Nov 18 - Ode to IBM CSCTeam Kenya 4

Ode to IBM CSC Team Kenya 4

by Jenn Keskikyla

Nov 18, 2011

Nairobi Kenya

This is the story of Team Kenya 4

We hardly knew each other when we came through the door

We had weekly calls for intros – that’s true

But it took meeting in person to know us through and through

Muriuki had us all tell our tale

And in another language! We could not fail

The team met our clients, Vision, MoHEST and KAM

And time after time had to survive traffic jams

We moved to Machakos, green grass and clean air

The contrast in setting was without compare

We learned to live without internet or power

But the hardest of all was taking a cold shower

I’ll take some time now to tell of the group

And I may even slip in some personal scoop

DOT assigned Alex to take care of our needs

He misses his children – they’re growing like weeds

Raphael and his team make sure we have a car

No time is too early, nor distance too far

Then there’s Rita, with her once long hair

Who takes us all over – she really does care

Bahram works hard, then goes for a run

Or makes friends in mosques for some extra fun

Cammy is cute and loves taking to tots

For the school for the deaf, she sure has done lots

Dilhun loves adventure and trying new things

She bought Miraa, and watches, next will be rings

Henriette loves massages – she’s had one or two

And mornings of yoga to start the day anew

Isabel has three girls – they’re all home alone

She can often be seen skyping or on the phone

Jennifer shopped at the masai market – Too Bad!

The prices she paid would soon make her mad

Kunle’s had problems with his lousy thinkpad

But he takes it in stride and never gets mad.

Kensuke semms like the strong silent type

But can out-jump the masai – Did you see the height?

Lotem, at Daystar, had us all close to tears

With his recounting history of an assassination year.

Marissa is funny with her southern drawl

She’s the only team member who knows how to say Y’All

Richard was tired of eating Nyana Choma

So he cooked us some Indian food from his homa

Lastly Rob loves Tusker and a football game

He adopted a daughter, and Sities’ her name

Masai Mara, game drives – we went on safari

But then were too tired to go out and party

Excursions to Nakuru and Nairobi were done

And no matter where we went we had fun

We hiked Ngong Hills, then walked with giraffes

Some soaked in a hot spring while sharing some laughs

Then back to work to write our reports

And try to make a presentation of sorts

The MoHEST guys, we began to believe

Would never take the hint and finally leave

But through ups and downs our work is now done

And off in all directions we now will run

Saying goodbye is never easy

And this time it’s making me feel quite queasy

But I’ll always remember this team that’s for sure

And I know that these friendships will ever endure

We all must leave but as we go

Let’s do like the French, and say, “A Bientot”

Nov 18 - We did it!

8:45 a.m. We were all a bit nervous, as the room filled. There weren't enough chairs for all the attendees, so they had to bring in chairs from another conference room. The tension built until it was finally time to start at about 9:15 am. We were on the 10th floor of Jogoo House, the home of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science & Technology. Our mission was complete - we were presenting our final report on a framework to capture and track innovations in Kenya.

Our report recommends five main areas of focus for innovations in Kenya:

1. Integrate Industry with Academia
2. Promote an Incentive Regime to drive and share Innovations
3. Establish the Kenya National Innovation Agency (KENIA)
4. Drive Commercialization of Innovations
5. Innovation Performance Metrics.

We call them the "Big Five" as a play on words around the ultimate safari goal - which we achieved on our weekends off. 

Here I am doing the part of the presentation where  we link the Big Five Focus Areas into the overall Innovation Framework for Kenya.

The good news is that it went very well! The Secretary for the Ministry stood up at the end of our presentation and thanked us for our hard work. Then he did something unexpected..... in front of a room full of 50 people, he committed to undertaking our main recommendation.... to establish a new body of government called the Kenya National Innovation Agency. Even better than his commitment was the audience reaction: spontaneous applause!

The secretary passed the microphone around the room and asked for comments and questions from the audience. There were alot of positive comments and some really good questions. The session went for three hours!!!

Here is a picture at the end of the presentation where our team is presenting the Secretary with a copy of our presentation and also our final report.

L to R: Secretary from MoHEST, me, Bahram, Richard, Henriette (hidden behind), Mavisi from MoHEST.

So we have successfully completed our mission for the IBM Corporate Service Corps! We have buy-in from our client and a promise to engage in our recommendations. Tonight we celebrate!

Nov 14-17 Countdown to the Final Presentation

This has been quite a busy week, but not very interesting for blog readers, I'm afraid.

Monday - Heads down work on writing our final report and creating our final presentation. We worked from 8 am to 11 pm and I didn't even stick my head outside of the hotel all day. But we made great progress and felt a real sense of accomplishment by the end of the day.

Tuesday - See Monday - Ditto. Oh wait - we walked down the street for lunch. Big day! hahaha

Wednesday - I woke up very much under the weather. I must have eaten something bad. Maybe lunch on Tuesday? The Vision 2030 subteam had their final presentation, and I hear it was very well received by their client. I unfortunately had to miss it since I spent the morning in my bed. ("Nuf said" about that - I'm better now.)

Thursday - The team said good bye to Machakos and transferred to Nairobi. It was sad to say goodbye to the hotel staff who have become our friends for the past four weeks. This is a cake the hotel staff made for us at dinner on Wednesday night. 

This is the team packing up in front of the garden Hotel. LOTS of luggage!






Once we got to Nairobi, the Kenya Assoc. of Manufacturers (KAM) subteam did their final presentation, which again was very well received by the client. In fact they presented each of us with KAM / IBM CSC mementos and gave us a lovely lunch on the lawn!  Very nice! 

In the afternoon we had a meeting with the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Information and Communications. Dr. Ndemo was very personable and engaging. He was involved with all the previous CSC Kenya teams, and although none of our projects touch his Ministry directly, he still wanted to meet us and hear about the work we have been doing.





On a personal note, this has been a very difficult week to be away from home. I wish I was there to support my family and friends in person and help in any way I can. You know who you are, and I want to send you all my love and tell you that you are in my thoughts.  xoxo 

So tomorrow, Friday, is our team's turn! We say they saved the best for last. 

We will present our project findings, recommendations and final report at 9 am to the Senior Leaders at the Ministry of Higher Education, Science & Technology. (MoHEST). After that we will have a meeting at the IBM Nairobi office to wrap up with the local team. Watch out for tomorrow's blog!

Nov 12-13 Weekend

"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times" Dickens was right! 

This weekend we took another trip into the Kenya countryside. Starting with a hike in the Ngong Hills, to Olorgesailie, to Lake Magadi, to Lake Natron on the border of Tanzania, to a tour of a masai village and back home on Sunday!    Action packed! 

Saturday: 

We stopped to buy our weekend supplies at the Ngong Market. Here's a picture of it - incredible chaos! Do you think that's why some of the team got sick? 

Hiking in the Ngong Hills was fabulous and windy.  Have you seen the movie Out of Africa or read the book? It starts with "I had a farm in Africa.... at the foot of the Ngong Hills. At the end, when Denys Finch Hatton is buried, his grave is on top of one of the hills.  The hike was tough since the "hills" are surprisingly steep but there was a surprise at the top.... Wind turbines! And right at the base of one of the turbines - a Masai 'manyatta' (hut) with a family living there. Talk about the past colliding with the future!  While we were enjoying the rewarding view at the top, our guide, using binoculars spotted a giraffe way in the distance. We laughed and asked him if we were going to go see it and he said yes. Little did we know he was telling the truth! So we started picking our way down the slopes.

On the way down we came across these
fellows heading up. 

 After about 5 kms of hiking on the plains away from the bottom of the hills, suddenly we were in a herd of giraffes! They were beautiful and there must have been twenty of them. It was breath-taking. As we got closer they realized we were there and they started to run.... it was like their movements were in slow motion, but the speed is amazingly fast.

The bull giraffe with the herd was huge and he was unusually dark as giraffes go. What a beauty he was! Here I am standing near him! I was holding my breath.

After we finished our hike, we went to Olorgesailie, which is where Louis Leakey and his wife Mary excavated in the 1940's. It is where they found many stone axes that were used by early hominids. It's an amazing place, and they have preserved the excavation sites exactly as they were, with the stone axes exactly where they were uncovered.


From Olorgesailie, we drove to lake Magadi which is widely known as the hottest place in Kenya. Our last stop for the day was at the Magadi Hot Springs, where the water comes flowing out of the ground at temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius. I couldn't even stay in with the water just up to my ankles - hot hot hot! You could literally feel the heat coming through the soil under your feet even when you were out of the water.


Sunday:

The heat kept me awake most of the night so I started Sunday feeling a bit drained of energy. We left  at 5:30 am and drove to the Shompole Conservancy for a game drive. By 8:30 am the temperature was well over 35 degrees so we stopped and had breakfast at a watering hole. The varied animal footprints in the mud told a story of a very busy meeting place. The baboon footprints were SO human!! 

After breakfast there wasn't much to see anymore,  because by then the heat was so intense all the animals were taking a siesta and hiding out in some cool spot we never found. This was when the first of our team started not feeling well.... General symptoms of stomach aches, head aches and an immediate need for a bathroom (or in our case, a bush!). Here is the team, standing in the middle of what felt like a desert. You can see the Shompole hills behind us.

We drove just over the border into Tanzania and then headed back for a visit to a masai community. We booked a masai guide to show us around his town. 

Our guide "John" is on the left  in this picture. He stopped to say hello to his two friends. 

John seemed not to notice the heat or the dust, but by noon when we were still walking, we 'muzungus' were all feeling a bit faint and needing shade, rest and water. None of the above to be found anywhere. We asked to be taken back to our van, and because we had walked so far, it took quite a few stops and asking for directions to make our way back.... even our guide was asking others which way! 
I was at the end of my rope.... not feeling as sick as other people, but just tired, hot and dusty.
The dust is incredible. It is a red colour, and it turns everything red. Your skin, your sweat, your saliva. and it gets everywhere! We looked quite a sight.

As we climbed into the safari van, the kids and women crowded around us. I was suddenly struck with this awful guilt. Here I was, lucky enough to be getting into a van with distant yet real prospects of a cool drink of clean water and a cleansing shower before the end of the day. And these people LIVE here. There is no exit for them. And they don't have fresh cold water coming out of taps. And they can't have a shower in a clean bathtub to rinse the dust off. Wow. It was a moment of clarity that hit me like a thunderbolt. It felt something like I imagine survivor's guilt must feel. Why me? Why am I so lucky? Why can't they have what I take for granted?

The ride home was long - about 6 hours and quite silent. We were all lost in our thoughts , remembering the day. We had to make a few emergency stops for people to be sick, so that was also quite a sobering aspect of the trip. I was lucky enough not to be ill, and I felt awful for my team mates that were. We got to our hotel at 9 pm and all raced for the showers. It took TWO full washes to get the dust out of my hair and the pores of my skin. I fell asleep very grateful for hot water, clean sheets and a comfy pillow. 

 

But my last thoughts were of the dusty children who sleep on the ground or on an animal hide in a dark, dung-constructed manyatta in the middle of the hottest place in Kenya......

Nov 11 - Community Service Day at Machakos School for the Deaf

We had a wonderful and emotional day volunteering at the Machakos School for the Deaf on November 11th. The school has 250 students from nursery school age to high school grade nine.

The IBM team arrived at 9 am and were greeted by the Principal, Mr. Muthembwa. He told us that it is a boarding school and it costs $30US per term to feed and teach the students. Some students cannot afford even that, so there is a fundraising program in place to help cover their costs. After a brief meeting with the teaching staff, we attended a school assembly where we were introduced and our agenda for the day was communicated. The students looked great in their red and plaid uniforms. What I noticed right away was that it was so much more quiet than a typical school assembly. In order for these students to 'listen' they have to watch the visual sign language of the speaker. The sign for Canada is: Make a "C" with your right hand and then put your hand on your left upper chest. I smiled because it made me think of a hockey jersey with the C for Captain!

After the assembly we got down to work volunteering: Planting trees, cutting the grass and cleaning the kitchen and dining room.

Here is Dilhun digging with one of the new shovels we bought for the school.

 Here is Richard sweeping the dining room floor after all the tables had been taken outside for washing.







After all the work, we got to the fun part - play!! We had taken soccer balls with us to donate to the school. We also took skipping ropes and other toys. The kids loved them!  I think one of the favorite activities, though, was having their photos taken. Once I pulled my camera out, I was mobbed. Here are four of my favorite photos:

Aren't her blue eyes amazing?













She was soooo excited!












These guys were really hamming it up for the camera

There were a bunch posing for this photo, but I zoomed in on this boy's face. His eyes just shone!

After awhile the older boys naturally took over the soccer game and some of the younger children came and sat on the sidelines with us. The children were fascinated with Henriette's blonde hair. They patted it and touched it and signed to each other about it.

One little girl  who I guess to be about seven years old sat beside me and in very basic sign language, we started a little conversation:

Hello my name is Jennifer. I am from Canada. What is your name?

Hello my name is Charity 

(pointing at my IBM T-shirt)

E-Y-E  B-E-E    M 
(then she laughed because she got the joke of the T-Shirt)    I-B-M
Yes!
(pointing at the soccer game) B-A-L-L
Yes!
(pointing at my bottle of water) W-A-T-E-R 
yes!  
B-O-T-T-L-E
yes!

We were both grinning from ear to ear! It may sound like a simple conversation to be excited about, but it felt great that we were able to communicate with each other in her language.  (Way back in high school I learned the basic letters of ASL with my friends Colleen and Cathy,  so although I didn't know the word signs, I could communicate with her by spelling out each word).  I remember how hard I had studied Swahili before coming to Kenya and I wished I had spent more time studying American Sign Language (ASL) too.

The highlight of the day was when a group of senior girls presented a traditional Kamba dance for us. One girl played the drum and 12 girls danced to the beat of the drum, which they could feel through vibrations. It was beautiful and very emotional. The leader of the dance group had a stick/baton with an animal hair tail, which she swished around in time to the beat. The other girls never took their eyes off the baton so they knew what to do. Their rhythm was incredible - you could see it in every movement. WOW.  It was a true demonstration of ABILTY in the face of disability, and it was inspiring. There were many of us with large lumps in our throats by the time they finished.

It was a day never to be forgotten.

Nov 10 - Kenya Business Daily article

We're in Kenya's Business Daily!

Click on this link to see the article:

http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate+News/International+IBM+Team+in+Kenya+to+spur+innovation/-/539550/1266670/-/item/0/-/aqhtne/-/index.html

Nov 7-8 - Working in Machakos

Monday and Tuesday were both very hard-working days. Our clients from MoHEST travelled to Machakos so they could be with us all the way. While it is a nice gesture on their part, it's actually quite exhausting having to host your client in what feels like a 24 / 7 environment. So we decided to incorporate them into our team. We assigned tasks to all and we each did our own work so that we could accomplish all we needed to. It ended up being very productive.

So now the fun part of the blog - what we do for entertainment in Machakos when it's raining!?

 

Monday, Richard (from IBM India) volunteered to cook us all an Indian meal using the hotel kitchen! It turns out he's quite a chef and cooks alot at home for large groups in his church. He made a delicious dinner of Chicken Curry with vegetable rice pilaf. It was delicious. Here he is - hard at work!!!

The meals at the hotel are all buffet, and it's almost always the same selections..... beef or chicken pieces and either steamed rice or Ugali (a traditional maize based starch that looks like thick mashed potatoes.) with coleslaw. So we've been asking for some variety, and Richard came through! We all enjoyed it tremendously - Thank you Richard!

On Tuesday after work, four of us walked into downtown Machakos to look at the shops. It was really amazing - a true slice of Machakos life. We are the only 'Muzungus" in town and there are no tourist shops at all. Most shops are a small cupboard -sized store front on the sidewalk with a few wares displayed. Every price can be negotiated and it is expected that you bargain.

Here is Henriette from IBM Denmark at a tailor's shop. While we were looking in his shop, we noticed 2 interesting facts. 

1 - He had no power and was sewing by the
light of a kerosene lamp. 

2 - His iron was cooling on the sidewalk out front - it is a hollow iron, filled with glowing charcoal - Something from the early 1900's in Canada! 

As we finished looking around, it started to POUR raining. So we decided to take a 'matatu' (mini-bus taxi) home to the hotel, even though it was a short one kilometer walk. It was a really authentic experience!

 Here is the view from inside where I was sitting - Hahaha!












Back on the work front, we have a big milestone meeting on Wednesday in Machakos - The MID-TERM REVIEW..... ! This is a meeting where we present our progress and preliminary findings to the senior management at MoHEST.     In a stroke of genius (if I do say so myself - hahaha) I proposed that we have our Machakos M0HEST team mates do some of the presenting themselves. Since they have now been doing some of the work, they should also get some of the visibility. So that plan has now been adopted and we all have our fingers crossed for tomorrow. Wish us luck! We leave Machakos at 5 am tomorrow to 'beat' the traffic and arrive at 8:15 am. Our presentation starts at 9am if we are on schedule. More work updates later!