Mzungus, Microfinance, and MooCows

Sleepy Sheepy

Tue, 14 May 2013 02:56:10 -0400

Zzz….

Have you heard? Nicole likes guys with beards.

Thu, 09 May 2013 05:36:57 -0400

Have you heard? Nicole likes guys with beards.

I've officially been here too long

Wed, 08 May 2013 02:31:52 -0400

“Hey smell this.”

“Uh, what? Why?”

“Do you think my shirt smells a little mildewy? Smell it.” [sticks shirtsleeve under friends nose]

[smells shirt, makes confused face] “No, it smells fine. What are you talking about?”

“I dunno. I think it smells moldy. I don’t think the girl who cleans our house is doing the laundry right - a lot of my clothes end up smelling like mildew after she washes them.”

“Oh. So when the girl comes to your house to clean up after you, she hand washes your dirty clothes…and sometimes they smell funny?”

“Exactly! What the hell…”

“And did you have trouble sleeping last night because of the pea under your mattress?”

Right. Good point.

Speaker 1 was played by me, the jerk.

Speaker 2 was played by the co-founder of www.wowowo.ke.co, pronounced “woah, woah, woah” not “wow o wow”

Happy Easter (When one can’t go to Uganda for a long weekend one might opt to spend Easter...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 02:06:17 -0400

Happy Easter

(When one can’t go to Uganda for a long weekend one might opt to spend Easter in Kitale. And in Kitale they have very odd tourist attractions.)

Are you always that brown, or are you just tan? HR needs to know.

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:10:00 -0400

“Fahim! If you can get some days off at Easter we should use the long weekend to whitewater raft in Uganda, right!? We can just pop over the border. I can’t even stand it, this is going to be so much fun!”

“I can’t. They don’t give visas on arrival to Pakistanis. I’d have to come to Nairobi first and get a visa, and you know I can’t get the days off.”

US passport holder: 1

Pakistani passport holder: 0

”Fahim! I’ve been thinking about the places where you can work post fellowship. Don’t you think IDB is the best bet? You can do impact investing *and* Islamic financing all together at once. Seems like the perfect place for you right?”

“It does sound perfect. Except they have country quotas and there are all ready a lot of Pakistanis working there. Now if I’d been born in the US or the UK…”

US passport holder: 2

Pakistani passport holder: 0

”Fahim! OK fine. If you can’t work at IDB then you could spend a few years with a US based private equity firm. You might have to defer Islamic financing for a few years but at least you’d re-sharpen your traditional investment skills right?”

“Seriously Nicole? Have you been paying attention!?* I can’t get a job with a US private equity firm because I don’t have the right kind of visa.”

US passport holder: 3

Pakistani passport holder: 0

So let’s review. Because someone is born in a country like Pakistan and they have Pakistani “papers” it suddenly becomes far more difficult for them to get the jobs they want or even to travel freely between countries. And yet, any random dude born in a “developed” (aka “white”) country like the US or somewhere in Europe can basically waltz right into whatever country they want and apply for a job and have their eligibility for said job be evaluated based on (are you sitting down for this? things are about to get crazy) their qualifications! Not their birthplace!

It makes me want to scream. It. makes. me. want. to. fucking. scream.

When are we going to stop defining each other based on our skin color or the country in which we were born? Aren’t we more than that? Shouldn’t we be judged based on what’s in our hearts and how we treat each other? No…it’s clearly much easier to just scan the crowd for the ones with brown skin and keep them in the back.

* Fahim is about a thousand times nicer than I am so obviously he would never say, “Seriously Nicole? Have you been paying attention!?” That was me taking a bit of artistic license with our chats. Carry on.

Hold your breath and fill a market gap

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:26:41 -0400

About two weeks ago I got legal. No more temporary visas, no more special passes. All my immigration paperwork was processed and I was awarded a one-year work permit. Holler.

One of the side benefits of getting a work permit is that I can also apply for a resident card which will allow me to get discounts in all the National parks - this is quite exciting since my first proper visitors are booking flights this week. However, in order to acquire this golden pass I had to apply in person at the immigration office downtown.

Immigration. Where law-abiding citizens age for hours and days and weeks in line until they are so tired and beaten down that they can’t even remember why they went to the office in the first place.

Although I was ready for a litany of bureaucratic and ever-changing requirements I was pleasantly surprised when I only got rejected by the man behind the iron-barred immigration counter once. My application was rejected because my two (2) passport sized photos had been shot against a pale grey background, instead of (as he so artistically stated) a “snow white background.” I tried to explain to him that in the US snow in the city is often the color of my passport photo - dirty and grey and almost never white. He was not amused. He told me to get out of line.

Annoyed but not surprised by this turn of events I went outside and asked one of the security guards where I could get new passport photos printed. I expected him to give me the location of some photo shop several blocks away. But instead he said, “Oh just wait right here.”

I did, and suddenly an enterprising young man came up and introduced himself to me and led me to the bus stop across the street. There, in the corner of the matatu stage where it reeked of urine and other unmentionables this gentleman took my photo. I began to protest and tried to share my requirement of a white background, but before the words left my mouth this man’s business partner stepped behind me and held up a white sheet for the photo.

This was not their first rodeo.

The team disappeared to some undisclosed location to print the photos and 10 minutes and 500 shillings later I had 2 new passport photos in my hand.

I don’t want to think about the various agreements that may or may not be set up to share this photo revenue between the guys with the cameras, the security guards, or even the immigration officers. Instead I like to think that these young men simply saw a market gap, and filled it.

Hurray for the hustle.

nataliegrillon: @nbiden indeed - mathare Nairobi

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:25:10 -0400

nataliegrillon:

@nbiden indeed - mathare Nairobi

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself..."

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 04:26:16 -0400

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”

- - Albert Einstein

I was in India. On a road outside of Delhi. This happened next...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:45:48 -0400

I was in India. On a road outside of Delhi. This happened next to us. This is real, documented by my own hand, with my own iPhone.

Watch.

And then giggle furiously.

Well, that’s what I do. I guess you don’t have to giggle furiously…you know, if you hate life or whatever.

(if the embedded vid doesn’t work - try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDtq4vMemzM)

To my horcruxes

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:12:00 -0400

It can be an ugly thing, you know? Missing people. Being acutely aware of the fact that the ones you love most are far away. You can think fondly of them. You can email them. You can even talk to them on the phone. But. They are just…so…far. You can’t touch them. You can’t hug them. You can’t watch as their laughter sneaks up and wrinkles the corner of their eyes. You can’t truly feel their frustration as they clench their fists while they explain what happened in that brain damaging meeting. You can’t feel it when you are both laughing at each other so hard that the air between you seems to shake. And you can’t just quietly, silently, be with them in the same space.

However. I am equally and acutely aware of the fact that really, let’s be honest, I have nothing to be blue about. When I compare myself to the farmers that we serve, I am wealthy beyond belief. I’ve been given every opportunity in the world, particularly as a female. And I find myself now with everything I should ever want and many things that the people I’m serving in Kenya so often do not have: Safety, security, wealth, equality, empowerment, opportunity.

So, rich white girl, you’re a little homesick? You miss the ones you love?

Really?

Cry me a river.

So can I suck it up? Of course I can. I’m a pro. I can and will tighten up and carry on and do what needs to be done and I can fold those feelings up into a tight little package and stuff them down so they don’t distract me from the task at hand.

But.

The feelings are still there.

And after sitting with them a bit what I’ve realized is that the voice in my head is right. I am rich. I am lucky. But it’s not just because of where I was born in life and the opportunities I was given. I am lucky because I have these feelings of longing in the first place.

Because these feelings of emptiness are caused by the vacuum that is created when a love that was there is suddenly …not. And there couldn’t be a gap in my soul if there had been nothing filling it up to begin with. I have an amazing family and I’ve been incredibly lucky to find and keep truly dear friends over the years, and I’ve given them each a piece of my heart. So yes it hurts when a piece of you is beyond your grasp, when you want to reach out and pull it close but it’s just beyond your fingertips. That’s the risk of giving part of yourself to someone else. You might wake up to find part of your heart on the other side of the world.

But the alternative would be to live a life never knowing what it was to be loved. That might be safer, but it certainly can’t be better. Because a life unshared isn’t a life at all. So I’ll take a little pain any day because the pain is simply proof of the love. And I’ve been given far more than my fair share.

We have to stop laughing, we have so much to do...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:08:00 -0400

It’s late afternoon, it’s hot, we’re tired, and we’ve been locked in this conference room for hours. Everyone’s here: the IT team, our software vendor team, and occasionally when we successfully lure them into the room, our head of operations and head of finance. We’ve been here all day. Just like yesterday. And the day before. Just like we’ll be here tomorrow.

We work and debate and discuss and decide. It is exhausting. But. We get so much done. And we laugh so hard. And it’s my favorite way to work with a team. It always has been. It probably always will be.

What is it about being locked in a small space for hours on end that makes a team so productive? We don’t get distracted by the responsibilities and work commitments made outside the room. That helps for sure. But there’s something else.

When you spend hours on end with a group of people, you can’t help but catch a glimpse of the real version of each of them in those moments and spaces that happen between the work. There’s something about sharing a big, ugly problem and working together for days to solve the problem that allows people to let their guard down, to laugh (mostly at each other) and to start to build the kind of bonds that make it not only more productive to work together, but just more pleasant. Wouldn’t you much rather work with someone who you’ve shared a meal with, who you’ve shared a drink with, who you’ve shared a huge, belly-grabbing, I can’t stop crying, I might pee my pants laugh with?

Every last one of my dearest friends from past jobs all shared cramped, exhausting conference room moments with me. They make up some of my very favorite memories.

Because in those brief moments when the whole group is clicking and we’ve forgotten that what we’re working on is actually work, well, that’s when the transition happens. We are no longer just co-workers, we have become a team.

Yo.

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:35:12 -0400

Yo.

You eat ribeye. I eat mango.

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 05:11:02 -0500

“Wait, so you ate a giant steak two nights in a row?” I ask my friend, who has been at a banking conference in the states. “Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”

“Well of course it’s a bit much. But you know how it is at these conferences. Everyone is trying to sell you so they woo you with fancy steak dinners.”

Meanwhile on that same day on other side of the world, my team is also trying to woo new customers and sell them on the financial services that Juhudi can provide. But the courting process is a bit different.

Instead of wearing suits, we put on our Juhudi Kilimo t-shirts. And instead of flying to a conference filled with other bankers wearing suits and vendors, we pile nine people (yes, nine) into a pickup truck and bounce along dusty roads looking for farmers.

Some call it outreach, some call it sales and marketing. But whatever you call it the goal is the same: to get the word out about Juhudi and to find new groups of farmers who want to take loans from us. No TV ads, no mailings, no elaborate website. Just old fashioned door-to-door sales.

It’s hot, dusty, exhausting work. We drive deep into the countryside and park the truck in a village market. Then the team disperses and introduces themselves to the shopkeepers and patrons and they explain how Juhudi works and they hand out flyers. We glue Juhudi posters to the walls of shops and we take down names and phone numbers of all the interested clients we meet. We pile back into the truck and bump along to the next market but stop anytime we pass farmers on the road. The loan officers lean out of the truck to talk with them. More names, more numbers. We repeat this scene over and over for the entire day, until the staff are exhausted and we’ve run out of flyers.

Our newest salesman, posing under collateral

And when our team is hungry we stop to eat. But no ribeyes for us. We buy mangoes on the side of the road.

When your target customer is a rural farmer deep in the interior of the Kenyan countryside it takes a lot of effort just to get to them. Let alone educate them on your services, answer their questions, train them on group methodology and ultimately help them manage loans.

So we’re trying to reduce friction. We’re putting in a customer management system so the loan officers can easily track all the names they’ve scribbled on a piece of paper and follow up on their sales with more efficiency. We’re installing a new backoffice IT system so that once these clients are on board the loan officers spend less time processing paperwork and more time accessing all the client data they need real-time through their tablets.

But I can’t help but feel that this technology is a bit like pain medication – treating the symptom but not the cause. The real issue seems to be infrastructure. It simply shouldn’t take two hours to travel 40 kilometers. But it does. Regularly. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but just imagine if we did. Imagine if we could unstick the flow of goods to and from the rural areas. I think if we could figure this out there’d be ribeyes galore.

But if I never fail, how will I get stronger?

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:03:00 -0500

When 150 pounds of barbell and shiny metal plates crash onto a metal cage, it’s really loud. Even when they only have 8 inches to fall. It’s loud enough that the people on the elliptical look at you in disgust. And loud enough that the local “trainers” (whose job is ostensibly to help people get fitter but whose actual job seems to be to chit chat with one another while occasionally doing their own set of not-fully-locked-out pullups) will walk over and scold you in a very angry voice. “Madam! Please! Why are you trying to lift these weights? You should not carry any weight that you cannot easily lift!”

Huh?

Some of you know that I crossfit. And I’ve gotten many requests from friends and family who also crossfit to blog about my experience trying to keep up with training while in Nairobi.

But let’s be honest. Talking about crossfit, or any other form of exercise for that matter (I’m looking at you marathoners), is insanely boring to those who don’t participate. So I’ve resisted until today. But this post, I promise, has nothing to do with crossfit.

If you haven’t drunk the koolaid here’s the context: Crossfit mixes power and Olympic weightlifting with bodyweight and gymnastic exercise. I won’t get into details, but if you’ve ever seen someone at your gym lifting a bunch of heavy weights and then timing themselves as they run around for 7-12 minutes doing really weird shit like jumping on boxes, swinging kettlebells and flinging themselves on the floor before jumping up to clap their hands (we lovingly call this a “burpee”) then you’ve seen us at work.

Crossfit can be transformative for people. It has been for me. The workouts push people to their absolute limits and then, if you let them, they push you just a little bit farther. There is tangible growth. Watching someone who, six months ago, couldn’t do a single pullup bang out 10 in a row is amazing. Witnessing internal dialogues shift from “I can’t do this” to “I will try my damnedest to do this” is simply beautiful.

Because that’s the kind of change that stays with you far beyond the gym. You put in the effort and you are guaranteed to get equal results in both mind and spirit. This ain’t no spin class.

So back to my scolding.

I was at the very end of what felt like one bajllion heavy squats. And one of the disadvantages of my gym here is that they don’t have bumper plates – which means if I have to drop the metal weight I’m lifting, it lands on a metal cage. This is good for the gym floor. This is bad in terms of noise pollution.

Last rep in my very last set. I squatted deep but it was one squat too many and I got stuck on the way up. So as all crossfitters are taught, rather than hurt myself I safely dumped the weight behind me. Where it crashed. Loudly.

“Madam! Please! You should only use weights which you know you can lift!”

I look at this guy, very confused. And I tell him that the purpose of the cage is to catch the barbell when someone has to drop it. He tells me, again, that I must not drop it. I ask him, “But if I never fail, how will I ever get stronger?”

And he tells me that I’ll get stronger by lifting the weights that I already know I can lift.

Which is just about the silliest thing I have ever heard.

Is that how I’m going to live my life? By only lifting weights I already know I can lift? If that were my approach I’d still be curling 5lb dumbbells. And what about in real life? Should I only do things that I’ve done before? Should I only take on challenges that I am 100% positive I can overcome?

Of course not. That’s absurd.

Failing (at anything) sucks. It can hurt, or be embarrassing, or it can just be incredibly humbling. But it’s how you get better. If you don’t put yourself out there, and try to do more or be more, well then you’re just treading water. I don’t want to tread water. I want to do all the things in life that scare the crap out of me. I want to take the harder job, tell you what I’m scared to tell you, make the hard decision and do the things that excite me but make me incredibly uncomfortable.

I always want to be just a little bit in over my head. Because that’s where growth happens. That’s where we become better versions of ourselves. Doesn’t the rest of the world deserve the very best version of me that I can be? Doesn’t the world deserve the very best version of you?

Only lift weight I know I can lift?

No thanks. I’d rather fail.

Hustle and flow

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:07:38 -0500

His name is Josiah and he is a hustler.

I first met Josiah a few weeks ago, when he proudly showed off his farm to us. With help from Juhudi loans he runs a thriving dairy farm selling milk to the local market, using tea revenues to fund his children’s school fees, and giving us a new definition of “green” by powering his home completely with biogas made from cow dung and a few solar panels.

We visited with him again last week and asked him about his dreams.

His mother died when he was 12. And his father. Well. He “wasn’t a very good man, he drank too much alcohol.” So Josiah became head of the household after his mother died and wasn’t able to go to school and get his degree.

So now, as a proud father of seven children (five boys and two twin girls), he says his dream is for every one of his children to get a degree. “They will all get a diploma,” he says. And when we ask about his youngest, his two twin girls he says, “Will they get a degree? Of course! All my children will have a degree so they can choose their work. They won’t have to be farmers unless they choose to.”

And I was struck by Josiah as I’m struck by so many Kenyans that I meet. Despite the odds - whether it’s an alcoholic father and a dying mother or the oppressive corruption from the police and politicians - so many business people I meet here just keep moving. They keep working. They keep hustling.

Josiah’s kids will no doubt have more choices waiting them as they enter adulthood than Josiah had himself. And why? Because their dad is a hustler - taking loans to buy cows, and using the cow dung to power his home and using the biogas waste to fertilize the grass which he grows to then feed the cows. Dig a tilapia pond, plant more tea, build a bigger chicken coop. Hustle, hustle, hustle.

And his reward? Seven educated children, with the choices of the world laid out before them.

Gifts of wisdom and bananas

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:50:42 -0500

Gifts of wisdom and bananas :

Last week I had the chance to accompany Acumen CEO Jacqueline Novogratz and three of our East Africa portfolio managers into the field to meet with customers who are using three products provided by companies that Acumen works with: clean cookstoves, d.Light solar lanterns, and of course, Juhudi’s very own asset-financing loans.

We met lively and energetic men and women all either currently living on $1-2 day, or coming from a past of living on that amount. Below is Jacqueline’s account of our meeting with Teresia, a grandmother who told us that her dream was to see her grandson educated. So that one day he could have conversations in English with visitors like us, and so that one day he could read the Bible - something she cannot do, but longs to do.

As is almost always the case, she insisted on giving *us* presents. Bananas grown on her own land, which nourished us for the rest of our trip.

http://blog.acumenfund.org/2013/02/19/dignity-not-dependence-while-living-under-1-a-day/

"No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of..."

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 05:03:49 -0500

““No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as love?””

- - Albert Einstein

“We're going to have to take the cow.”

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:25:00 -0500

Remember that time when I wrote that blog about how sometimes working at Juhudi isn’t really much different than working in the US but sometimes it’s really quite different? Silly Nicole. I should have waited a day before posting.

The day after I posted that blog we were headed to our branch in Nyamira to conduct refresher training for Salesforce.com, which the loan officers are using to track and manage their sales leads. On their tablets. (Yup, pretty fancy) But en route we get a call from the branch manager who would like to repurpose our visit and make use of the corporate pick-up truck which is currently transporting us. You see, it’s the 29th and the branches are all doing a final push on recoveries so they can collect as many late payments as possible before end of month reporting. Keeping a healthy portfolio is critical for operations. Fewer write-offs means more cash to avail as loans to the creditworthy farmers who actually are making good use of the loans to build their family’s assets.

But I digress.

The incidence of late payment at Juhudi is quite low – only 3%. And when a farmer is late in their payment the other members of her group (who guarantee the loan) work to secure the payments and remit to Juhudi. Most of the time that works, but sometimes they need our help. And if even Juhudi staff can’t get the repayment, then we have no recourse but to repossess the asset we financed and sell it at the market to recoup some cash.

Sometimes they need a heavy. With a pickup truck.

So instead of conducting IT training, we pile into the pickup truck and visit a farmer who is late on his very first loan, despite the fact that as the chairman of his group he is supposed to be the role model and mentor to his other group members. As the hours pass the Swahili gets more and more heated – and although I can’t make out exactly what is being said, I don’t have to. I can follow every negotiation tactic without even speaking the language. Or so I think.

After a while our branch manager finally begins untethering the dairy cow this farmer has financed and she begins making arrangements to take the cow to market in the back of our truck.

The prospect of losing his cow seems to finally be the motivation he needs, and suddenly our farmer finds the cash Juhudi is owed.

But I am still a little confused. Because during the exchange I had heard our driver say “mzungu” a few times and well, I am the only mzungu there.

“Isika,” I said, “were you talking about me when you were negotiating?”

“Who me?” he says, making his most innocent face.

“Yeah you! I heard you say ‘mzungu.’”

“Oh. I did. I told the guy that you were the owner of the money and you had come to see why he hadn’t paid. And I told him that you said he looked very healthy and the cow looked healthy too so you didn’t understand why he wasn’t paying his loan.”

I just stare at him.

“Well it worked didn’t it?”

More staring.

“Oh don’t worry Nicole, I think he was much more scared of losing his cow than he was of you.”

You don’t say. Me, the girl who had come to talk about Salesforce…

Hey boo.

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:31:51 -0500

Hey boo.

“Wasn’t she saying that she only took photos of livestock?” “Seriously? Do...

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 23:45:04 -0500

“Wasn’t she saying that she only took photos of livestock?”

“Seriously? Do I look like I’d be caught dead on a farm? Someone should tell her we share over 98% of our genes.”