Over and Out

And just like that, my Corporate Service Corps experience has come to an end!
We departed Nyeri early on Thursday morning for a rushed journey back to Nairobi. The staff at the Green Hills feted our time there with a massive display of grilled meats, whose intention I appreciated even if I was unable to partake. The blurred landscape on our speedy streak down Thika Road for the last time gave me a few things to look forward to in my return to the States... things like highway lane dividers, infrastructure that doesn't appear to have been recently hit by a fragmentation grenade, and traveling in something other than white knuckled panic.

Once in Nairobi, we enjoyed a lovely lunch at an upscale Chinese restaurant in the Kenyatta International Conference Center called Tin Tin. I wouldn't have done much other than observe even on a normal day, but given that it was Taanit Esther and I was fasting, my food abstention was particularly easy to notice. Nonetheless, I was fortunate to sit in between Dr. Getao, our client, and Jane Jamieson who is the regional coordinator for Digital Opportunities Trust, the NGO that IBM contracts with in order to pull off the CSC program. Jane, who was visiting from her home in Turkey, was in an unmistakable selling mode, and I certainly couldn’t blame here… there are ample opportunities for follow-on projects here for future CSC teams. That said, the discussion was very pleasant and ranged from amusing stories of Dr. Getao traveling the world on a shoestring budget as a third-world academic to Jane’s experiences with Ramadan in various sites around the Muslim world.

We proceeded from there to Harambee House, the Kenyan executive seat, where Dr. Getao’s presence gave us the all-access pass past the various security layers. To work off our lunch, they arranged for the elevators to be out of service, and we walked up the ten flights of stairs to the executive suites where we would be conducting our final presentation. The audience was our “Team Chui”, Dr. Getao and her leadership team, the rest of the group of IBM CSCers, a couple of DOT folks including Alex, Muriuki and Jane, and a large group of the East Africa IBM team, including the congenial and impressive Tony Mwai, the Country General Manager, i.e. IBM’s top guy in Kenya.

Team CHUI... what WHAT!

The presentation came off flawlessly. Nimeesh from Ottawa launched us with reintroducing our objectives, reviewing our eye-opening visits to the various government ministries to see their existing processes, and breaking down our research, including explaining the six main areas we selected to focus on and the findings we had in each area in the current Kenyan legal code. Anna from Seoul then launched into our first group of legal global best practices including sample legislation focusing on standard data structures, data centralization and eliminating redundant systems, gleaned from the review of dozens of laws from around the world, some of which she translated herself from the Korean. I took over to finish off the legal examples for open government and public data, protection of PII and data privacy, freedom of information and data security. I then reviewed some of the potential areas for Kenya to be a global e-government leader by putting in some regulatory framework to leverage Kenyan’s mobile phone explosion to better deliver services, and gave them a straight-talk review of some of their draft legislation, detailed its legislative archaeology in some 30 year old legal principles and outlined the threats that it entailed to Kenya’s efforts to roll out e-government. Luan from Zurich then brought us home with the strategic summary, “Monday Morning Action Plan” for immediate steps that need to be taken, and then a long term roadmap stretching over years for how Kenya (and Kenyans) can realize the benefits of these frameworks in their lives.

The question and answer period was a very robust back and forth with Katherine and her deputies all drilling down into the details of our findings and conclusions, debating the strategy back and forth a bit, and candidly discussing some of the political considerations or obstacles that may shape their approach. All of them including the DOT and IBM teams gave us phenomenal feedback and over-the-top appreciation for how much we were able to advance their knowledge and plan of action on this subject in such a short period of time and without any legal or regulatory expertise on our team. Not to pump up our already inflated egos further, but they’re right. The four of us not only came together in a very brief four weeks to form a very highly functioning team, but we pulled out all the stops working late into many nights mastering an area in which we had no prior background, learning the legal, regulatory, administrative and bureaucratic landscape of a country none of us had ever set foot in previously. And the presentation and full report which we delivered were top-notch, giving Dr. Getao – who is at heart an academic and a technologist – the bootstrapping she needed on how her office can obtain the authorities necessary to execute her agenda. It’s not worth beans coming from me, but Dr. Getao said as much in her thanks and farewell, and told us we can all share pride of ownership when the first e-Government Act of Kenya passes Parliament sometime next year, inshallah. Our team is extremely proud of what we accomplished, the value that we delivered, and the potential impact it can have on Kenyan society in the future. And if I never read another piece of Finnish legislation again, it will be too soon.

It had started to rain lightly while we were presenting which gave the only needed excuse to inextricably snarl the already congested downtown Nairobi traffic. So the four of us sat in the car for about 40 minutes before we were even out of eyesight of Harambee House. We proceeded to the very comfy Crowne Plaza hotel, where I was able to break my fast on the generally unadvisable but situationally unavoidable hard liquor. A few carrot sticks sufficed to put something non-alcoholic in my belly, but I was fortunate that the adrenaline, team pride and sense of accomplishment helped to weather the fast without any difficulty. The rest of the team eventually joined us with high-fives and fist bumps all around for a job well done. I’m sad that I won’t be able to participate in the other two subteam presentations, the media event and the celebratory dinner, not to mention the variety of follow-on safaris upon which most of the team is embarking, but the necessities of Shabbat, Purim, family and work dictated otherwise.

We headed back to the Country Lodge where exhaustion began to set it across the team. Since my early morning flight the next day would necessitate me leaving before anyone else work up. A round of tearful goodbyes ensued as the intense circumstances and close quarters bonded us as an entire team, but particularly tightly as a subteam. I’m thrilled to have gained an international network of close colleagues and friends and hope to welcome all of them to Washington over the coming years and maybe even pay some of them visits over the fullness of time.

I leave Kenya with very mixed emotions. I’m very homesick, and more than ready to resume life. I’m certain I will miss the camaraderie, pace and effectiveness of our lean, mean, focused and fun-loving team, not to mention the simplicity of life with one project, no supervision, no administrative requirements, no need to shop, clean, cook, drive, pay bills, or handle any of the little distractions of daily living. The time for focus and reflection over the course of this month has been of immeasurable value. The rare value and sheer unlikelihood of the opportunity to travel abroad to work on a strategic project with highly skilled colleagues at company expense bolstered by my regular salary not only at no risk but to the advancement of my career is simply remarkable, and I’m acutely aware at how fortunate and blessed I am to have had the opportunity. The next CSC application period opens in another month, and I’ll be an avid advocate for my team and colleagues getting their names in the mix. Heck, Deb might kill me for saying so, but I would do it again in 2012 or 2013 if I could.

In the meantime, I’m very excited to be heading to Kinshasa, making Congo the whopping number 6 on the list of countries Dave has visited in his life, for Purim with the Rennas. I plan to hew closely to the detailed entry instructions that Adela provided in chapter and verse to navigate the airport on my arrival. I’ve got a Masai costume in the works for megillah reading which I expect to be a hit, I’ll try to post some shots. I’ll miss Deb and the kids terribly for costumes, megillah, mishloach manot and seudah, but it certainly will soften the blow to be with old friends. I don’t think that the Rennas were expecting anyone not related to them by blood to schlep to them in the DRC, if they were to make a list of other people least likely to make the journey, I’m quite certain I would rank near the top possibly behind only Beyonce, the Unabomber and the ghost of Levi Eshkol. Actually, I might have been in a tie with the wraith.

After a whirlwind Shabbat, Purim and an extra day of touring around Congo that will no doubt be enjoyed but was forced upon me by the vagaries of flight cancellation, I’ll return home for the joyful reunion with the Sloan brood. The separation has been very painful, and is really the only flaw in what has otherwise been an inspiring, exhausting, fulfilling and magical month. Oh, and I need me a double order of Max’s schwarma followed precisely three hours and one minute later by an entire mushroom and extra cheese pizza pretty much immediately after I land at Dulles. Make it happen, Washington! J

Unexpectedly, I’m tearing up a bit here in the boarding lounge for my Kenya Airways flight, which cannot be putting my fellow passengers at ease, so I’ll sign off for now, wish myself a Safari Njema and plan to end this blog with a rundown of the Congo and a note indicating my safe return to DC, iy”h.

Kwaheri Kenya.

Victory over Racism

OK, maybe that's a mild exaggeration, but after being refused service on racial grounds on three occasions (and an additional time because the barber is closed on Sunday), I have successfully gotten my hair cut! This may not seem blog-worthy, but I lost about 3 pounds, am 8 degrees cooler, and my tefilin and hat both fit again.

I admit this may seem like less than earth-shattering news in light of Japan, Libya, Israel, etc. but it's all I've got to offer today.

This is our last day in Nyeri, we'll spend the day practicing our presentation before delivering it to the government tomorrow in Nairobi. I packed this morning, and will be off to the Congo in another 2 days, and back home in less than a week! How the month has flown... well, maybe not for Deb.

A Different World

My loot from the Masai Market in hand, I set out to reconnect with a friend from college who is stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. The directions I gave the taxi to arrive at her place were quite convoluted, and I quickly realized why. Neither the U.S. Embassy nor the embassy housing are in Nairobi, but rather quite a distance away, in a vast gaggle of embassies and U.N. facilities in a suburb that reminded me of Burleith or Foxhall in Georgetown. After four separate security checkpoints, the last of which included a brief interrogation and through search of the taxi, we entered a gorgeous group of modest sized houses with modern facades, gleaming SUVs sporting red diplomatic plates in the driveways, carefully cultivated lawns, roads as smooth as glass, not a speck of paint missing from the walls, and some white kids playing basketball on a flawless court with bright white netting. It was like we had not only left the city, but left the planet. Ellen and her new husband Felix were extraordinarily gracious and we were able to spend a few hours relaxing on their terrace, reminiscing, catching up, and talking about the state of affairs, and the likely state of the future, in Kenya. Felix’s insights as a former Kenyan journalist (he films documentaries now) and Ellen’s from her various interactions with Kenyans all over the country, confirmed some of my deep-seated American cynicism and exposed a bunch of issues, good and bad, that were new to me. The degree to which political gossip is a mainstay of Kenyan discussion was clear as soon as another Kenyan, Eunice, joined the conversation. I think some of this stems from a sense of powerlessness developed over years of having no other outlet with which to even symbolically reign in Kenyan leaders, but clearly another part of it stems from the ludicrous antics of the Kenyan first family. Ellen will be back in DC for a year starting this summer, and hopefully we’ll be able to keep in touch on that side of the world as well.

Felix was kind enough to give me a ride back to the Tea Room (an establishment long since closed, but still the term of reference for the main matatu stop in Nairobi), where I hopped a matatu back to Nyeri.


One of the most amusing parts of matatus is their naming conventions. Apparently, matatu decoration was an art while the industry was still the wild west. Now matatus are by regulation white with a yellow stripe down the side that lists their route and maximum capacity. However, the last vestige of this radical individualism is the names painted or placed by stickers on the top of the front windshield. I've made a small collection of matatu names which I present here for your reading enjoyment.

     Unique Shuttle
     Exalted King Coach
     Ultimate Leader
     Lucky
     Peacemaker
     Blessings
     Spirit Queen
     Trailblazer
     Reloaded
     Mediator
     Troll
     Watch Out
     Da Blues
     King of the Road
     Yours 4 Da Asking

... and my #1 with a bullet ...

     Relax, God's In Charge

It's not as roomy as it looks here

The view in my matatu

My matatu was unnamed, but left almost immediately, a bonus, with me in the back corner seat next to a six year old girl who was not allocated a seat on her own. Her eyes went wide when she saw me - my pigmentation is not common on matatus at all, let alone those heading to Nyeri. Her mother seated next to her said something that loosely translated “Just sit next to the mizungu and don’t complain, he probably won’t bite.” The little girl stroked my arm a few times, played with my backpack straps a bit and fell asleep on my lap after a few minutes on the road, despite the bone-jarring bumps which are fare of any travel on Thika Road these days. The ride was largely uneventful, but there was a hilarious moment when the matatu pulled off the side of the road for no obvious reason, and a *mob* of people charged the van from every side, pulled open the windows from the outside and shoved their arms into the van up to their armpits and started shouting. Far from a terrorist ambush, dangling from their invading limbs were stalks of bananas, bags of mangos and sack of fresh cut sugar cane. I was too constrained and amused to actually participate in one of these transactions, but I would say that at least half of my matatu-mates did some of their produce shopping right there in their seats.

My teammates had returned from Lake Nakuru hours before I got back, and were ready to go to dinner soon after I dropped my bags. After a quick jaunt to the Outspan, we came back to our hotel where it was “disco night” with a DJ playing to a completely empty terrace. Not to let a good set of music go to waste, the team created an impromptu dance floor and spent a few hours cutting the proverbial rug. I am indebted to my American male colleagues for ensuring that my utter lack of anything resembling dance skills did not render me a complete outlier.

Slums and Souvenirs

Sunday was an overcast day in Nairobi, but I quickly set out to accomplish the few items I had set out for myself. The first and simplest was quickly thwarted, as although all the barbershops list hours starting at 8 AM, none of their signs mention that they are uniformly closed on Sunday. This country has some sort of vendetta against giving me a haircut. I proceeded into the city center to verify that there heretofore unmentioned City Hall Masai Market souvenir fair was indeed present. Its vendors were just starting to set up, so I followed my original plan to go to YaYa Center, a suburban shopping mall which hosts the published Masai Market on Sundays. I caught a “City Hoppa” bus (I assume that it’s a play on words since Hapa in Swahili means “here” but I’m not at all certain) which engages a staff of two – one driver and one hawker who shouts at people on the street to entreat them to board instead of opting for a competing bus company or any of the parasitic matatus that follow the identical route. The hawker also collects the 20 KSh fee (about 25 cents). The bus arrived at YaYa Center much more quickly that I expected and I missed the stop. Since it was still early though, I decided against disembarking and taking another bus in the other direction and instead decided to ride this bus for the loop, see a little bit more of the neighborhoods of Nairobi, and then jump off when it came past the mall going in the other direction. The circuitous route took me through some truly lovely tree-lined suburbs like Hurlingham, but then passed through those into Kawanguare, a suburban Nairobi slum. Many of the people were boarding in their Sunday best heading into town for church, but that made them stand out against their environment even more. Clapboard shacks with corrugated iron roofs as homes and kiosks. Not a shred of green to be seen, as whatever scrubby weeds surfaced were quickly mowed down by the emaciated livestock. Mountains of open garbage as tall as the window on our bus with goats rooting at the top and children rummaging around the bottom. The estimates of how many people live in Kawanguare range from 250,000 to 500,000. Having struck up a conversation with my hawker by this point, I asked him what these people did for work, and he replied “Nothing”. He said that many of them expected to inherit farms, but when those lands were transferred away from them through a variety of unsavory means, they came to the city seeking sustenance. But in his words, “They have no land, no jobs, and no hope.” Although that is likely an exaggeration, it is true that this is an area with some of the most extreme poverty in the world, with people living off about US$1 per day. He did say that the schools in that area are slowly but steadily improving, and agreed that education was the only hope for preventing the slums from being inherited by another generation.

        

Even the Nebulons are getting in on the action...

Disembarking at YaYa Center could not have provided a more sudden or stark contrast. For those of you in the DC area, YaYa is like Tyson’s Corner Center, but with even more white people. Exclusive brand names stores, gleaming marble floors, upscale coffee shops, even a street team in full space-age regalia hawking the new Samsung smartphone for a sum which exceeds most Kenyan’s annual income. 
    

It keeps going...

... and going

Arrayed in the parking lot were close to a hundred mats, splayed on each were hundreds of African tchatchkes ready for the haggling. Every step I took though the market was met with “Hello friend! Jambo! Karibu Kenya! What is your name? Where are you from? Please come with me just a moment to see my shop, looking is free, but you must hold the wares to know their quality and for you as my first customer of the day I have a special deal which I will not be able to extend for very long, so please let me feel like I am working today, sister please start wrapping these products for our foreign friend. Wait, but you are not buying, let me give you another price just for spending this time with us, and you are still not buying? Do you prefer this price? I feel this is our special time, and that we should do business together, but you are walking away. Do you promise you will come back? I will hold this piece for you, but you promise you will return?” Rise, repeat, multiply by one hundred, I am not exaggerating. I wended my way through the warren of pressing venders jotting notes down on what prices I was hearing and what products I was interested in procuring as gifts. Finally, I looked at my list and realized that if I were to go negotiating each of these gifts from vendors separately, I would be there all month. I decided to take a chance and try to make the system work for me. I beckoned one of the particularly earnest sellers, Mike, over to me and explained the system of agency, whereby I would provide him with a list of products, he would procure them for me at the best prices, and then I would negotiate with him and only him on a price for the bundle of goods. If I like the price I got from him, I would only need one agent, and if I didn’t then I would engage another agent to compete with him. Industrious as all Kenyans I’ve met, Mike eagerly set out on his task, engaging a deputy to help on his search. I sat in the shade with a mango juice, while they busily traversed the shops, bringing me products to verify. At the end, I had a pile of about 25 gifts, and hadn’t lifted a finger. Mike started with an absurdly high price for the group, and I re-explained that I could easily get another agent to engage on the same task. He immediately cut his price in half. I negotiated him down to about one third of his initial asking price, happily handed over the cash, and received the hefty bag of loot in return. Before letting me go, Mike asked me what course I studied in school. I told him Software Engineering and Business, and he paid me what I can only take as the ultimate marketplace compliment, “You are a tough customer.”

Coffee, Tea and Nairobi

Friday morning, the team decided to take in a little local color before work by going to one of the many ubiqutous coffee plantations in the area. At least, that was the intention. The Postal team had made a very good friend and number one fan in the local postmaster and he hooked us up with a guide and an entre. The hitch was that we when we showed up, we were met with a non-coffee, non-plantation destination. It was a tea factory. We went through and saw the tea leaf delivery, the withering, macerating, drying, crushing, and sifting machines.  Then we advanced to the tasting room, where about 10 different pots were brewing, and Francesco took the lead, swirling and spitting as one might at a wine tasting. Remarkable how many different styles (their relative value apparently changes with the desires of the market) can come from just one batch of leaves.

Vast bins of drying tea leaves

I <3 Conveyor Belts

Tea varieties all from the same batch of leaves

Francesco hard at work

Not to be deterred, we inquired after a subsequent coffee visit, which was happily granted. After a 5 minute drive that took 35 minutes, we arrived at yet another factory, this one devoted to coffee. The smell of freshly roasted beans was ambient from the moment we got out of the car, though there is no industrial roasting at this particular plant, just enough for quality control and tasting. We went through the demonstration groves, where the agronomists at the coffee mill show the farmers optimal practices for maximizing the quality and yield of their plants. Apparently, one the farmer delivers the beans, there's very little that the mill itself can do to increase the quality of the resulting coffee... much of it is determined at the plant itself. Steve, the British intern showing us around the plant, was quite accommodating of all of our questions and most importantly arranged for a fresh cup of joe for all of us - and by fresh I mean beans that were roasted one floor below, having been beans on the tree mere weeks before. As you might imagine, it was delicious.

This whole process turned from a quick one hour jaunt into a 3.5 hour morning event, which stressed out some of my teammates, as they had a trip planned to Lake Nakuru for the weekend. I was on a little bit more relaxed schedule to head to Nairobi, since I was planning to take a matatu. I don't recall to what degree I've covered matatus thus far, but they are small Nissan minibuses that are the most common form of inter-city transportation in Kenya. Picture five rows of three seats with a steering wheel in the front, inside an interior the size of a Honda Odyssey. Foreigners typically shun them, and for some good reasons... up until recently, matatus were completely unregulated. Speeds were unlimited, as were numbers of passengers which could number above 20. Fatal accidents were common. Drivers were either unlicensed, stoned or both. Vehicles were unguided road missiles, and held to no mechanical standard. After accidents, drivers would typically abandon their junk heap vehicle and just run for it. These practices have been largely reformed now with police constantly pulling over matatus to check the licensing and state of the driver, ensure that insurance and inspection are up to date, check the number of passengers, but the stigma still remains.
Matatus are cheap. By comparison, a private taxi from Nyeri to Nairobi is about 7500 Ksh one way, or about 85-90 dollars. A matatu ride from Nyeri to Nairobi is 250 Ksh, just under 3 bucks. Yeah. So my colleague Francesco walked me down to the matatu stop, I bought my ticket, he snapped a photo of me in the matatu as my last will and testament, and waved goodbye. I sat in the "jump seat" by the sliding door, which avoided the "death seat" next to the matatu driver. The only downside with a matatu is that they leave when they are full, which in my case took about a half an hour. In that half hours time, you are a captive audience and a sitting duck for every two bit vendor with any wares to ply. Fruit, drinks, cookies, samosas, candies, phonics books, calendars, combs, grilled meats of unclear origin, religious texts, and padlocks, all circling the lot full of vans, shouting and looking to swoop down on any flash of cash since they're largely selling the same stuff. My van finally filled (with 17 passengers instead of 15 if you count the two kids unbelted in their parents laps), and we pulled off onto the highway. The "African Massage" was in full force, but honestly once you have accustomed yourself to the white-knuckle, breath-catching panic of passing by swerving into the oncoming lane on a well-trafficked highway, there's really very little incremental terror doing it in a matatu versus a taxi - only that your heirs will have less to inherit in the latter case.
I made some small talk with my sleepy matatu-mates who were pleasant if not particularly conversational. When we made a brief stop to drop someone on the outskirts of Nairobi, I hopped out to make room for the exiting passenger and was immediately approached by an aggressive panhandler who quickly became abusive when I refused him. My fellow passenger leaped to my defense, pouring calumny on him in Swahili until he backed away, flipping all of us off in the process. Matatu Solidarity!
I made it to downtown Nairobi unscathed and in enough time to make it to my modest accommodations, shower and head over to the synagogue for Kabbalat Shabbat. Many of the folks I met the first time were not around, which made it difficult to gain entry past the synagogue security guards, but fortunately, I spied a former head of the shul, "Veitzman" (first name, yes, you may be Israeli if your first name is Veitzman) who granted me access. I quickly discovered why things were particularly buckled down as my entry was immediately followed by the arrival of 4 black sedans and a chase car with siren blaring. Out walked a gaggle of obvious Israeli security goons, the Israeli Ambassador Yaacov Keidar (who is a regular attendee there) and the Israeli Minister of Internal Security Yitzchak Aharonovich, who was in Kenya for official meetings. Davening proceeded with the normal hodgepodge of tunes and styles, with some of the regular mizrachi mix taking jabs at the bitachon crew for not singing along.
The next morning we were not only without a minister, but also without a minyan. We davened mostly from our seats, and I was glad to be able to help out at least a little bit, leyning most of the parasha from a chumash. I should mention that we were lacking a white minyan, which is to say that there were sufficient African Kenyans present to make a minyan, but despite the fact that many of them have been coming to shul there for two decades, or in the case of the younger kids their entire lives, none of them have been put in touch with any sort of conversion process. Certain shul members have definite opinions on why this has been the case but I'm not going to get into shul politics by blog.
After davening, I ran into David and Michael, two East Africa trekkers - one from Australia, the other a GWU graduate who just finished his service in the Israeli Army. Since my plan for the afternoon was already wander-lunch-nap-wander, I amended it to wander with friends-lunch-nap-wander, and enjoyed trading stories of Kenya.
Saturday night, we were all invited to join a lecture that the visiting Minister was giving at the social hall in the shul. I was happy that my Hebrew has not atrophied so badly that I couldn't keep up, as the Minister addressed topics as varied as Iran, fire-fighting, the Itamar Massacre, Gilad Shalit, mafia protection rackets, the various Middle East revolutions in progress, Hamas, Hizbollah, electoral realignments, "broken window" theory and others. It got heated at one point, when someone asked about the recent settler evictions, and the minister simply replied "Ani lo rotzeh l'daber al zeh." (I don't want to talk about that.) It was a good talk, though I think I probably could have given it. Not to be conceited, but I've got the process on being an Israeli minister pretty much down pat. (apologies to the non-Hebrew speakers for the Hebrew, apologies to the Hebrew speakers for the poor Hebrew transliteration).

Audience member: Kvod haSar, mah ata choshev al <noseh>?
Sar: Tishma, <noseh> zeh lo davar pashut. Zeh inyan m'od me'urkav, v'm'od matrid. Yesh beYisrael achshav vikuach tziburi al <noseh>, v'kamuvan yesh vikuach gam b'memshala. Anachu ovdim achshav al <noseh> v'nireh ba'yamim v'chodashim hakrovim mah ha-tozaot.

Try it yourself, you too can be an Israeli minister! Use Syria, tunnel smuggling, prostate cancer, Idan Raichel, Krembo, you name it. All you need now is a few hundred thousand votes and you're good to go.

High Five

 It’s been a very rewarding couple of days for our team, and hopefully we’ve even got room to improve from here. Before the reveal, maybe it’s worth giving a little bit of insight into what our daily schedule has been like over the last few weeks that we’ve been researching and drafting our report. We’ve typically been getting up around 6 or 7 AM, joining together for breakfast at 8 AM, starting work at 9 AM, working until 1, breaking for an hour for lunch, resuming at 2 PM until it’s time for dinner at 7 PM, dining for an hour, then heading to the bar, laptops in hand, to work from about 8 PM until midnight or later, then going to bed for a few hours until we get up and do it all over again. Our team recognized early on that we had a massive body of research to tackle and a lot of report drafting to do, and we grabbed on with both hands from day one.

That hard work got put to the test on Tuesday as we gave our government sponsor a preview via phone conference of the draft report that we intended to present to her extended staff the next day. Although all of us were quite confident in the quality of our work, I think the shared fear was that we were not going to tell Dr. Katherine Getao anything that the head of the e-Government wouldn’t already know, and that she would look at us and say, “Right. So?”

Far from the case, she was attentive and inquisitive from the first substantive slide. One of my teammates believes she counted 20 “Fantastic”s over the course of the call. She gave us a couple of additional areas for investigation, followed up to clarify a few points that were new news to her, and expressed her excitement to see the final report. Though it was very gratifying to hear it, we soon shuffled off to bed, as we had another 5:30 sortie to Nairobi the next morning to present our preliminary report to the CIOs of Kenya’s 42 government ministries. Since I have already had a chance to present on numerous occasions, I left this one to my teammates, which meant I got to sleep the whole car ride. We arrived at the conference center at the Kenya Institute of Education, and heard Katherine give a heartfelt, humorous and very ambitious presentation on the e-Government strategy for the next year. Her staff reviewed some of the subtopics in the strategy, and then it was our turn. Anna had created a visually stunning presentation, and Nimeesh and Luan both did a great job sharing it with the assembled ICT officers. The questions came fast and furious, substantive and on point, and I used my perch in the center of the seating area to clarify our key principles and outline the opportunities that Kenya has to “leapfrog” a number of stages of technological development, and learn enough from the world’s experience with e-Government to “cheat” and start on the last page of the book, as it were. The reception to our points was very warm with both Dr. Getao and her staff immediately integrating some of our points into their responses to crowd questions. At lunch, I was able to sit with Katherine, together with one of the architects of the Kenya Vision 2030 plan and a gentleman from the Ministry of Information and Communication who has been instrumental in drafting and passing many of Kenya’s laws pre- and post-constitution. I will admit to a thrill when during the somewhat heated lunch discussion regarding whether these principles were better promulgated as new legislative authority or simple regulatory edicts, and what position they would occupy vis a vis some of the laws already in process, Dr. Getao at one point said “Yes, but are you listening to what IBM is telling us???”

The conference was a bit eye-opening hearing that the status of some of the projects that our legislative proposals will legitimize was more rudimentary that we had hoped, and we will need to adjust some of our included timelines accordingly. And we did get ambushed by some laws in draft form that no one had bothered to circulate to anyone in e-Government but that will directly affect our outputs, but by Thursday morning we had already tamped those down and were working them into our final report. Overall, it was extraordinarily gratifying to have many hours of hard work pay off with an eager and engaged reception and a very satisfied client. The next few days we’ll spend ensuring that the final full-length report if of similar quality and contains the few tweaks that Dr. Getao requested.

We celebrated this milestone with some boisterous alcohol-fueled card games, neither of whose names are of a quality to be published in this blog, in the bar with the extended team. This weekend, most of the team will head to Lake Nakuru, while I hitch a matatu ride to Nairobi for one more crack at the Nairobi Hebrew Congregation, a long-awaited meet up with my dear college friend Ellen who works in the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, and some frantic souvenir shopping for what seems like an endless list of deserving recipients. One week from now, we’ll have finished our final client presentation and I’ll be on a plane to Kinshasa… how the time has flown.

The News You Refuse

I'm fortunate to count numerous journalists among my friends, so many that it's drastically skewed my perception to the positive. It occurs to me only in retrospect that all of them without exception are print journalists... and my infrequent exposure to the clowns on cable TV never even met the definitional criteria by which to affect the average. I have learned my lesson.
Our early morning meeting with the reporter started amiably enough with introductions, and random recollections from each other's respective hometowns manufactured from the mists of history playing the role of international travelers' small talk. "Ah, Rotterdam, I remember it well" and such.
We then dug in to what exactly he wanted to report on. We briefly detailed our respective projects, and he requested whether there were any "human interest" stories among us. I stammered and try to convey that the human interest stories were not the CSC participants, but the CSC beneficiaries, the citizens persevering while their country simultaneously experiences the birth pangs of democracy, attempts to modernize their economy, government and civil society, and teeters on the edge of chaos and violence, in a neighborhood too well accustomed to both. He persisted in inquiring about human interest stories on the team, but relented in the face of our blank stares and agape mouths. He then asked what we would be doing over the course of the day. As it so happened, we had a meeting scheduled with the district commissioner (an appointed mayor for the larger region - a frank, competent lady in charge of coordinating the efforts of 42 different government agencies in her location, and the first woman ever to hold her slot), but that didn't catch this newsman's fancy. The other teams were going to be working on their reports, debating ideas for innovation, and distilling them down into presentations - also nothing that raised his eyebrow.
He then literally said "Will anyone be doing anything with a screwdriver?" My already dumbfounded expression hit the pavement. "One of the unique aspects of the IBM program," I said, "is that rather than digging ditches or building houses - and trust me no one would want to live in any house I built - we're using our professional skills and honed expertise to bring more value to Kenyan society than we could by turning screwdrivers." I may as well have said it in Yiddish for the impact it had.
John, our teammate from marketing, quickly took control of the situation, clearly more accustomed to dealing with this type of vapid kabuki than any of us. He suggested a return visit to the school for the mentally disabled or the orphanage that we had just visited the prior Thursday, a proposal which immediately hit paydirt. I gagged a little bit, and turned off like a lightswitch. As Luan's boyfriend put it, "If he wanted a show, we could have sent him to the theater."
Are we really so facile as to demand only news which looks good? I will admit to not being an unbiased observer, but I actually think the problems we are working on (and dare I say some of the solutions we've come up with) are quite compelling. Our stories are counterintuitive to many Western notions about what is afoot in Africa, and represent the best chance for an emerging market country to pull itself up by the bootstraps out of a backdrop of plentiful basket cases into a somewhat prosperous, largely functional state. In Africa! Go know.
Our subteam ignored our newsman visitor for the rest of his foray here, which saved me the trouble of telling him where he could put his screwdriver. Instead, we had a very productive visit with the DC, and set up our presentation for the e-Government conference in Nairobi on Wednesday. On Tuesday, we'll give our client Dr. Getao a sneak peak, and then get up at the crack of dawn to trudge down the Thika Road. Once more, into the breach, dear friends, once more...

Dave != Mountain Climber

Today’s diversion was a quick jaunt up the 2^nd largest mountain in Africa and the largest in Kenya – the aptly named Mount Kenya. The six of us who opted out of the weekend in Mombasa, geared up at 7 AM and loaded into what may have been the rickiest excuse for Kenyan transport ever conceived. If it were a building, it would have been condemned. Our hour-plus commute to the gate of Mount Kenya National Park included what we’ve come to refer to as the “African Massage”, namely the laborious journey over poorly maintained infrastructure in vehicles notable not only for their complete lack of shock absorbers but the deafening din that their apparently loosely coupled parts make while ambling down the rocky roads.

We set off with a modest goal of making it to the first base camp, since we had a day to spend on the mountain instead of the five days necessary to summit. The vistas were gorgeous, but after an hour and as the incline increased, doubts began to set in.

Been there. Climbed that.

By hour two, I was left with two questions: Mah Rabu Maasecha Hashem? and What The Hell Was I Thinking? My feet hurt, the dust off the mountain was choking me, the sun was beating down even though the climate was temperate, and the path seemed interminable. But no one suggested we quit, and on we trudged until we made it up to Met’s Camp at 10,000 feet and immediately collapsed. An accomplishment, but not enough to justify me taking up a new hobby. Our hikemate John is heading immediately to Kilimanjaro after our CSC assignment to attempt to summit it in 5 days. Good luck, kemosabe, I’ll be stateside with my feet in Epsom salts in solidarity.

The way back down was much easier and more leisurely, which allowed us to enjoy the views, birdsong and flowers.

Back at the gate, the DeathMobile threatened not to start up until the driver fiddled with EXPOSED WIRES underneath the dashboard, took out the battery and shook it, and had our guide physically push our Matatu Minus out of its parking space. Being in a different seat on the way home, I was able to identify the literal hole in the floor through which I could see the road whizzing by beneath us. On the way home, we were tempted to recommend turning on the air conditioner to see if the engine would immediately catch fire.

We will be very, very sore in the morning, but at least we’re not the latest traffic statistics.

Supposedly, a crew from CNBC is arriving in the morning to chat with us, so I decided to hit the barber to see about reducing the extent of my Jewfro. I was unceremoniously declined as soon as I entered as the hairdresser said “I can cut hair, but I cannot cut your hair. It is very complicated.” Sigh.

Taking a break from the grind

Today we took a break from our work schedules to spend some time in the communitiy of Nyeri. We spend time at the Allemanos Special School for mentally disabled children, and the Mweiga Orphanage, both of which are only a few kilometers from our hotel.

The conditions we met may have been shocking from an American perspective, but they were in line with much of what we have seen around Kenya, and the kids all seemed happy and well cared for. Once one reorients their vision to a country without building codes (at least outside the major cities) and with minimal material possessions (allowing that most of what we stock up on in the States is without regard for a need/want/just to have it distinction), you begin to absorb the actual experience of the people instead of their superficial surroundings. And in both cases, the first person experience of the kids seemed superb.

At Allemanos, we were prepared to not really have any interaction with the kids since so few of them are capable of communication. But from the moment we arrived, it was clear that standard verbal communication was not going to be required. We parked the cars, and walked down to the sports fields where the students were having Physical Education. Immediately a wave of at least 100 kids of all ages, identically dressed in gray jumpers FLOODED towards screaming at the top of their lungs. Within moments, there were multiple kids leading us around by the hands, kicking soccer balls, dancing, and just generally making clear their unrestrained glee at our presence. In some ways, it was the least foreign experience that I’ve had since I’ve been here. These kids, deprived of speech, were like similar kids anywhere in the world – unburdened by the knowledge of their own limitation, and absolutely satisfied, even ecstatic, within the boundaries defined for them.

We started up an IBMers vs. Allemanos soccer game, which basically consisted of the 6 male IBMers versus about 30 mixed-gender Allemanos students. They had seemingly boundless energy, but we had precision. After giving up an early goal in part due to amazement, I took a perfect feed from John and tied it up with an open goal. Rami would have been so proud. Alex, our DOT liaison, joined us and scored the next goal despite his inappropriate alligator shoes. And Francesco put us ahead for good. I let up a late goal, but we triumphed 3-2… our hosts did not seem put out.

After the kids had some lunch and we some tea with the school administrators and teachers, we got a short tour of the facility – a simple kitchen where the aptly named Charity cooks the 400 meals per day that the school requires, a nicely outfitted physical therapy gym, a garden that the more able kids help maintain, a cow pen where the half dozen oxen provide milk for the school again with assistance from the pre-vocationally functional students, the laundry, the dormitories and the classrooms. Most of the buildings were donated from societies in Europe, though all of the staff is constituted of government employees.

My colleague Francesco brought an extra laptop and provided Sister Jane, the school administrator, with the school’s first computer, complete with a USB modem which will outfit them with internet connectivity.

The kids put on a lovely presentation singing and dancing with full vigor, and most of the IBM team joined in the fun. All in all, an extraordinarily rewarding visit.

Our next stop was an orphanage in Mweiga. I was creeped out by the welcome we received, which consisted of well-rehearsed songs, dance numbers and a (weak) comedy routine. My allergy increased as the time went on as I asked myself “Is this another safari?” I got suspicious that maybe this was the donor shpiel that the administrators had the kids put on in order to extract more foreign money from visiting pockets, and I withdrew from the crowd to talk to some of the kids around the periphery. Fortunately, my impression seems to have been inaccurate, and the kids I spoke with were very well adjusted and not at all put upon by the proprietors to gussy up to visitors. I spoke with Theresa, a 13 year old girl who was caring for their newest orphan – pudgy 9 month old. She was self-confident, articulate and pleasant, talking to me about her desires to go to the University of Nairobi and study accounting, her satisfaction with her local school, the big-sisterly role that she plays with some of the other girls in the orphanage and the general litany of teen stuff. She was decked out in a High School Musical t-shirt, naturally, though I never got to ask her if she actually knew what that was.

I played some soccer (poorly) here as well, and then broke out some of the gifts we had brought, specifically the construction paper and massive bin of crayons that Bianica had brought. Immediately the kids converged on me and I was awash in children showing off how well they could write their names or draw a flower. It was adorable. I broke out my rusty origami skills and started doling out paper cranes and fortune tellers to much acclaim. Reka then graced the kids with some salsa dance instruction which they seemed to catch onto quickly (certainly relative to me). I got some face time with the 9-month-old who was initially quite shy, but the patented Sloan baby charm bore fruit and the international language of “Boop on the nose” was received with the requisite smiles and giggles. The skies opened and the rain started to call, which we took as a clear sign that our day was over.

The next day, we proceeded to Kimathi University, where I had the opportunity to address about 100 students on the general topic of why IBM is cool and why they should Think Big. I was bowled over by the reception, with some of my Swahili humor getting a rise and very positive views from students and teammates alike. I stayed after to talk Watson with a few of the more inquisitive students while most of the students went for an IBM career workshop and to do some hands on work building functional smartboards from about $22 of materials.

Half the team then departed to Mombasa for the weekend, but I stayed back for another restful, if largely solitary, Shabbat. Tomorrow, we’re off to hike a bit on Mount Kenya before returning to our productive grind.

The Gory Guts of Government

Our whirlwind day in Nairobi started in Nyeri at 5:30 AM followed by a three and a half trek south. It was a frantic sprint over poor roads and unmarked speed bumps for much of the journey with a few jar-rattling moments, with the last third of the trip spent staring at the bumper in front of us in a choking traffic jam from Thika into the capital which is apparently de rigeur. The massive road building projects in process seem to be targeted at exactly this migration pattern, but there seem to be enough cars transiting to fill the new road with plenty to spare.

We arrived at  Nyayo House (which still gives me chills) slightly late for our first meeting with the General Counsel of the Immigration Ministry the organization that has subsumed most of the government's Registration departments. We were shuttled up through the masses into the VIP elevator and whisked into his office. What followed was a frank discussion about which laws they respect and which they don't and how we can ensure that our legislation falls into the former camp. Government authorizing legislation is so vertical here, with empowering acts dedicated to each of the ministries, that cross-cutting rules are relatively rare. Success will depend as much on the political power of our sponsor as the quality of our report, but we'll do our part.
We then delved into the front lines of the processes we hope to reform, getting an all-access tour thanks to our backing from the President's office. We began with the head of Passport issuance, who held forth at length on the Somali threat, bragged - rightfully - about the degree to which IT automation in that process has squeezed out the opportunities for graft. Touring the floor was dizzying but not without some method behind the madness. The duplication and over-specialization within the step-by-step-by-step carousel of clerks was at least organized, publicly posted and ultimately effective (if not efficient) in that it can turn around a well-qualified passport request in 14 days (quicker than the US to my recollection). Our magnificent guide took us through the pre-check, the verifying clerk, the cashier, the photographer, the scanner, the indexer, the recommender and the adjudicator. Astoundingly, all of this is done without a whit of external validation or cross-checking unless there is a whiff of suspicion, despite the fact that they have the entire process automated and online access to perfectly good sources of validations. Not only that, but the din is undiminished as people from all over the country flock into this one of only five national processing centers for passports, both to file their application and pick up their finished passports - a daunting task as you can imagine for people coming from the sticks. We saw numerous people turned away for issues with their paperwork or improper materials for pickup. The notion of corruption was literally laughed away, blaming it on "blockers" outside who stand outside the offices posing as expediters who make off with hard-earned, unschooled shillings with no results. (Others have told us that the blockers are only still able to hang around because they kick up to the bosses within the Ministry.)

We took tea with the ministry CIO, Jane Otoko, who was quite blunt with what she hopes to get out of e-government and how we can best achieve it within our allotted time frame. We then proceeded to the low point, at least until that time, of the organization process at Makadera station deep in the neighborhoods of Nairobi. Gone were the gleaming computers, well ordered queues, clear processes, and pressed uniforms. These were ramshackle huts, literally sticks bound with twine at some points, populated by a listless group of unbusy bureaucrats whose chief duty appeared to be delaying the snaking line of humanity outside their door from getting their National ID cards.The administrator held forth in painful and painstaking detail about the finer points of each inane step of their process, proudly displaying "archives" of paper logbooks tenuously stacked in jury-rigged bookcases. No window was intact. No clerk strayed from their designated simple portion of the task. Their tools seemed plucked from the 18th century. No customers were served simultaneously, each one waiting for the one before to complete the full Model-T assembly line process. The opportunities for subjective evaluations, inexplicable delays, and corruption abounded. A single web-form could render all of them irrelevant and their customers served at a much higher level.

Those few of them who were working in a dilapidated concrete structure had an interesting cornerstone.

Given my experience yesterday, one would expect it to say "killed fighting FOR Mau Mau" especially on a building populated by the government that has now dedicated their national holiday to them. A fascinating dissonance.

We rushed back to Sheria House in the government complex and met with the Attorney General's CIO, who tried to give us a clearer idea of what we needed to provide the legislative drafters. In the course of the meeting he enlightened us to the 255 forms that they provide for corporate legislation, the five types of marriage they register (civil, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and African customary), and the hodgepodge of other functions their office serves.

On the ground floor, we then witnessed what was the most striking of all the processes we experienced today - the Birth Certificate registration office. Only 60% of Kenyan births are registered, since many still occur at home, especially outside of Nairobi. Many children are not registered until they need to sit for matriculation exams, and the administrator was telling us of cases where people don't register their birth until age 70, when they want a passport to leave the country. The process is completely manual, with the only computers involved being one set for printing the certificates, by manually typing them and then printing onto form paper, and calculating statistics, by manually typing collected numbers into an Excel spreadsheet with over 70 tabs and copying the numbers into a "report" in Microsoft Word. The actual records are stored in hundreds and hundreds of red backed books dating back decades and decades. These books are on shelves, on desks, strewn on the floor and, in at least one instance, being used as doorstops. Foot-high piles of applications rested on every spare surface, with some clerks unable to see over the pile in front of them. No process was apparent although the administrator assured us it existed. The dysfunction was dazzling, and I've provided a brief snippet below. This is one of those areas where someone concerned with e-Government throws up their hands and does not know where to begin, except maybe with a match and a jug of kerosene.

We finished off the day meeting with Vivian from IBM East Africa at a delightful repose called the Nairobi Java House, a Starbucks knock off which definitely smelled, felt and tasted like carefully calibrated corporate issue home. I'm not saying I miss it, but it's impossible to deny the draw.

Aberdares

I almost had nothing to write about today, as my iPod/Alarm Clock determined now was a good time to reset itself back to Eastern time. The same rooster that I threatened with bodily harm yesterday, today I owe my timely arrival at the front desk to meet up with Isaac, my driver up to the Aberdares. A gorgeous ride, complete with swirling hills, gaping green valleys, every shape and size of kiosk and roadside market along the way and some of the worst infrastructure my rear end has ever had the misfortune to experience at highway speeds. The next NGO to grace Kenya should be Meineke, and they should bring shocks.

We arrived at the Aberdares around 8 AM and immediately started a game drive around very different environs than I had experienced outside of Nairobi. The wide open dusty plains were replaced with lush greenery, providing a much more scenic backdrop, but also a much more dense camouflage to shield the objects of our interest. Animals would often burst from the foliage and out across the plain into another shelter before I could even power up my camera. Nonetheless, we enjoyed seeing more zebras, eland, bushbuck, waterbuck, gazelles, warthogs, water buffalo, rabbits, wild horses, and a phenomenal assortment of birds their untamed plumage luxuriant in the early morning sunshine.

We saw a number of majestic reticulated giraffes, and my guide Martin, gave me the "book" on giraffes: "Magnificent in appearance, Colossal in height, Bizarre in form, Unique in gait and Inoffensive in character". 18 feet tall on a base of only 4 feet, raising both left legs, then both right legs when walking (try it sometime, you'll fall over within three steps), and as mellow as their neck is long. Though the inoffensive character has its limits, as the kick from a giraffe can kill a lion. After a 14 month gestation, the giraffe gives birth while standing, which leaves it's 4 foot tall progeny to fall 2 feet to the ground once it emerges. Quite a harsh way to start life, no?

The briefest but most fascinating part of the trip was to the Mau Mau cave, a hide out under a rock abutment overlooking a glorious valley. Here over 100 Mau Mau were stationed along with other caves dotting the Nyeri countryside. They live off game meat and wild plants. Their ranks consisted of commanders, warriors, transporters who would bring food from cooking sites (lest the column of smoke give away their location, and runners - young boys who would ferry messages between the various hiding spots. They stockpiled weapons by raiding police stations, and administered illegal loyalty oaths to as many of their countrymen as they could. My guide and driver

This particular hide-out met with an abrupt end when the British bombed it and buried the remains of the 114 Mau Mau based there in the debris. How could the British have identified this location in this vast land? There begins the real story.

The Mau Mau were not defeated by the British. Fighting on foreign lands against an agile force which had minimal supply needs and indiscriminate standards of warfare, the British did not stand a snowball's chance in hell. Even the Masai askari that the British were able to hire as mercenaries were on unfamiliar territory and could match the Mau Mau in ferocity but not in mastery of the land. However, the Mau Mau were so fierce even amongst the loyalty they demanded from their own people (the first high profile killing by the Mau Mau was of a Kikuyu police official) that they began to alienate other Kikuyu who joined the Home Guard, a British sponsored security force. More and more, the Home Guard became constituted of disaffected Mau Mau who would expose their former crews' location, tactics, supply chains, and identities. Eventually the threat of retribution by the Mau Mau became hollow, and people could cross them with impunity, and the Mau Mau were squashed by the British and the Home Guard.

The damage, however, was already done, and the wound to the British colony festered and would not heal. The myth that the vast majority of Kenyans preferred their British masters was dispelled and a decade after the genesis of the Mau Mau's campaign, Kenya was granted its independence.

But the story doesn't end here. For although the titular head of the new Kenyan state, Jomo Kenyatta, had been jailed in isolation for years as a Mau Mau organizer, many others in the power structure came right out of the Home Guard. In fact, what happened was unlike anything I've heard of in any other country. In most instances, the winners appoint their leaders the historical heroes. History is written by the victors and all that. But who were the victors here - the Mau Mau, without whom the British might still rule these lands, or the Home Guard, who effectively slaughtered the Mau Mau by betraying them to the British?

 Instead of a straightforward answer to this question, those in power played a sly double game. The Home Guard and their ilk maintained all the control and wealth, but passed on all the glory to the Mau Mau heroes. So today there are statues, universities and streets named for Kimathi (a homicidal loon by most accounts), but those who stood in solidarity with Kimathi are impoverished and underserved to this day, while those who turned him in are living quite well, praising him at every opportunity. In fact, the Mau Mau's illegal status was recently revoked, and the new Constitution even transforms the previous national holiday from Kenyatta Day to Mashujaa Day - literally Heroes Day - which celebrates the Mau Mau warriors. On this day, the Mau Mau and their descendants are paraded around and feted, only to be returned to their fetid environments as soon as the fireworks dim. Whether this historical deception will pass without redress is a fascinating topic for a Kenyan PhD sociology thesis at some point in the future, but it's known by everyday Kenyans, who seem to adopt the same attitude that has baffled me all this time - the past is past, focus on the future.

I ended the morning with a leisurely row in a small boat around a natural lake in the shadow of Mount Kenya, and then headed back to Nyeri to take up our project again... no rest for the weary.

We returned to the main roads passing through the 6,500 acre ranch of an eccentric German who demands complete silence on his lands, but flies his helicopter back and forth from here to Nairobi.

Back to work...

Shabbat Nyeri

With the rest of the group enjoying a Safari in Samburu,  a Shabbat of solitude was in the offing.






I set up my little Shabbat corner of my room, and jumped in, lighting candles (something I’m certain I haven’t done in at least 13 years if not longer). Knowing that all of the rooms surrounding me were assigned to my colleagues and therefore empty, I let loose, serenading the unperturbed trees outside my window with a full volume Carlebach Kabbalat Shabbat, something I haven’t really done since my last Friday night at Kesher back in October. About halfway through, I could hear the muezzin from the local mosque behind the treeline and across the highway joining in, something that recalled davening in certain locations in Jerusalem.

Emotionally, it was a mix of the transcendence of davening apart, away, and in complete isolation and longing for the top shelf family time that normally constitutes a Shabbat evening. But having made my solitary bed, I aimed to sleep with gusto, pacing my prayers according to me own whim, lingering on tunes that felt right, and singing every Shabbat zemer published in the Koren siddur. My Shabbat meal constituted of a mini-Kedem grape juice, 2 whole wheat matzot, a tin of tuna fish, a packet of RJ’s Kosher Beef Jerky and an orange – basar v’dagim v’chol matamim – and I was off to bed.

Since all my timepieces are electronic, I can’t tell you what zmanim I observed, but I can tell you precisely when I woke up, as the rooster who has made himself a home just out of view but not out of earshot from our bank of rooms has been quite punctual all week. He has no snooze button, and his repeated crowing is quite impossible to sleep through. I hope to kill that bird.

Praying in the morning was similar to the previous night, although layning the parasha to myself alerted me to how rusty I’ve become, gotta work on that before Rami’s bar mitzvah. Before lunch, I caught myself pausing a second time after “Savri” in Kiddush, which brough a smile to my face - as if I expected one of my avian audience to reply “L’Chaim”.

I leisurely strolled around the town and the Green Hills campus for some of the day, indulged myself a long Shabbat afternoon nap, and enjoyed a few selections from the Mitoch HaOhel collection of drashot from YU that the Rosenbaums presented to me as a going away present. The frenetic pace of our work during the week and the full stop of this Shabbat put the conceit of progress and the humility of rest in lovely contrast, and I thought for a while about the proper frame of reference for our work here. Though I hope that all of us are able to make substantive contributions during our brief stay, Shabbat brought home the notion that Kenya was here long before us and will be here long after us, and our fondest wish can only be that its progress, whose success will be determined by factors indubitably far out of our control, is ever so slightly buoyed by our efforts.

Tomorrow I rise early to head out into the Mau Mau caves, fortunately long since abandoned.

Shavua tov!

Some background on Nyeri

A very productive morning, after which my colleagues headed out "into the bush" to spend some time on safari in Samburu. Samburu is not particularly Shabbat-friendly (not that Nyeri is significantly better, but at least I have the span of the Green Hills to roam), so I opted to stay alone. My Sunday free, I signed up for an early morning excursion into the Aberdares, the nearest National Park to the area, and a hike to tour the Mau Mau caves.

I haven't written much about our home base of Nyeri, but it is Kikuyu Central. The Kikuyu are the largest of Kenya's 42 communities, yet hold power, wealth and influence even in excess of their numbers. In fact, President Mwai Kibaki is from this town. Nyeri now is indistinguishable from many other towns its size in Kenya, but during the dying days of the British Protectorate, this area served as the home base for the Mau Mau Rebellion, a bloody and vicious time prior to Kenyan independence. The myth and history of the Mau Mau have become indistinguishable in many cases, but it is likely that they were driven to revolt by the typical excesses of colonialism - shortage of land devoted to the natives, outrages visited upon the local communities, a complete stripping of their political rights - and it is undisputed that they dwelled in the forests around Mount Kenya, stockpiling captured weapons to add to their signature Panga long machetes, and unleashed violent attacks ostensibly in the hopes of driving out the British and other white Europeans.

At this point, the accounts veer into the gory and easily exaggerated, but hyperbole or no, they were trying times for Kenya. Tens of thousands of Kenyans died (a significant number due to internecine violence) and another 70,000 were imprisoned over the course of a conflict which killed less than 100 Europeans but made the case that the British protectorate was failing and likely led to Kenyan Independence in 1963. All this within a small radius of our current home. In fact, the local university where I'll be speaking at the end of next week is called Kimathi College, named after Dedan Kimathi, a Mau Mau freedom fighter/terrorist (your pick) who is currently hailed in Kenya, but was known at the time for strangling to death those who he suspected of treason until his alienated followers joined up with the British, captured him, held him less than a mile from our hotel, and then executed him by hanging after a court decision in absentia. I'm hoping for a knowledgeable guide who will be able to provide some first hand or close second hand knowledge of those times for me.

In the meantime, I've got my own Shabbas Safari planned that consist of pray, eat, walk, read, sleep, repeat. Shabbat Salama.

Reaching out

Today we spent much of our time reaching out to a variety of local and national government officials. Since our project spans the gap between e-Government and its constitutional, legislative and regulatory underpinnings, we have a broad range of technical and legal within the government who we need to interview in order to ensure that our recommendations are relevant and actionable. Given our short time frame, it's already remarkable how many meetings we've been able to coordinate at relatively high levels. I know that if the tables were turned, I'd be deleting emails and sending calls to voice mail left and right. Fortunately, that hasn't been the case here.

In parallel, we're developing detailed interview documents that spell out exactly what information we need to get from each stakeholder, and doing our own research via the web to determine what some of the answers are likely to be, and what other answers can be brought from outside the country as global best practices to benefit Kenya. It's massive, but fascinating reading for my inner geek as we compare e-government legislation in Norway, the U.K., Finland, Australia, the U.S., South Korea and others.

OK, enough work talk, here's another piece of local color. Luan, Nimeesh and I had lunch in Nyeri again today, at another second story cafe, this one open air. The heat of the day and omnipresent dust was not enough to erase the enjoyment of drinking in the sights and sounds of this bustling small town. I'm confident that there's no corner like it in the US anywhere - bumper to bumper cars, people milling about, in front of storescape that is devoid of brand names, each one hand painted with the proprietors name above it, none of them busy, but all of them eking out a living. Below the balcony was a man tending a small, crowded coop of chickens, and an even more crowded cardboard box of chickens, which led me to jibe that my colleagues lunch would at the very least be fresh.

A trip to a bank to make the deposit for the group's weekend safari led to an experience with the always flexible closing time. 3:10 can become 3:00 with a kind word, and we walked into an ultra-modern Barclay's Bank which seemed to defy the space and time around it, as if it was a portal to a first world country.

The negotiations at the bank took longer than we expected, we had already taken a leisurely lunch, and it was hot, so we decided to grab a cab back instead of walking. For 200 shillings (about $2.50), it seemed a reasonable luxury. My rudimentary Swahili was enough to identify and procure a vehicle (cabs are not marked anywhere in Kenya that I can tell, but certainly not in Nyeri). Fortunately the cardboard on the passenger side floor was sturdy enough to keep my feet from touching the street. As we drove up the main road, I was dismayed to see the driver pull into the Koboil gas station on the corner. I questioned the customer service wisdom of fueling up with a car full of passengers until I glanced over at the driver's side dashboard and realized that it was amazing that we had made it to the gas station, given that the needle was firmly on "E". Sure enough, the driver asked for his fare at this point. He took 100 shillings and put it in his pocket, and gave me back the other 100 shillings to give to the service attendant, enough to buy 1 litre of gasoline. His fuel gauge ever so slightly buoyed by the stop, he ferried us back to the Green Hills front gate. And here's the good part. He then gave me his cell phone number in case I ever needed a cab again in Nyeri. This is to say, that this guy who sits around the center of town waiting for the rarest rarity of a cab fare, so much so that his means of livelihood and transportation stands on the verge of uselessness with vapors so evanescent that the kilometer each way to our hotel would stand a fighting chance of exhausting them, who can spare only one quarter of a gallon of gas at a fill-up, nonetheless has a CELLULAR PHONE which he will fund and maintain even at the risk of disabling his only apparent source of income. I have nothing more to add.

We returned immediately to work upon our return, this time choosing the grassy plaza as our "office". A sudden rain forced us inside, and the rhythmic patter of the rapid drops on the corrugated tin roof made the passing shower sound more like a typhoon. It mostly drowned out the noise of the absurdly sonorous aerobics class though, and provided a steady soundtrack to our furious work efforts, which carried over to a brief dinner and then back to the bar for a few more productive hours.

Next will be my first Shabbat in isolation in Nyeri... more to come.

Day One?

Despite the fact that I've been in Kenya for a week, this felt like Day One all over again. If nothing else, this was our first "regular" day, waking up with no agenda, no appointments, just a blank sheet of paper, and a sackload of expectations. We reported to our crammed work room, accompanied by a selection of Kenya’s six-legged fauna. A butt-ugly marabou stork methodically patrolled the terrace outside. John, our delegate from Marketing, promptly saw to it that the room was plastered with Smarter Planet posters, while the rest of us attempted to figure out the massive 80s era network router in the middle of the table.

Our team jumped right into the meat of our project, breaking down the issues we hoped to tackle, identifying the stakeholders and sources of information we would draw upon for data, and overall taking a disciplined and methodical but aggressive approach towards a broad and complex situation.

After a non-stop morning, we broke for lunch and headed en masse into Nyeri town, separated from us only by the near vertical stretch of road that undoubtedly earned our hotel its name of Green Hills. The town itself is less than a kilometer from our door, but only half that distance be forward progress, the rest must be ascent and descent. Nyeri itself is a small but vibrant town, dusty and shabby on the whole, but hardly desolate with the buzz and bustle of a market town around every corner. The storefronts probably average about 6 feet wide, selling everything from auto parts to liquor to cellular phones to household goods to cellular phones to hair products to cellular phones. I’m still floored by the degree to which people who look like they don’t have ten shillings to spare are all toting mobile phones. Out of an abundance of caution, I doffed my yarmulke, as we entered the city proper, and we meandered over to the Nyeri Town View restaurant, situated on the second floor overlooking what must suffice as the center of town, marked only by a small blue and white obelisk at the middle of an intersection frequented by decrepit cars and trucks of questionable structural stability. We crowded into the compact diner, which managed to stash a kitchen, a full bar, and two dining areas into a tract no larger than my two-car garage. Still, the service was warm and welcoming as it has been everywhere we’ve ventured in Kenya, and for the meager sum of 250 shillings each (about $3), my mates feasted on a platter piled high with chicken, rice and vegetables, barely making a dent before capitulating to the generous portions.

We headed deeper into town after lunch, with Nimeesh and I serving as the scout team. We located a barber shop, a 4 shelf grocery store narrow enough to require a sharp exhale in order to pass someone in the aisle, a few more cell phone stores – really Safaricom, Zain and Mpesa are omnipresent, I counted three Safaricom stores alone on one block – and the ultimate goal of our wanderings, a store selling bicycles. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, even after bargaining, we were met with the “Tourist Surcharge” which might be more unceremoniously dubbed the “White Man’s Price” and the price was beyond our tolerance. We made a mental note to beseech our Kenyan program manager Alex to inquire after the same cycles and see if the price didn’t drop by a solid 20% or more.

In the afternoon, we got back to work, which turned out for most of the folks to be equal measure drafting interview questions and arranging for weekend safaris, but we made steady progress. Some took a break for a one hour aerobics session held at the hotel which is apparently hosted by a half-deaf black Richard Simmons hopped up on amphetamines. Those exiting the class resembled those exiting Nam.

The PCK team visited the local Posta branch and were pleasantly shocked to be greeted with open arms by the branch manager who welcomed them in without an appointment, and despite their complete lack of business attire or formal preparation, held for over an hour, giving them an invaluable front line account of everything that transpires at the branch level… certainly a tremendous boost to their challenging project.

After a quick dinner we got right back to work, this time retiring to the un-updated but perfectly comfortable hotel bar, and beginning our legal interpretation and gap analysis, while sipping some Tuskers and gin and tonics. We dubbed this our new official after hours office, and worked through an entire edit of our day’s work.

Tomorrow, our work structure finalized, we begin our research in earnest!

Today’s activities were brought to you by the word surreal. If you would have asked me to assign a number value to the likelihood that I would be in Nyeri relaxing in a bar with a Tusker, interrupting our discussion of the finer points of the Kenya Communication Act of 2009 to bend an ear to the TV news to learn the latest twists in the Attorney General appointments imbroglio if only to figure out who we’re going to be meeting with in Nairobi next week, pausing only briefly to define the word “promulgate” to my Korean colleage, I would have given you a low single digit percentage which rhymes with “hero”. Go know.