Days 12-13: Rongai and Pipeline Field Visits

Second project of the trip: Evaluate the current customer service levels and create a standardized Client Engagement Process that can be used as the retailer opens anywhere from 6-8 new stores in 2014.




how water is transported from local boreholes - this is not purified and extremely salty

Wednesday and Thursday were spent in the field visiting the water retail stores, interviewing staff and going to client's home for customer service feedback. They were extremely happy with the product, clean drinking water is not a regular commodity in the area. The organization offers 10 liters of purified water (which they do in their shop) for 100 KES/$1.17 + delivery for an extra 20 KES. Most clients can afford to pay for one 10L jerry can per week, though a monthly subscription for upfront payment of 360 KES (which means 90 KES per jerry can + free delivery) is offered. The discount is incentive to purchase in advance but clients struggle to have the cash up front.

Some staggering facts:

1. In Kenya, only 61% of the population have access to clean water sources.
2. Worldwide, 1 of out 5 deaths of children under 5 is due to water-related disease.
3. 3.5m people die each year from water-related diseases.

Highlight from Wednesday: As we left one of the clients homes and I slipped my shoes back on, I quickly realized that her chickens had left some presents inside…amusing in retrospect but a bit challenging in the moment.


beef pilau lunch in Rongai - 200 KES/$2.35



Pipeline neighborhood, low income and full of students/YPs

Days 10-11: Office time

Both Monday and Tuesday were spent making reports, training the staff and looping in the management team including the CEO (who resides in NJ!).

the backpack beekeeper suit

Tuesday was a bit different in the sense that there was no electricity in the office, then the generator was turned on only to run out of petrol. After my laptop died, we went to the local mall to charge our devices and grab lunch. I was so excited to see thin crust pizza, kind of sad really. Ha! Spent some time with the Head of Internal Ops learning more about the org and life in Nairobi. Always love speaking to locals on international trips, its the best part of traveling IMO.

It’s been a whirlwind and fulfilling experience to come in a little over a week ago, see how the company functions and evaluate the best type of value-added (in addition to BAU) reporting options. Yesterday, the office learned the magic of pivot tables. It was fun to see their eyes light up as they realized how much faster they could analyze data with this small trick!

Tuesday evening, I met with the co-founders of the second organization at a local incubator hub, very cool place! We discussed our goals for the next three days and by the time I got home, the restaurant wasn't serving dinner anymore. It happens, good thing I had a delicious pizza for lunch.


88mph - tech incubator space



Days 8-9: Weekend of work + Nairobi National Park

On Saturday, went over to Nairobi National Park for a few hours. No one had signed up for a tour so it was me, the driver and a 8 passenger  vehicle. Luck was on my side - saw lions, giraffes, zebras, ostriches, an eagle, and various other animals that I can't remember the names of. The juxtaposition of the park with wild animals and the city of Nairobi so close by was striking. Once minute there are two giraffes fighting and the next second, there's a plane flying over them. Unreal.

The rest of the weekend was all about work. Got a lot done! Need to shift gears to the water social enterprise but struggling as I feel very connected to the honey social enterprise at the moment.

My daily struggle: food. Breakfast at the hotel, then lunch is usually skipped as I don't know where to go or who to ask so by the time 230 rolls around and the dizziness hits me, I start looking in my bag for a granola bar. Sometimes I ask the taxi driver to stop at the local mall (it's safe don't worry) and pick up a sandwich for dinner. Eating at the hotel isn't ideal because there are stray cats walking around and they LOVE to sit next to me. Panic attacks ensure. On Saturday, I felt that I deserved a nice dinner so off to the indoor restaurant I went (usually people are in the casual garden areas) and was one of three tables there. Thought I'd do some work while eating but it didn't work out. Found myself missing home (and wishing I was celebrating Halloween)!



Zebra crossing

Days 6-7: Back in Nairobi

The past two days were extremely productive in making progress towards the final deliverable for the honey social enterprise. I did a full assessment of the existing and proposed reports as well as conceptualized a few others. Sitting with the Finance Director helped me put all the pieces together - i.e. field data, sales, production, distribution - and determine what would be valuable to report to the management team.

Last year, the social enterprise brought in a consultant to propose a full management dashboard deck  but to various limitations, it has not been fully implemented. And so here I am, to implement, train, document and create process flows.

Made a list of to-dos, its about 25 items long and I hope to work through them this weekend. I'm currently on #3. Seven days in, seven more to go, though only 2 more with this org. It's crunch time. Wish me luck!

But before that, going to slip away to Nairobi National Park tomorrow from 6-10 am to take my chance at spotting some animals. Hoping for a lion!

BTW just realized that the term "social enterprise" may not be widely known so a little definition might be of use. Essentially its a business that is working towards solving a social need (i.e. adding income to beekeepers/farmers to raise their poverty level) or the fancy wiki version

"A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders. Social enterprises can be structured as a for-profit or non-profit, and may take the form of a co-operative, mutual organization, a disregarded entity,^[1] a social business, or a charity organization.^[2]"

Days 4-5: Sindo

Day 4
Woke up bright and early to 6 am reggae music playing outside the guesthouse. Good thing, because my and the HFO had a meeting at 7 am ! Over a breakfast of eggs and chapatti (massive Indian influence in the food here), we discussed the Field Operation Management Dashboards and the data behind it. The day was spent in the field with hive technicians, meeting farmers and scouting some sites for hive storage. The organization is building out in a new area of Western Kenya and has been gathering farmers to engage in beekeeping but all farms need to be checked out. The manager in the field has spent over 3 weeks doing his due diligence on 140+ farms. Data feeds from the field are a bit limited due to a new technology that they are working on implementing. The field staff have all been given smartphones with an app in which they can input farmers stats, hive inspections, etc. The goal is to use this for impact metrics in the future using Grameen's PPI metric.

The best moment of the day was when we were walking towards a potential site and the school children spotted us. All of a sudden, 50 or so little kids were running towards and swarming us while screaming "how ARE you?!?" and "Mzungu!" They always scream both when we walk by, and then giggle hysterically afterwards. Not sure why they were fascinated by me, but I'll take it! In the evening we were too tired to go to dinner so we crashed early after killing many many malaria ridden mosquitos. Unfortunately one survived and went to town...



Sikimu and fresh fish

Day 5
Another early start. Spent the day visiting around 7 farms and talking to farmers about beekeeping and their challenges. One of the farmers had made his own beekeeper suit with workman's overalls and a backpack for the netted hood. What an innovative idea!


beehive



the baby calf on the left was literally just born

Along the way, our 4X4 got stuck and 5 Kenyan men came to push the car out of the ditch with no luck. We ended up backing up and it all worked out! We decided to drive back to Kisumu instead of taking the ferry. The roads are not fully developed so it was massively bumpy until the last stretch. Passed a street called "Obama Rd." Obama's father is from Western Kenya and the local are very proud of it!



We arrived at Kisumu and checked into another guesthouse which looked huge in comparison to Sindo's! It's all about perspective. After dinner, it was internet time! Bought a small bottle of water at the hotel rooftop bar so I could use the Wi-Fi. Another early start to tomorrow with 5 am wake up to catch a 7 am flight back to Nairobi.

The last few days were a great opportunity to dive into the field operations of the company and see how things work on the ground. I learned a lot from the HFO and we had plenty of time to go over the management dashboards that are under his mandate and come up with ideas for new reports. Looking forward to meeting the rest of the management team and get cracking on the dashboards.


maize

storm is coming







 

Day 3: Nairobi to Kisumu to Sindo

For the next 7 working days, I’ll be working with the honey social enterprise. The first 3 days will be in rural Kenya as we felt that a field visit was critical to better understand the company and that the data that all of the reporting focuses on. As today is a holiday, we took full advantage of spending the full day traveling to Western Kenya.

The Head of Field Operations (HFO) and another mgmt. team member picked me up at 6 am, to head over to the local bus depot. HFO called “his guy” and we got three tickets to the bus from Nairobi to Kisumu (7 hour ride). The HFO and I got acquainted and debriefed on the organization and my project.  After lunch (and some internet time before rural Kenya), we rented a car, had some car trouble which we worked through just in time to drive onto the last ferry. We backed the car in and got out to enjoy the beautiful Kenyan sunset!

After arriving in Sindo, we had an adventurous ride through the dark and bumpy roads. Thirty minutes and several GPS location checks later, we found our contact and checked into the local guesthouse. We grabbed dinner which involved a walk down dark village roads and the perfect opportunity to use my manager’s LED keychain (thanks C!)) It was a long day and one which allowed me to transition into local time, 7 hour time gap conquered! Off to learn about field operations tomorrow.

my 800 KES room

Day 2 in Kenya: Switch hotels and debrief

Late check-out followed by a quick ride to the next hotel. The taxi stand inside the hotel mentioned a rate of 2000 shillings (80 KES to 1 USD) which is an outrageous cost for a 2 km/5 min ride. Once we arrived I asked for a receipt to which he responded he had no receipt pad. I asked for the fare and he said that he was told that they had told me. I asked him to call the hotel to check the rate, he said his phone had no credit. Hm. We settled on 1000 KES, later finding out that it should have cost 400 KES. Bamboozled yes but instead of 5x as much, more around 2x. It happens. The driver promised to drop off a receipt (and change if he found out the fare was too much). We will see!

The Country Lodge – my mainstay for the two weeks – is nice and connected to the lovely Fairview Hotel which has 5 restaurants and a pool. I’ll be spending most of my evenings at their garden café.

Met with the water social enterprise’s main contact to debrief on the project which I’ll be working on for three days + post return to NYC. My goal is to interview clients and sales managers to come up with a Client Engagement Process. Earlier in 2013, they launched a retail storefront and sales program to sell drinking water in a low income neighborhood. At around 500 subscribers, they are in need of a consistent approach to maintain contact with their client base.