bay in Palawan. What I found, after six hours swerving around goats along a dirt road, was a bangka launching pad to the region’s spectacular islands.

This is genius. Hitching a van ride could be one of several things. It could be sitting in the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of Filipino cockfighters on the way to a bloody death match, or it could be the driver from the hotel holding a sign outside the airport that says “DEVELOP ECONOMIES.” The fact is that it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the van was hitched and the road was filled with goats apparently unphased by the vans streaming past.

"I rented a motorbike from an old man in Pai and almost hit an elephant."

Later in the article, Levin describes his interactions with the ragtag group of international wanderlusts. Check this technique out:

All this nautical freedom was affecting my shipmates. Before starting the trip, Marly Pols, 43, a Dutch flight attendant, said she had only thought of the beaches in store. But by the second day we were sharing tales and bottles of rum like a band of leisurely pirates. “This is our home now,” she said as we lounged on the top deck the next morning. “We’re in this together.”

This is a classic move. I know because I use it in all my pieces of about travel. It is critical to highlight the fact that these people who you have never met before have become your friends much more quickly had you not met on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no electricity. In one of my dad’s favorites – titled “Dispatch from a Shrinking Planet” – I described the days and nights with my own band of pirates as I moved from beach to beach around the Philippines:

I mostly traveled alone, and met some cool people along the way. I dove with a woman representing Slovenia at the World Expo in Shanghai, a professor of comparative religion in Germany, an Italian banker, and some Filipino rastas who happened to be Rotarians. Diving is a great way to meet people, since you’re out on a boat in the middle of the ocean for eight hours a day, three days in a row, with nothing to do but eat, drink, share stories and play cards. In fact, some of my best memories are from either from the deck of a boat in the Pacific Ocean, or the bungalows and beachfront bars where I spent most of my nights.

Hanging out with the Italian banker at the front of the boat.

Another non-Somali pirate crew in Diani Beach, Kenya

The key is to highlight the sheer randomness of it all. Most people wake up every morning and, on average, their day progresses in a similar way as the day before. But when you are thrown on a boat in the middle of paradise with six strangers from around the world with nothing to do but look at coral reefs, eat fresh seafood, and drink cold beers, you tend to be able to spin a few good yarns. The fact that you are asking yourself questions like “How did I get here?” and “Is this real?” needs to come through in your writing. Otherwise, it seems too perfect.

Is this real?

The last element to a good travel piece is the element of introspection. Traveling is about meeting people and seeing new things. But it is also about you and the fact that you are doing something sweet. Here is how Levin closes out the article:

Taking a breather, I crept barefoot off to the beach, empty save for the ghost crabs who hovered by their burrows, watching me with googly-eyes. The tide was a sigh, the sky aglow with constellations, and I was, thrillingly, the only witness.

A notion of independence is essential to good travel writing. Ultimately, these are not articles about snorkeling with Swedish people in a tropical paradise. They are testaments to the sense of liberation that comes with doing whatever you want. It is less about travel and more about freedom.

A few months ago, I wrote a four-part post titled “How to Travel Alone.” In part two, I describe an impulsive decision that was momentous in my own realization that you can do whatever you want:

After an amazing four days of scuba diving in Coron, an island in Palawan that was the inspiration for the novel The Beach, I flew to Manila. I was planning on taking a bus up north to La Union, a town northern Luzon, to do some surfing. I bid farewell to a friend I’d met on the boat, and walked to the exit to hail a taxi at around 7 PM. The main terminal in Ninoy Aquino International Airport has huge glass walls with a view of the city.

I took a moment to reflect on my plans. Looking out at the city skyline, I thought about the traffic, the pollution, and the seedy red light district where my favorite guesthouse happened to be located. After a few contemplative minutes, I turned around, walked up to the Cebu Pacific ticket counter and bought a flight to Cebu that night for $30. I got on the next flight and arrived in Cebu City at 11, called a friend to get a recommendation for a place to stay, took a taxi there and booked a room.

The next morning, I got up early and took a bus to Moalboal, a town two hours south that someone recommended in Coron. Twenty meters below the surface of the ocean, surrounded by millions of sardines off the coast of Pescadero Island, the decision to re-write the plan was validated.

To this day, I think about staring out at Manila and turning around to buy that ticket. That, I thought at the time, is liberating.

This sign was hanging in the lobby of the guesthouse I checked into in Cebu the night I booked the flight from Manila.

So my hat is off to Dan Levin, who successfully made the rest of the world jealous. Your humble correspondent certainly enjoys writing and thinking about geopolitics, international development, poverty alleviation, and other deep matters. But he is happiest when writing about life on the road, and the impulsive decisions that make it interesting. So I hope you learned something. Because this is a great way to make your friends jealous.

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A Meta-Travel Writing Piece, pt. 1

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As a generalization, people who travel are interesting. Not interesting in the sense that they are unique or intriguing (sometimes that is the case), but that they often tell good stories because they have fresh experiences to draw from. And within the broader fraternity of travelers, the people who detach themselves from the grid and opt for the most self-indulgent of all pursuits – living on a boat, for example – are really the ones who are out there doing it. Lately, some fortunate journalists from the New York Times have managed to convince their editors to allow them to do just that, and still get paid for their troubles. And, in the spirit of the meritocratic nature of the Internet, I am going to give a lesson on travel writing.

Someone (not me) entering the propeller

These two articles – “Out at Sea, Relaxing in the Philippines” and “Cambodia’s Sweet Spot” – are basically cubicle fantasies, subtly acknowledging that the whole purpose of the piece is to make you wish that you were there and not where you happen to be at the moment. In the first, the author takes a five-day sailing trip from El Nido to Coron. Faithful readers of this blog will remember that Coron is the place where I cut my diving teeth, descending to 42 meters (12 beyond the legal limit for someone of my experience and designation) and into the propeller shaft of the Okikawa Maru, World War II relic of the naval battles in the Pacific Rim. In a true case of trial by fire, I followed a Filipino dive master who had forgotten to put batteries in his torch inside the ship and was trailed by a Frenchman who almost got lost taking a wrong turn down a staircase in a 168-meter long Japanese tanker sitting at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately, we caught the Frenchman heading to a different floor before it was too late, though his spirit of adventure would have hopefully guided him out of whichever room in the ship he happened to find himself.

The flight from Coron

The second article is about Kep, a sleepy town in Cambodia that has recently seen a surge of interest from travelers seeking an authentic and laid-back beach experience. As a young backpacker in 2009, I considered myself what people in the business world call a “first-mover,” descending on the place with a small group of American microfinance volunteers and a Belgian epidemiologist who had nothing but bad things to say about two-term president who directly preceded Barack Obama. Ironically, the Belgians, led by King Leopold, made the Americans look like Mother Theresa during the 19^th century in Africa. Unfortunately, this blog was only three posts long at the time, and the fourth – classified in my “travel and culture” section” – read as follows:

I am heading to Vietnam until December 23rd, and Cambodia until January 4th. I am going to try to update the blog as much as I can during the break. See you in 2010.

Clearly I was not as knowledgeable about geopolitics as I am today. Had I met this Belgian the 260^th post (this one), he would have received an earful. Fortunately, another Kiva Fellow and frequent travel buddy, Gemma, did know a thing or two about a thing or two, and let him have it.

The only way off the island off the coast of Kep

These articles in the Times follow a classic pattern of travel writing. Each one opens with an anecdote describing a mundane situation which generally would not happen to in your daily life. Levin comes out swinging in his piece, opening with a brief paragraph setting the scene:

WE were floating gingerly over a forest of antler-shaped coral when I heard a Swede who was snorkeling with me shout. I popped my head above water and caught only a fragment of his declaration in the slosh of waves: “Monster in a hole.”

When he wrote that line, he surely knew what he was doing, which is to effectively reach out from the pages of the newspaper and grab the poor guy who just wanted to take his mind off the pile of work his boss just put on his desk by the collar and say “See what you could be doing?”. Now, on top of all that, the man has to deal with the knowledge that someone somewhere is being paid to snorkel with Swedes. But that is the key to being a good travel writer. No one wants to read about the guy who stayed on the boat because he was afraid of getting sunburned. They want to hear about the crazy Swedish guy who is hunting for moray eels.

Hello turtle.

Once you have set the scene, you really need to drive the point home. Again, Levin pulls no punches in letting you know just how much better his life is than yours. After finishing the story about the snorkeling Swede, he breaks it down in much simpler terms:

Fortunately, relaxation was never in short supply aboard the Buhay. We were in the middle of nowhere, paradise-style: a sea of high-definition azure stretching to the horizon, dotted only by distant uninhabited islands. After a few days of sailing, life had become a hazy routine: eat, snorkel, chill out. Repeat.

Nothing to do but relax.

I know from experience that this is exactly what happens in the waters between El Nido and Coron. After getting my open water and advanced certification in the span of a week, I flew to Coron to explore some wrecks. Normally, you would need a special certification and at least 50 dives before exploring a sunken ship 40 meters below the surface of the ocean. Of course, I had neither a certification nor anything close to 50 dives.

Fortunately, this is not the case in the Philippines, where the same laid-back vibe that Levin describes pervades every aspect of life, including the risk tolerance of the Filipino beach bum in charge of keeping you alive underwater. When he asked how many dives I had, I lied and said 15 (it was only 10). Clearly, I should have gone higher, since his next question was, “How good are you?” But as a two-year captain of my swim team in high school, very little about the water scares me, so down we went.

In part two of this post, I will describe how to use language and stories to make people jealous.

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How to Get Around the World

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c. 2008. I jettisoned the blazer of corporate America to live more deliberately

Perhaps the most novel and amusing aspect of living abroad is getting around. In the United States, I spent two years walking through the Copley Square mall to avoid the dismal cold of Boston winters. When I moved back with my parents to save money for my Kiva Fellowship, I parked my car at Norwood Central and took the commuter rail into Back Bay Station each morning, and back again in the evening. I actually enjoyed riding the rails for those three months, since it was my first and, to-date, my only taste of suburban work-a-day living. Every morning, armed with a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and a day-old Wall Street Journal discarded by my father, I boarded the train and appreciated the fact that I was a commuter. And, unlike my fellow riders, I didn’t have to worry about mortgage payments and other of adulthood’s reality checks.

I brought this same zeal with me to the countries I’ve lived and traveled. And, when it comes to getting around, Africa and Asia do it right.

A tricycle and mini-bus in Bago City, Philippines

I am not quite sure where transportation innovation comes from, but the evolutionary pathway took a radical turn at some point, leaving Asia with the transportation equivalent of the sea animals shown in the Blue Planet episode on the deep ocean. In the Philippines, the staple of the transportation diet is the jeepney. These elongated former U.S. military jeeps with two parallel benches in that back and are known for their “flamboyant decoration and crowded seating.” These vehicles would be absurd if they weren’t so practical and convenient. Each jeepney has a defined route, allowing you to hop-on and hop-off at your leisure, provided you know where you are going. Amazingly the driver serves as both the controller and the comptroller, handling the money and the navigation simultaneously. Given the separation of these duties in Africa, this feat is a testament to the industriousness of Filipinos .

A late-night impromptu jeepney charter with some new friends in Manila

For the more rural traveler, the tricycle will get you where you need to go. Unlike the smaller, more childish version to which most people are accustomed, Filipino tricycles have a sidecar attached to a motorbike. It is designed for two, but I have seen no less than eight people riding through the rural areas. This may seem crazy, but it becomes more reasonable once you have seen a family of five on a single motorbike in Phnom Penh.

Sharing the back of the tricycle with a couple of kiddos

Motorbiking in Kep, Cambodia

To take you the last mile, you can pick up a trisikad. It is the same as a tricycle, except pedal-powered. It is truly excruciating for the driver, who is carrying 500 pounds of people on a BMX. I know because I tried my luck as a trisikad driver during one late-night excursion back from the bar on Bantayan Island, which gave me a new appreciation for white collar labor.

Hour #12 on the bus in Burma

Different species belonging to the same phylum as these weird creatures exist throughout Southeast Asia. The tuk-tuk in Cambodia and Thailand, the motorbike in Vietnam, and the fishing-boat ferry with the outboard motor in waterway throughout Asia give you a taste of the authentic. Of course, the bicycle is truly the rice of the Southeast Asian diet, ubiquitous and trustworthy.

Riding my bike in Bagan

For some serious grittiness, Africa offers a connoisseur’s menu. In Ghana, the tro-tro, otherwise known as “the tro,” is the way to get around. It is a large, rectangular van forged out of hard steel. Unlike the florid jeepney, the tro is straight monochromatic business. For a dollar or two, one can “tro it,” as my Canadian friends used to say, long distances. For a more comfortable ride, you can take the air-conditioned bus, but will be forced to watch Nigerian movies that are generally about witches, adultery, or both. Unlike Hollywood, where a director might put out one movie a year, Nollywood functions more like the soft-core pornography industry, where directors make a movie a week.

Riding the train to Mombasa, Kenya

For pure chaos, Nairobi is truly Mecca. Matatus – 14-seater passenger vans operated by a two-man team made up of a driver and a “tout” – careen through the city, spending more time on the sidewalk or the wrong lane than in their own lane, where they belong. These horrible transports cause problems for everything, creating needless traffic jams by purposefully creating loggerheads and refusing to back down. As with copies of the Sega game “Shaq Fu,” the world would be a better place if they did not exist. Fortunately, the city of Nairobi is planning on getting rid of them once and for all.

In my Barack Obama shirt, next to the Tender Lover

There is one saving grace to matatus: their names. A friend of mine actually compiled a list of the best matatu names over the course of three months. Here are a few:

Total Pain
Facebook
Hearse
Emirates
Tender Lover
Burberry
Ceo
Short Message
Mystical
Malia Obama
Baseline
Alicia
Compliant MOA
God’s Power
Pirates
Jolly Escort
Christaholic
Seduction
Annointed Reloaded
Karl Malone

Either way, these miserable machines get the job done. And I will keep riding them until something better comes along.

Anyways, those are some of my favorite forms of transportation. I look forward to sample the rest of what the world has to offer.

A fishing boat on Inle Lake, Burma

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Crowdsourcing Funding for Projects in Africa

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For the first time today, I gave some cash to two very cool causes through organizations that allow start-ups and projects to crowdsource funding from a lot of different people.

The first is being run by a friend and former Kiva Fellow, Rebecca Corey who worked for a microfinance institution in Dar es Salaam, the capital city of Tanzania. She is back again for a way-cool music festival in Zanzibar that I hope to attend, but that isn’t the only reason she is visiting the eastern coast of Africa. The music archive at the Ministry of Culture in Tanzania has a deep wealth of great music in reel-to-reel format, which could be lost to the elements. To prevent that from happening, Rebecca and her team are going to save the archives before it is too late.

Here is the project description:

More than 100,000 hours of music like this is sitting idle and all but forgotten on deteriorating reel-to-reel tapes at the headquarters for the Tanzanian Broadcasting Corporation in Dar es Salaam. The Radio Tanzania archives are running out of time and it’s our goal to digitize and preserve them before it’s too late. Remarkably, our project coincides with the 50th anniversary of Tanzania’s independence from colonial rule. It’s the perfect time to celebrate Tanzanian culture by preserving and reviving this treasure of national heritage.

The Kickstarter funds will be used to purchase equipment for the digitization, to pay royalty fees to musicians and the Tanzanian government, and to produce a “Best of Radio Tanzania” compilation CD with extensive liner notes, photographs, and lyric translations. In order to make the digitization sustainable and directly beneficial to the local community, we are going to establish a Radio Tanzania Digitization workshop that will train Tanzanians in the digitization process and will employ locals to run the workshop in our absence.

The roots of music can be traced back to the continent, where traditional African music spread across the world and morphed into jazz, rock, hip-hop, and everything in between. When I lived in Ghana, I used to buy gospel CDs from pick-up trucks riding through the streets with speakers blaring the music and practically went deaf listening to highlife and hiplife at outdoor bars and clubs, where having a conversation is difficult, if not impossible. Music is an important part of the culture and historical tradition of African life. Preserving it is a noble cause.

There is an old Zimbabwean proverb quoted in a Talib Kweli song called African Dream that goes, “If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.” Unfortunately, anyone who has witnessed me do either of those things knows that the saying has little bearing on reality. But still, I can do my part to help. I urge you to do the same.

The second project I supported is a fledgling Kenyan start-up called M-Farm, started by three Kenyan ladies here in Nairobi. The company helps farmers gain access to markets through their mobile phones. They are raising money to attend the Unreasonable Institute, a start-up accelerator in the United States. Here is the description from the Unreasonable Marketplace:

M-Farm enables farmers inquire about the current prices of different crops in specific markets throughout Kenya. Up-to-date market information empowers farmers as they bargain for a fair price with middlemen and purchasers.

The M-Farm system provides farmers a group selling service where they can connect with other farmers from the neighborhood to jointly market crops in greater volume, helping rural farmers access large-scale local and international markets. Farmers often need to have large quantities of produce available in a short time frame in order to sell to exporters and large-scale retailers.

We’ve more than 2000 farmers,from the pilot test we carried out,already subscribed to the system and are paying for the service. During the pilot test,73 farmers working with M-Farm who have benefited by having a 50% increase in their profits and a 30% saving on the cost of input. M-Farm has achieved this by creating direct market linkages with local exporters and international buyers who have ensured stable prices for these farmers.

They are growing fast and providing a valuable service to Kenyan farmers, who suffer from a serious information assymetry that leaves them at the whim of middlemen who use their ignorance about market prices to low-ball them on prices. Using mobile technology, they connect those farmers with markets around the country. In doing so, the supply chain becomes more efficient, food becomes cheaper, and farmers become richer.

A start-up accelerator is the kind of thing that gives young social enterprises a platform to grow and expand. So, if you have some time, support a real homegrown startup out here in Nairobi.

Kenya

Tanzania

Non-Profit Career Advice: Urban Development

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Photo credit: Digital Slide Theater

This is the first post in an ongoing series offering advice to people interested in learning more about international development work. Mandy Goodgoll, a Masters Candidate in International Affairs at the New School, offers advice on urban development in developing countries and emerging markets.

First of all, let me say that urban development is a great field to get into. It can be analytical, creative, big, small, international, local… essentially, whatever you want it to be. Having said that, I would highly recommend narrowing the search a little. By that I mean, narrowing down to a sub-field you think you might want to try out.
Some examples:

Water (from infrastructure like sewage management, to conservation, to increasing access to potable water for the urban poor… I’m currently writing my thesis on water management)
Forestry (a variety of important issues in forestry like conservation… not something I know too much about)
Low-income housing (could be in an urban environment in a big city in the US, or it could be related to ‘slum upgrading’ in any developing city around the world).
Urban management (working with local governments to make service provision (like water works, or roads) more accessible or managed more sustainably
Urban farming (this is kind of a big deal as of recently, not only in cities like NYC. It’s also being written about in Argentina and Tanzania – reducing the footprint of cities and eating local)
Renewable energy (from solar panels in India to wind farms in Eastern Africa… it’s one of the hottest topics right now, and extremely relevant in the developing world)
Transportation (another really hot topic that mostly centers around public transportation, bike lanes, and other new forms of transportation – death to the car!)

So that’s a very brief rundown of topical areas you may want to delve into. I would recommend thinking about what kind of experience you want. Large and internationally recognized organizations may look great on the resume, but in actuality, you may not have such an exciting experience sitting in the head office of some organization doing research on the internet.

Here, I suggest – go local! There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer for 3-4 months at local NGOs, so that’s why narrowing it down to a sub-field you’re interested in will help in your hunt. Then I would recommend narrowing down on a region. South-East Asia? East Africa? South Africa? Central or South America? There are very unique issues in each of these areas, pertaining to urban issues and urbanization in general.

Latin America is heavily urbanized. Look at Bogota, Carracas, Santiago, Sao Paolo, Rio, Buenos Aires… mega urban cities with big divides between rich and poor – making urban issues very complicated to answer.

In Africa, urban development is much less advanced. You have the cities of South Africa, which present unique problems in respect to the rest of the continent; you have Lagos which is essentially a huge mess of poverty, bad-governance, zero infrastructure, and corruption (don’t go there); and Nairobi, which is this complicated urban metropolis that essentially makes no sense at all, from an urban perspective.

Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya

Then there’s Asia – which I don’t know as much about as my focus and experience has been Latin America/Africa. But in cities like Bangkok, you have crazy issues with water management, alternative forms of transportation, sustainability issues, green-building, and urban poverty overlapping to create a melange of a city that is really exciting.

I would highly recommend looking into NGOs in different places that get you working at the local level. It doesn’t necessarily have to be linked to the urban specifically, because any exposure you get to how the city works (or doesn’t work) from a local level will give you insights on how citizens (or non-citizens) are affected by the decision made in the city. How are people excluded from infrastructure? How do they view their urban environment? How do the flows in a city impact society, economies, the environment? I would recommend this avenue because it can give you more insight into the structure at the bottom, rather than the top – which will inform you in a different way in the future.

On the other hand, you can go dig wells in West Africa, or work with a Sanitation Activist Group in Cape Town… That would give you access to very specific topics, and would also allow you to work at the local level.

Regarding where to find such NGOs… you could look at organizations that have partnered with UNICEF or UN-Habitat in the past. Also, idealist.org has volunteer opportunities. One organization which comes to mind as a good hub of information is the African Center for Cities. It’s run out of the University of Cape Town, and is led by Edgar Pieterse – guru of African urban development in general. I like the work they do, and a lot of it is really on- trend: http://africancentreforcities.net/.

Okay, hope that helps.

Mandy’s Music Recommendation

Develop Economies Returns to Kenya

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In eight hours, I am boarding a Virgin Atlantic flight bound for the United Kingdon. Tomorrow, I will spend the day wandering around London, before boarding another flight for Nairobi. On Sunday morning, I arrive in Kenya, and start work again on Monday.

The transition is one of the more interesting parts of living in different countries around the world. You start in one place and end up in another 36 hours later. During those 36 hours, you are either in transit over the Atlantic Ocean, sitting at the airport bar, killing time reading the newspaper and wondering where other people are going, or exploring a new city, if only for the 12 hours that you have before your next flight. It can be an intensely personal time of reflection, as you wait around for the next move and think about why you are making it and what you want to get out of it.

At Kiva Fellows training in San Francisco two years ago, I met a girl who had spent 9 months in the Philippines and Cambodia. I asked why, if she enjoyed Southeast Asia so much, did she come home? She told me that she hated saying good-bye to people. I thought it was a bit sappy at the time, but she had a good point that I see echoed everywhere I go. It is hard for people to invest in relationships that they know will only last for a few months, especially when they know they are leaving for good.

In countries or cities with relatively small ex-pat communities, this dynamic is less prominent, since people tend to spend time with whoever happens to be around. But in much larger and more diverse cities, like Nairobi, people stratify by neighborhood, country, industry, or other common defining characteristics. This isn’t because people are necessarily afraid to jump outside their comfort zone. It is just easier for some people to fall in with a group of people who speak the same language and understand their own cultural context.

But the more interesting stratification to me is the one that develops around timing. People who are going to be in the country long-term tend to be less interested in meeting people who are staying for only a few months. I came to Nairobi during the summer, when people flooded into the place from everywhere for short-term work assignments. I met people staying short-term and long-term, and enjoy meeting new people in general. But it is always a bummer when people leave at the end of their stay. And this is why many people simply don’t bother trying to form new relationships with people who are just going to move in and out of their lives.

For me, it doesn’t make a difference either way. If someone is only staying for a month, I don’t usually go out of my way, but for anyone else, that is plenty of time to meet new people and become friends. I am heading back to Nairobi for round two, where I will be focused on work, writing, and becoming an expert photographer with my new Canon DSLR camera. So happy new year to all my readers. I will enjoy kicking it off with a few more posts written from Nairobi.

Develop Economies’ Music Recommendation

How to Travel Alone, pt. 4

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This is part four of a four-part post on the joys of solo travel.

In this last installment, I will share my thoughts on the need to meet as many people as you can and be confident as you roam the world.

– 7. Be open

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

Today, people say that I am a “good connector”. That is because, whenever my friends travel to a new place, I put them in touch with the people I know there and make sure they show them a good time. But this is decidedly a skill I have picked up in the last two years.

When you travel alone, you have to be willing to strike up a conversation with anyone. People you meet on the road tend to be some of the more interesting, offering a perspective you don’t get every day. This is especially true in countries that are off the beaten backpacker path, which attract some of the more out-there individuals. And, for an American, Asia, in particular is a great place to meet interesting folks, since most of them tend to be from the other sides of the proverbial ponds.

Out of a mix of laziness and self-involvement, I’m going to break the cardinal rule of respectable travel-writing and quote myself speaking about the subject of people on the road in a post titled “Dispatch from a shrinking planet“:

When you travel, you meet people on the road. The relationships are short, but what they lack in breadth they make up for depth. You become closer to them in the three days you spend together than you do to the people renting the apartment below you for a year. You stay in touch and email from time to time. When something happens in their country, you reach out to see if everything is all right. When you move to another country, you blast an email to your friends and tell them to put you in touch with everyone they know in that city. I moved to Nairobi on a hope and a prayer, and, because of the people I’ve met along the way, managed to land an apartment and a handful of job interviews before I touched down. Seeing the world is nice, but meeting people and making friends is truly the best part.

People, to me, are the best part of traveling (which is somewhat paradoxical to say in a post about traveling alone). But tou never know who you are going to meet. And, in the information age, Facebook makes it much easier to stay in touch once you go your separate ways. Traveling by yourself makes you crave human connection, which causes you to open up.

8. Be Confident

“A ship in harbor is safe. But that is not what ships are built for.” – John Shedd

La Castellana, Negros Island, Philippines

The first few times you do it, traveling alone can be tough. When you are living in a familiar place, with a support network around you to fall back on for advice or companionship, you are challenged in different ways, but having to rely on your wits tends not to be one of them. When you get off that bus in a place you have never been, where few people speak the language and there is no one around to tell you that your guesthouse is just over that hill, or that immigration won’t let you in the country unless you get your visa in advance, you have to be diligent, adaptable, and creative.

You need always keep your eyes open, but also accept things as they come and not be so risk-averse that you avoid contact with everyone who doesn’t look like you. At the same time, you need to be wary not to get ripped off or robbed, and be persistent in figuring out where you need to go and how you need to get there. Sometimes, you need to be polite and patient; other times, a pushy asshole. But what you can’t do is rely on anyone else but yourself to make the right decision.

And when things go wrong, you learn from your mistakes and take that wisdom with you as you move forward. When things you go right, you get the satisfaction of knowing that, even with the odds stacked against you and no one to show you the way, it was you, and nobody else, that made it happen. When you travel alone, you come to realize that, in this world, you make your own luck.

Sometimes you might not have a conversation beyond a few cursory beyond, “Could you tell me where…” or, “a beer, please.” for a few days, so you have a lot of time to think about life and how to live it. That kind of introspection can be lost in the daily grind. The solitude of a language barrier in foreign country is sometimes enough to elicit some great thinking.

When I was in Ghana, I went through a rough patch for a few weeks and was calling my brother practically every day for advice. He told me to chill out and not call him for a week, since all the noise was clouding my thinking. “You’re out in the wilderness – it’ll be good for you,” he said. “Jesus was out in the wilderness for 30 years, except he didn’t have a cell phone.”

The point is well-taken. When you travel alone, you are in good historical company. Jesus, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, the kid from Flight of the Navigator. Sometimes it gets a little lonely, but you’ll be stronger as a result. As the great travel writer Paul Theroux once said, “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”

The cliffs of Malapascua Island.

Without a doubt, traveling alone makes you more confident. The same can be said for any time you venture outside your comfort zone, but putting yourself out there in a place foreign in all senses of the world is enough to give you the confidence that you can handle any situation. That feeling translates to other aspects of your life as well, and allows you to move through life with greater confidence and a belief that you can handle what comes with poise.

In Salt from My Attic, John Shedd wrote, “a ship in harbor is safe – but that is not what ships are built for.” So, if you are thinking about throwing your life in a backpack and can’t find anyone to join you, don’t be deterred. Just go for it, and enjoy the freedom of being out there on your own.

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Below is a short photographic retrospective of all the places I’ve been these last few years.