News about Takamoto Biogas: I travelled upcountry alone to meet up with one of our sales reps for a presentation at a previous client’s home for the local farmers. I intended to do at least half of the presentation, but upon arriving I found that one of the farmers spoke not a word of English, so I just tried to fill in the holes for everyone else as much as I could understand. I had planned to return to Nairobi that night, but of course we were running on Kenyan time and downtown Nairobi is not a good place to be after dark on a week night so I spent the night at that client’s home. The client and the sales rep kept suggesting I was fasting, and that at my age I should be *gesture to wide in the midsection*. Rest assured that if you ever go upcountry everyone is generous to the point that you may never feel you need another meal. It turned out to be a good thing I had stayed the night upcountry as there was some kind of explosion at one of the bus stops downtown I would have had to walk through at just about the time I would have been there. (There have been many threats of attack since Kenya’s involvement in Somalia, however this explosion still has not found blame).

We also did some photoshoots with the clients— see below:

Mixing the dung and water

Enjoying the light of a biogas lamp

Demonstrating using their biogas stove

Our clients were super excited to have photographs taken of them and their biogas plants. We hope to get these framed and give them to our clients as a gift.

We have also attempted a few photoshoots with our team during construction. See below:

Kyle climbing out of a dome of a biogas plant under construction

Part of the construction team finally behaving for the camera

In addition to travels, I had a new experience this past week of interviewing and hiring employees! I hardly thought I would be doing that this early on in my career. It was a challenging and interesting process—I’m not sure which is harder, being the interviewer or the interviewee… But now we will have some interns in the office with us and some more sales people working up country to bring in more clients.

Apart from work, Nairobi is just as vibrant and exciting city and it was promised to me to be and the variety is endless. From rally races to concerts to tango classes they pretty much have it all (except delivery alcohol—props to Buenos Aires).

See below some shots from the rally

This is really how close we were standing to the racers.

A local clown we met at the rally.. who tried to teach Kyle and Graham how to dance.. See below:

http://youtu.be/c30Q_popdds

Concerts are endless in Nairobi, one of the best of which is the first Sunday of every month call “Blankets and wine.” People bring blankets and picnics of mostly alcohol and its an afternoon of local music.

Solo cups are hard to come by here hence the Hannah Montana thing we have going on.

Some of the local talent

And what I love most about my job—the often unexpected variety. I can go from a 10 acre farm with no white people anywhere to be seen and crisp, clean air, to downtown that is always bustling and choking you with bus fumes to places like Kibera slum, to our lovely apartment.

A tea farm owned by own of our clients

Kibera slum

Kyle and Collins, our Swhahili tutor walking through Kibera slum

A charcoal grill we keep on our rather small back porch bought originally to barbecue the chickens the boys brought home live to slaughter.

]]> http://lauramschutter.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/five-weeks-in-kenya/feed/ 0 lschutter IMG_3091_1 IMG_3843 copy IMG_3793 copy kyle_profile IMG_4030 IMG_3626 IMG_3667 IMG_4105 IMG_4121 IMG_2988 IMG_3489 IMG_3474 IMG_4092 http://lauramschutter.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/humor-from-kenya/ http://lauramschutter.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/humor-from-kenya/#comments Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:02:42 +0000 lschutter http://lauramschutter.wordpress.com/?p=656 Continue reading →]]> So one thing that has been perhaps the most frustrating to me here is not understanding the locals. I’m used to being in Latin America where I am a surprise that I understand what is going on.. but here ENGLISH is spoken to me and I don’t understand! One example of this occurred this Monday while I was alone in the apartment. A woman rang the doorbell and asked for Kyle, I explained that he was not here but said I would pass the message along. She said to tell Kyle to stop by the side bar in for something about the cat raids. I was a bit confused so I repeated exactly that back to her and she said yes. So I asked her name and said I would pass the message along.

So I text Kyle who is off watching wild animals in Naivasha “Purity stopped by to ask me to tell you to stop by the side bar in regards to the cat raids… I hope that means something to you.” He calls me laughing says he has no idea at all and when he arrives in the evening we still have no idea who this woman was or what she wanted. Finally that night it dawns on him that he was having the ink cartridges refilled at a shop downstairs and that a woman named “Faith or something” was helping him. I said, “You mean Purity?”

Ahhhh so cat raids were cartridges (and here I thought the apartment complex had a cat problem). And we finally realized the side bar was the cyber cafe. Anyways, there are many more stories like this that make me miss the simple slang each Latin American country had to offer.

I am also working on collecting amusing images here. See below:

We met up with them at dusk as the train was leaving Kibera. This train makes one trip each day to downtown and takes forever but people use it because it is cheaper than the busses (about 15 cents). They were shooting for the second documentary Bankslave will be featured in just this year.

We got to see a few of his pieces in Kibera, however since it was growing dark quickly we will have to return another day for a full tour.

Once it had become too dark to shoot anymore we headed to a hotel (which actually means restaurant here and hotel, but we went to a restaurant) for some beers. Tusker is the Kenyan beer and from what I have been told the best that is offered here.

As always, more photos can be found on Facebook

Some of my recent learnings to share with future potential visitors:

If you are white and need to get a taxi start by saying you will pay half of the price they are asking. They will protest, so carry exact change. You will know you have underpaid them if they make some religious reference while saying you have wronged them.

Taxis are not yellow here, nor do they say taxi anywhere on them. So what people do here is keep the phone numbers of taxi drivers and then order taxis since it’s hard to know who to flag down on the street.

Practice squats before you get here because you will find very few American toilets here, ’nuff said.

Always carry toilet paper ladies, it can be hard to come by.

Be prepared to clean your plate when you travel upcountry or risk offending your hosts. This includes as many bananas as are put in front of you. And only eat when the host is watching you or he/she might think you didn’t eat and give you more. I consumed 5 bananas in 2 hours and when two more bananas were set in front of me that night I had Graham sneak them back onto the plate.

Wear brown shoes, or shoes you don’t mind turning that color.

Contrary to my fears before arriving here, you will get a LOT more whistling in the streets of Buenos Aires than here.

Don’t bother learning Swahili before you get here, Swenglish is the most common language in the city and in addition to Swahili and English most people speak the language of their tribe as well so be prepared to be confused. Very few people speak Spanish it seems so Kyle and I have tried using it a few times rather successfully I believe!

Busses are all privately owned and the same company will run multiple routes for competition. So unlike Buenos Aires when you see certain colors that does not mean it is the same route as another bus with the same colors.

More on busses: There are certain laws that are usually followed, such as you can only have as many people on the bus as there are seats (which is strange to me since in my experiences in the US, Peru and Argentina the whole point is to have standing room and load the bus up like sardines). However other laws are not followed quite so strictly such as stopping at red lights or stop signs and U-turns in the middle of the road over raised medians or cut around traffic over the sidewalk. And when there are likely to be few police around they will happily overload the busses and just give the cops they pass a cut of the extra money they make. Also, when these little busses are overloaded (which are the ones we took 3 hours up country) when a person in the back wants to get off they have to completely unload the bus and reload it.

Most of the biogas systems we are installing are located about 2.5 hours north of Nairobi near a town called “Kangema.”

Since Kangema is a bit of a haul from Nairobi (and the best way to get there is on the small matatus on semi-paved roads) for the sake of convenience and the happiness of our employees we ask the farmers to source the materials and two of the laborers from their own town. The other laborers we provide and they are housed and fed for the duration of the project by the farmer to reduce travel and to help keep the price of the system as low as possible. In order to ensure that everything is going smoothly a field manager will travel from the city to each location to check on progress and help out as needed.

When anyone new joins the team it is important for them to understand not only theoretically what Takamoto does, but also live and on location. So on Wednesday Kyle sent us (Laura and Graham) up country with Joseph (one of our field managers) to check on four different projects.

The trip began with a matatu ride that gave both Graham and I some nice lumps on the tops of our heads followed by a piki piki (motorcycle) ride that compressed our spines another few inches. But the scenery was beautiful! It felt a world away from bustling Nairobi, all green foliage, red dirt roads and blue skies.

We got to the first site around 1pm. This site was nearly finished and ready for Joseph’s inspection. We climbed inside the dome of the digester and had a look around.

The construction was finished and now the piping had to be installed to pipe the gas into the house.

The system would later be covered with earth so that only the pipe sticking out of the top of the dome will show.

Everyone was very friendly everywhere we went, although they all wanted to see Mr. Kyle and fed us their very own home-grown bananas. After the first I had had my fair share of bananas for the day but I ended up eating five by the end of the day (at the last stop I finally refused very firmly, perhaps even rudely, but there was no way I was going to eat another banana).

The next stop was with the Washington’s to finish some more piping (they would start filling their system that same day. The Washingtons built in addition to the biogas system a human toilet that will also feed the digester. (The digestion process clears the waste of any harmful bacteria and human waste is an equally good biogas source as cow dung.)

The Washingtons breed chickens and farm lots and lots of tea. Mrs. Washington happily showed me her tea fields while Graham, Joseph and Kibe (one of the project’s masons) soldered and hung meter after meter of piping.

It was starting to get dark so we headed to our final destination for the day: Mr. Chege’s house.

After a long piki piki ride and a hike off the main road we arrived. The power had been cut so we sat in the growing darkness in the dining room sipping chai and telling stories. We had come to install biogas lamps but because of the darkness we waited until morning. Dinner was served when the lights came back on and then we sat talking (another member of our team, Mashim, a salesman had also joined us) and learning about the nuances of Kenyan and tribal culture.

Mr. Chege put us up for the night and Mama (his wife) made pancakes in the morning and more tea. I asked if they could feed the digester so I could see how it works which they happily obliged.

This solution will be released into the dome of the digester where biogas will be let off and collected and the slurry will be pushed out the other side as more dung is added. This system must be fed every day.

A final ride on a piki piki and then we were on the matatu heading back home with grand plans to return to the up country soon.

To see more photos and videos from this trip please check out the Takamoto Biogas facebook page.

Many things sport prices that will make your eyes pop (such as a $0.60 meal) others cost as much as they do in the US or more. It seems to me that luxury items (meaning anything you could live without including refrigerators, rugs and folding chairs) are expensive. Being Americans, however, I pushed us to get a fridge this morning. This was my first expedition without Kyle by my side, but fortunately I had Graham with me and when I didnt understand something he could back me up or vice versa.

We returned to the house successful (only overpaying the taxi driver by 500 shillings (50 cents USD) even though I did my best to insist, it’s hard to do when you have just purchased a big ticket item) with a lovely mini-fridge and 3 folding chairs to join the two we had (all three of us got seats to dinner tonight!)

Later in the day we met Kyle’s assistant and Swahili teacher, Collins, a young Kenyan man who graduated from high school last year. He ran errands with Graham and I (helping us to get on the right matatus (busses) and off in the right places) and showed us some new parts of town.

Yesterday (which feels like last week already) we toured town and got a good dose of Kenyan culture. We started off the morning by going to Kibera (Kyle’s old neighborhood and the biggest slum in Kenya). Everyone and I mean EVERYONE knows Kyle and particularly the kids who had the biggest grins on their faces when he greeted them.

Later on in the evening we went to a play that was highly recommended to us by a friend of Kyle’s. And It was wonderful! We laughed so hard (even though we only understood less than half of the jokes I’m sure). It was called No Dinner for Sinners and very much worth the $5 we paid for it.

Tomorrow Kyle is sending us up country with his field manager to observe/help with a biogas system construction! Expect to see photos!

Things to add to the list of what I have learned:

Paper bags do not exist although plastic bags are called “papers.”

Never will I ever again have a wallet as fat as I have in Kenya (plastic is rarely used and 2,000 Kenyan shillings is only $20). Also, there are multiple versions of each coin which makes it hard to get used to them.

Don’t put your head out of the window of the small matatus on the passenger side. (Graham did this and almost lost his head when the guy who collects money and opens the door slid the door open suddenly).

Customer service is THE WORST here. It’ almost like they try to be as rude as possible. And yet on the streets or busses or anywhere in public people are very friendly and more than happy to help, but once they are being paid to help they will do as little as possible. A bit of a reverse from the US I think.

Milk is super cheap but cheese is super expensive.

Kenyan ginger soda is delicious! (and yet owned by Coke)

“Sweet” means delicious here.

“Pick me” means pick me up.

Women “get married” and men “marry.” (The boys are having a field day with that one and anything they can relate to it.)

It all began with a flight from JFK on Jet Airways Inda (fly with they, they serve yummy Indian food, free and seemingly unlimited alcohol, show tons of movies and feed you regularly and yet were the cheapest flight by far. Then a flight on Brussels airlines from Brussels (with a short stop in Rwanda) and the final destination being Kenya. The flights were uneventful except for a man being escorted by 3 police officers out Belgium who was pretty noisy until the plane took off.

We (another friend from home who will also be working with Takamoto Biogas accompanied me) arrived in Kenya with all of our baggage, payed the $50 visa fee, were collected by Kyle and arrived at his apartment around 12. We left around 1am to check out a local bar where beers are 2 dollars and white folks are scarce. My favorite saying from the night: “everything in Kenya is cheap, but nothing is free.”

In the morning we went to a trade show part of a week long fair in Nairobi where Kyle had a table with another biogas company and was signing people up to get biogas systems on their farms! In short my learnings from the day:

1. I believe the busses here are the ones that Peru finally retires.

2. Bus routes seem to change without warning. (We came upon heavy traffic so the bus turned around in the middle of the road and instead took a road that felt like going over ski moguls in a toboggan.)

2. People drive on the left here (they also tend to walk up and down stairs on the left.) And have extra mirrors on their cars I assume since traffic is insane.

3. It will take me a long time to remember names of Kyle’s friends because many are a trick even to pronounce. (But apparently Laura is hard to pronounce here as well.)

4. People LOVE biogas. There was lots of interest in Kyle’s company and the accessories that the partner company sells. I even managed to give a pitch.

5. The food is tasty! (I had grand plans to stay away from meat from anywhere but a nice restaurant or a grocery store for the first week, but caved to the kuku choma and nyama choma (traditional chicken and meet dishes served at the fairground.)

6. There are motorcycle taxis, and they can take two people at a time (3 total) without a sidecar. (I know this because I rode one!)

7. Everyone is very friendly and welcomes us warmly into their country.

Some images from the day:

And this time I brought my camera with me and played the part of the tourist well. See below:

Monday morning I met with one of the founders of Runa. Runa processes and exports guayusa, a tea-like traditional drink of the indigenous people of Ecuador. Runa was founded by Brown University graduates and although you can now find their products on the shelves of many natural foods stores and served in tea shops along the east coast, they are still in startup phase (guayusa might be in a store near you). I learned a lot just during that morning of what it means to manage a thriving startup company while walking what I believe was most of Brooklyn running errands and popping in and out of natural food stores to check the shelves for the Runa logo. But it was also an opportunity for me to seek advice from someone who has just been where Takamoto is now since even though I have been working with Takamoto since January, I will finally be on the ground in Kenya this October!

Feeling pumped after my morning tour through Brooklyn and with a stash of tea samples in my bag I walked 80+ blocks of Manhattan from where I was staying uptown all the way to downtown. I kept thinking, “…at the next station I will get on the subway.” but then I would see something interesting and continue walking. Today I have the blisters to prove my explorations, but I did see a lot more of the city than I would from below ground.

I finally made it down to ground zero. The memorial was open to the public, but there was no need to see the memorial to feel the presence of everyone who had been there just the day before.

I left New York yet again in love with the city but excited about the adventures ahead of me; a trip to Kenya, finding and building our management team, finding and renovating and filling a shared office space, documenting all of these developments with my trusty Cannon and the future of Takamoto… hopefully as brilliant as Runa’s!

As we were driving through the campus there kept appearing more and more students in very striking attire. The only theme I could come up with was “clash.” It turns out Lehigh students prep themselves for home games at “mo co” (morning cocktails) and then cheer their team on (at least through the first quarter) in colorfully or otherwise outrageous outfits. Huzzah for school spirit!

Makes me wonder what’s left for halloween?