Tim Is No Longer in Africa

Many of you probably know this, but I'm in the midst of a big transition from East Africa to the East Coast of America, specifically Washington, D.C. My year in Rwanda has come to an end, but I was fortunate to be offered another contract by VisionFund, which will allow me to be based out of the USA while I take trips around the world to do a couple projects at their MFIs.

It'll probably be several months or years before I can do a proper postmortem on my time in Rwanda- it was definitely transformative, and one of the best times of my life, but for the moment I'm looking forward. I will be joining many good friends who are already in our nation's capitol; living with fellow T4 alum and 'Old Man' Peter Chang, and definitely meeting with all my other friends for regular freedom celebrations at Old Glory.

I'm going to be very busy the next few weeks and months; furnishing the apartment, getting settled in DC, conducting training for work/being trained, and preparing for (possibly) several more trips overseas before the end of the year.

If the first few days back in the states are any model for what my life will be like now, I may decide to just ship off back to Africa. I arrived from Dubai early Saturday morning, went through immigration, and was notified that my 11 am flight down to DC had been canceled on account of the hurricane.

No problem, said I; I'll find a flight on Sunday or Monday, use my World Vision card to get a hotel room, and wait out the storm. After all, my time traveling through Africa has made me nothing if not flexible.

A series of events followed that resulted in something of a perfect travel storm- my phone was out of battery, it was the weekend and couldn't reach the travel office, there were no available flights for the next two days, no available hotels in the entire city, and we were told to evacuate the airport. I joined forces with a couple Austrian ladies ("G'day, mate!" Yes, I said it to them) who were trying to get back to Europe, and we shared a taxi to the evacuation shelter. The friendly New Yorkers at the first location told us to go elsewhere, as we didn't want to stay there unless we had a gun.

So I spent Sunday afternoon and night on a cot at School 108 in Queens, listening to the drizzle + breeze outside reach epic, hurricane-like conditions of a slightly heavier drizzle and slightly stronger wind. Anthony Perez was able to pick me up the following morning, and we went to his house on Long Beach to hang out until transportation resumed.

Finally caught a Bolt Bus down to DC, and here I am- a couple days late, but non the worse for wear. I'll post occasionally about the places I go. Your prayers for travel mercies are always welcome.

Lake Bunyonyi

Last weekend, I went to Lake Bunyonyi with Caitlin and Christina. Bunyonyi is in Uganda, just north of the Rwandan border. We took a matatu two hours north, went through customs, and then took two taxis a couple more hours to the lake. We arrived shortly before sunset, and hopped in a canoe for the trip to the island.


Bunyonyi is part of the African Rift Valley lakes, and though it is small, it is thought to be over 900 meters deep, making it the second deepest lake in Africa. It is dotted with dozens of small islands, many of which house their own resorts and campgrounds.


The accommodations are rustic, but comfortable. The cabins have solar hot water heaters and electricity, and the food in the restaurant is excellent.

The view from the shower was terrific.

Travel companions Caitie and Christina

Saturday we slept in, ate a leisurely breakfast, and rented a dugout canoe to go out on the lake. Upon learning how to steer, we went to another small island a couple kilometers away where we found a rope swing and a dock to lay out on. (Sorry, no photos- I was pretty sure that we were going to capsize, so I didn't bring my camera.) We returned to our home island before sundown, and joined a group of Scandinavian travelers for a game of soccer. My team lost, but I improved greatly in the hour that we played.

We then settled down for another enormous meal of delicious lake crawfish.



Seriously, the food was delicious.

Bujumbura

A couple weeks ago, I went with a group of friends to Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. Burundi is just south of Rwanda- in pre-colonial Africa, they were both part of the Kingdom of Rwanda, so they share the same ethnic makeup and language. It had a civil war which ended in 2004, so they are still very much on the rebound. Bujumbura is not as clean and orderly as Kigali, and overall seems poorer, but has some very nice clubs and restaurants.

We stayed in a bungalow on the shore of lake Tangyanika, the second largest lake in the world by volume (4500 cubic miles) and the second deepest lake in the world (4,800 feet at the lowest point.) By comparison, lake Superior has only 2900 cubic miles and is 1300 feet deep. I'm told the diving is terrific, but recommended only for the experienced.

There's not a ton to do in Bujumbura, except eat/drink/hang out at the lake, but we heard about a zoo in the city.

This zoo was charming yet terrifying, as only a zoo in the developing world can be. Here in the reptile house, our guide pulled a large viper out of his cage and set it on the floor so we could pet it. He also walked into a crocodile cage to tease one with a stick that was not very long.

The chimp, Tina, was a little more worrying for me than the snakes, what with the news stories in the last few years about people being mauled and killed by 'domesticated' chimpanzees. She tried to pull off peoples' clothes, jackets, rings, and bracelets.

The leopard was surprisingly similar to a housecat- playful, rubbing against the bars and letting us scratch her through the wire.

We also went into a cage with a monkey, who jumped around on our arms and heads for about half an hour before he started getting wound up and biting people.


We hung out a lot of the time at Bora Bora, a lakeside restaurant with a pool and delicious food, and at the Havana Club, a swanky night spot for dancing. Cool trip overall, mostly because of the people who shared it.

MONKEYS

Presented without further comment:

Kibuye

I went to Kibuye on Friday with some of my housemates- partly for my birthday, partly just to get out of the city for a bit.

As you can see, it's beautiful there. Kibuye is on the southern part of lake Kivu, one of the African Great Lakes in the region. A couple of us woke up at 5 am on Saturday to catch the sunrise:





This is the view from the night before, before a little rain:

Enjoying the Little Things

Rwanda is now 50% more 'extreme.'

Mountain Dew-



and bagels. Both of which I haven't had in 5+ months, and both of which I have become very fond of through their absences.

More Giraffe Pictures, Just Because

A Quick Word About Microfinance

My friend Anthony and I have a blog where we occasionally discuss various political issues. He posted a question some weeks ago concerning microfinance, which you can read here. Here is my response:


Microfinance is lauded by some as a silver bullet which will rescue poor societies by allowing people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, through providing financial services, training, and small loans to poor entrepreneurs. When microfinance is at its best, this is exactly what it does. It provides the means for people to provide for their families, save money, and improve their living situations. It avoids some of the problems of the traditional aid models, such as relying on corrupt governments, skewing local markets, and building dependence among the poor. Microfinance banks have typically targeted women, which has resulted in more freedom and empowerment for them; loans reduce the vulnerability of the poor during crises like sickness and drought. Repayment rates are typically high, and World Vision has reported increases in health and education, as families with loans are able to afford better living conditions and school fees.

But it comes with problems of its own. One obvious one is that microfinance, like any other tool, can be mishandled. It is not free from problems such as fraud, usury, and human error, just like other banks. Anthony mentions wealth disparity as a problem that might arise; to be frank, the real problem is nearly the opposite of this. The fact is that microfinance does little to help the poorest of the poor. They are usually trapped in subsistence activities, and if their loan does not help them grow their income beyond the interest rates, they will be worse off in the end. Most people in the developing world are not true entrepreneurs who have a visionary idea which can turn into profit and jobs for their community; 90% of these populations would be most benefited by a factory moving to their area and providing jobs. The International Labor Organization says that “nothing is more fundamental to poverty reduction than employment.”

So if a micro-entrepreneur is able to use a loan and develop a business where he can employ 100 people in his community, that will be far better than those 100 people getting their own loans to fund subsistence activities. The factory is able to access economies of scale and increase productivity; 100 women with their own sewing business simply crowd the market.

So to answer your question, in 10-20 years the criticism of microfinance will be that it wasn't able to deliver on the promise of curing poverty. It still is a good idea, and still helps millions of people around the world to provide for their families and defend against crises. But large-scale enterprises intensive in labor, public or private, will go much farther towards pulling societies out of poverty.

Into My Own

Picked up a collection of Robert Frost poems for my kindle last week, and just cracked it open today. The first poem in the set is about a boy leaving home, titled "Into My Own:"

ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Trip to Kenya Part 3: Mombasa and Nairobi

The bus back to Mombasa was relatively quick, and I was greeted upon arrival by the local branch manager who took me to the hotel. As I mentioned before, the hotel is pretty nice. It's situated on the beach, and has terrific buffets for the meals. I spent the weekend pretty much entirely at the hotel, taking a windsurfing class (verdict: I'm pretty terrible) and otherwise relaxing. Monday and Tuesday were spent at the office and in the field, where I got to meet some more clients.

Street scene outside the office in Mombasa

Back in Nairobi, I went into the office to wrap up some final business, and then went out to dinner with a former WV director who now lives in the Nairobi area. We went to 'Carnivore' restaurant, famous in its past for serving exotic game meats. Unfortunately, as of 2004, these meats are banned by law. There's a card on each table assuring the guests that the Carnivore management is committed to having these laws changed.

When you sit down, you are not brought a menu. You just get a heated plate, and a lazy susan filled with various sauces (above). The waiters carry around spits of meat, and they continue to pile slices on your plate until you lower your table's flag in surrender. The meats that I had were chicken, beef, pork, lamb, turkey, camel, crocodile, ostrich, and bull testicle. Terrific experience, but I have no desire to ever do this again.

Thursday I checked out of the hotel and went to the airport to meet another WV person, this time the marketing director who's partly in charge of my project. He wanted to see the giraffes, so we went to the Nairobi Giraffe Center.

As you can see by my photos, you can get pretty close to them. We fed them handfuls of pellets, which they would take out of your hand with their tongues. Our guide had a giraffe take food from between her lips, which is gross. I kept it in the hand.

After that, we went to the nearby Mamba Village (Mamba = crocodile in Swahili). Our guide helpfully poked at the crocodiles with a stick to make them hiss and roar and thrash about, which is significantly more entertaining than most crocodile exhibits at zoos.


There were also ostriches:


I'm back in Kigali now, and it looks like I'm here for the near future. I'll post more pictures from my trip on Facebook.

Mombasa!

Mombasa!

I'm in Mombasa now. It's hot, humid, and sunburny. And the hotel has delicious food, and I'm enjoying it here despite being constantly slapped in the face by the Valentine's Day decorations and the hostesses who keep asking, "How many? Just one?" Which makes sense because this is a beachside resort town. I need a woman to come travel with me.

Trip to Kenya Part 2: Kibwezi and Mutomo

I woke up at 5:30 to pack and get ready to catch the bus to Kibwezi. Kibwezi is a small town a little past halfway between Mombasa and Nairobi, on the main highway. So Lilian (the team leader/branch manager of the local office) picked me up at the hotel and got me on the bus to Nairobi. Since it's a major route, it's not exactly a matatu, but more of a tour bus with as many seats as passengers (usually). Still no AC though.

I took the 7:00 am bus to ensure that I would be in Kibwezi by noon or so to catch the 2:00 bus to Mutomo, another small town a few hours north that hosts a World Vision office. Look it up on Google earth to get an idea of where it is- it's in the middle of a drought-stricken but mineral rich region near Tsavo National Park, which is most famous for the Tsavo Man-Eaters, a pair of lions that killed 135 men working on the Ugandan Railway in 1898. The lions are now in the Chicago Field Museum (they're dead). So after driving through some pretty bleak landscape for six hours, I started to wonder when we were going to arrive. I had yet again failed to underestimate the African Way, and giving myself seven hours for what should have been a four to five hour drive was a mistake. The bus paused by the side of the road to let me out at 3:30 pm, nine hours after boarding. I was confident that I had missed the bus and would have to find alternate transportation to Mutomo. But as you may be able to forsee, I again overestimated the value of schedules in Africa. The bus was still loading, and Ambrose and myself were able to squeeze on. The best way to describe the bus is a Tokyo subway car combined with the family car from the Grapes of Wrath with all their household goods piled on top for the trip to California.


Since we were late, we were unable to get seats, so we had to stand in the aisle. As this is the only bus to do this route, and it only makes it twice a day, the bus was quite full- I did my best to count, and there were 40 seated, and almost another 30 standing in the aisle. No experience quite like barreling down a washboard dirt road packed into a bus so tightly that if anyone were to faint, they wouldn't touch the ground. And it's a given at this point, but there's no AC. Fortunately, we only had to stand for the first 45 minutes until some people left and we got their seats.

Notice the shadow of the bus? Those guys ride up there.

We arrived just before sundown and visited the ADP (Area Development Project- the name for a World Vision field office) office to use their internet and meet some of the staff. They were doing their work in the main meeting room that had a TV which was blasting En Nombre del Amor, a Mexican Telenovela which is dubbed in English for Kenyan consumption. It is apparently very popular- Ambrose told me on two separate occasions that he likes it because "the acting is very good." Ambrose is an interesting fellow- he is the middle child of 11, and is basically a one-man branch office for the Kenyan MFI, covering around 500 clients in a 50 km radius. As a result, he is an insanely hard worker.

L-R: Tim, Ambrose

We stayed in a local hotel that cost 500 Kenyan Shillings -about $6.50- for a room. Nothing fancy, but the hot water worked (despite nearly electrocuting me).

What $6.50 gets you in Kibwezi

Thursday morning we went to the WV office for the devotional and a brief presentation on the Micro project that I'm working on. They said they were busy, so I promised to keep it under 20 minutes- I finished in 15, and several told me it was too short. They said that usually when people say 20 minutes, it means an hour. We then took the Land Cruiser into the field to meet with clients. One client we spoke with, John, was a chemist who ran a small pharmacy in his village. With his loan he wants to increase the variety of drugs that he sells so that people in his community don't have to go the 30 km back to Mutomo for the Catholic hospital.

We were back on the bus down to Kibwezi by three. This time, the driver happened to be a friend of the WV driver, so we were able to get seats in the cab with the driver. This was much preferable to standing in the back, but was all the more frightening to realize how fast we were going. Back in Kibwezi, I spent the night in a hotel, and went out to the highway in the morning to flag down a bus going to Mombasa.

NEXT: Mombasa!

Trip to Kenya Part 1: Nairobi and Malindi

Like a boss

Flew into Nairobi for work on Sunday. I'm going to spend about two weeks in Kenya, doing training and various sundry activities related to microfinance. It's a nice change of pace, as Nairobi has full-on shopping malls that actually sell ice cream and donuts and Western candy (noticing a trend here?) and reasonably priced breakfast cereal. I walked from my hotel to the Nakumatt on Sunday and purchased a Snickers ice cream bar. Definite highlight.

I woke up at 2:45 am Monday morning to watch the Super Bowl. I watched on slingbox as best I could considering the poor connection, and went to sleep with the Packers up 21-10 just before halftime. I woke up two hours later just a few minutes after they were announced champions. Good way to start a day.

I spent Monday in the Nairobi office, and then flew to Malindi Monday night. It's a seaside city positively teeming with old Europeans with ridiculous tans and inappropriate clothes. Anyway, tomorrow I'm taking a matatu five hours into the bush to take another matatu another three hours further into the bush. Good times! I'll post photos when I get to Mombasa on Friday.

Couple o' photos

Apologies for the long delay since I last posted. It wasn't because I didn't have the time, although I have been getting steadily busier since my return from London, but because nothing very exciting has happened. Which I suppose is somewhat interesting in itself; it's feeling a lot more like home here, as I build routines and make friends.

Three activities that I've been doing pretty regularly- Ultimate Frisbee on Sunday afternoons, quiz night on Monday nights, and boxing class 1-2 times a week. I've met some cool people at all three, which has been nice. There's a decent expat community here in Kigali- lots of interns/aid workers/volunteers, but also embassy employees and businessmen. (Visitors' tip: the embassy people are the ones with sweet apartments. Go to their parties.)


Work has been going well. This last week I did a one-day training blitz from Gikongoro in the South to Ruhengeri in the North. The picture at the top is one of the volcanoes near the border with Uganda/DRC.

The other pictures are flowers at my house.

Jolly Olde England

I just got back from two awesome weeks crashing with Andrea and Dave in Wimbledon. The best part was obviously hanging out with Georgia Ruth, their brand new daughter, who is an exemplary baby. She has convinced me to drop everything, find a woman, and have one for myself. The Wallaces are just a couple stops away from London, so I went down several times to see the sights, such as the British Museum, filled with glorious, glorious plunder from ancient civilizations:

The Rosetta Stone

And also the Tate Modern, filled with unwashed masses of art students and if-you-don't-like-it-it's-because-you're-not-smart-enough-to-understand-it art.

The plaque next to this one had a complete paragraph talking about how it represented Adam and Eve and something about sex.

In all seriousness, the Tate was pretty sweet. I actually spent more time there than at the British Museum. They have a lot of the cool pop art like Warhol and Liechtenstein, and the weird stuff like Dali. My favorite was this German portrait photographer named Sander who was taking pictures of everyday people in the 30s. Hadn't heard of him before this visit.

I also visited Chipotle.

Other notable places we visited: Hampton Court Palace, where 400 yrs ago this year King James commissioned the first English translation of the Bible. Westminster Abbey for Evensong service. Herrod's to marvel at all the things I'll never be able to afford. Regent Street to marvel at all the things I'll never be fashionable enough to wear. More than a couple pubs. Wimbledon Common. Kingsbridge. Hyde Park. Buckingham Palace.

I'm working on plans for when I can return. It's a super place.