When some friends in Nairobi invited me to join them for a Goat Derby, I had no idea what to expect, but I knew I was in for a new experience.   How could I refuse?

Hosted by the Ngong Racecourse, the second annual Nairobi Goat Derby was held to raise funds for the Heart to Heart Foundation, which pays for children to have life-saving heart surgery.  According to the friend who invited me, the goat derby came to Kenya from neighboring Uganda, where they are kind of a big deal.  Ugandans breed and train their racing goats — they are not messing around.  Kenyan goat races, on the other hand, are pure silliness. Here’s how it works:

Participating families, schools, and corporations pay a fee for the privilege of running a goat in the races.  These are not purebred Ugandan racing goats, so getting them to run (and in the right direction) takes a team of 2.  One person to guide them with a rope, another to politely encourage them from behind using a broom-like bundle of grass.  Racers are encouraged to dress their goats in differentiating costumes.  Each category of racers (schools, families, companies) runs in a separate preliminary heat, and the top 2 goats advance to the final.

Thanks to my hosts, I had a goat in the race.

My hosts’ goat was full of fight.  Maybe because he preferred to avoid the stew pot.  He would have won the prelim heat, but the winner cheated.  Still second place was enough to advance to the final.  I stepped in as the herder for that race.  I know we were favorites to win it all . . . but our goat was a little too stylish for his own good.  Along with the necktie pictured above, we tried to race him a dress shirt.  His legs tangled and he went crashing to the ground.  Our only consolation was that his spectacular crash took a few more goats down with him.  Stew loves company.

Here’s a video of the prelim race:

Through the day of racing, eating, chatting, etc, I got a chance to see some interesting sides of Kenya.  There was a sound stage that mostly blared European and American pop music.  Bands rotated in and out, playing some decent music, and a lot of corny covers.  I finally spotted the elusive white Kenyans.  Stranger still was the black country western singer who did an astonishing impersonation of Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and other American singers with a country twang.  Many of his songs would have sounded totally authentic if I’d been listening to them at a small club in central Texas.  And even more surprisingly, almost everybody seemed to know the words to his songs.  So there it is:  Goat racing, euro pop, country western music.  I think Kenyans have a healthy sense of fun!

Live music is one of my favorite ways to get the flavor of a new place, so I was very excited when friends in Nairobi told me about a concert being given by Eric Wainaina and The Best Band in Africa a few nights ago.  This was more than a chance to sample the local culture: Berklee College of Music-educated Wainaina is also an important political figure.

Although Wainaina himself is not a politician, he has chosen to use his pop-culture influence for the benefit of his country.  With national elections approaching in March 2013, all of Kenya is wary of repeating the violence that marred 2007′s contest.  The bloodshed surrounding that hotly contested election rightly shocked Kenyans.  But, while everybody with whom I’ve spoken rejects tribal conflict, I have only very rarely heard anybody express support for a presidential candidate from another tribe.  Wainaina has become a key outspoken voice for unity, and a post-tribal Kenya.  A friend here in Nairobi even described a moving concert where Wainaina, who hails from the dominant Kikuyu tribe, was able to melt the hostility of a Luo crowd by singing a song in the Luo language.  That may not sound like much, but it’s a significant gesture and an impressive linguistic feat in this country of old ethnic divisions.

Wainaina has campaigned for human rights, against corruption, and has worked to support the International Criminal Court, which recently indicted the leading Kikuyu presidential candidate for 2013, Uhuru Kenyatta (son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta).  Only weeks after the election, Uhuru will face charges of crimes against humanity stemming from his role in the 2007 violence.  I will discuss this more in later posts.  Although he is little known outside Africa, Wainaina has been named as one of the 100 most influential people on the continent.  With his admirable leadership and really enjoyable music, it’s easy to understand why!

Yesterday I had the privilege of accompanying Read and Prosper adviser Jesper Hornberg on an excursion to Kibera, a famous slum of some several hundred thousand residents.  The purpose of our trip was to escort two young executives from the corporate citizenship department of Johnson & Johnson as they investigated community needs, demand, and business potential for water purification products.  The experience was both moving and enlightening.

Jesper Hornberg next to the Uganda Railway line, which runs through the heart of Kibera

Kibera is one of the most studied slums in the world, and is host to countless NGO projects.  During our short visit we passed by water purification and sanitation projects, schools, community centers, churches, internet access points, and more, all housed within huts of sticks, mud, corrugated iron, plastic etc.  The slum is a bustling city unto itself, but not one where you would want to live.   Kibera is crisscrossed with open sewers.  Walk down any given path and you will see ditches filled with every kind of human refuse.   You might cross on a rickety bridge of sticks filled in with mud, or you might jump.  I can only imagine that to fall into one of these ditches could mean death by disease.  And it is no wonder that the UN Development Program estimates that Kibera has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world.

In most ways, I found Kibera to be exactly what I had expected of a vast urban slum:  dense, squalid, heart-wrenching.  It’s a powerful reminder of just how much luck there is in all our existences.  We might be born in a developed country or to an affluent family, and we might have the blameless misfortune of being born into an existence where just surviving to age 5 is an accomplishment.  In a few ways I was surprised.  Many of the residents wore western business attire.  It is hard for me to imagine how somebody could live in a small hut with 10 other people, struggle daily for clean water and food, yet also put on a clean suit and tie and commute to an office job.  And yet I had the impression this must be common.  Despite our unmistakable  foreignness (and the wealth that represents), I never felt a threatening moment or the least bit of hostility.  This could be the nature of Kibera, or the strength of Jesper’s connections in the community, or some combination of the two.

A Kibera street

With all the earnest efforts of development NGOs in Kibera over the last few years, why are conditions so persistently bad?  While the answer is complicated, Jesper offered one explanation: “The NGOs are killing Kibera.”  Handouts make people dependent on charity, stifle the efforts of local entrepreneurs, and often offer solutions that look good on paper, but do not work well in the field. Jesper gave numerous examples from Kenya such as free mosquito nets being cut up and used for dresses, ceramic water filters that break quickly under rough handling, and other water treatment systems that are resold in local supermarkets, bringing a quick profit to enterprising slum dwellers, but doing nothing to improve health conditions for the poorest communities.

Both Jesper and the J&J team agreed on the key lesson to be taken from the failure of so many NGOs so substantially improve conditions in Kibera.  Effective development must grow from within the community, and the vehicle that will work best is not charity, but business.  People value what they pay for (or earn by some other means), and the products, services, and solutions which will bring real transformation are those that can sell in the marketplace.    While these insights, which underpin the concept of social entrepreneurship, are not new, my experience in Kibera made them real.

How does this apply to Read and Prosper? When Jesper and I discussed the potential pitfall we face by giving e-readers, e-books, and renewable energy systems away for free, he offered encouragement.  The challenges of rural development are different from those of urban slums.  And, by giving through schools, we will help strengthen the communities where we work.  I do not think providing books will make people dependent on aid, nor will it undermine local entrepreneurs.  I have seen how much Kenyans value education, and how enthusiastic they are when I tell them about Read and Prosper, or show them an e-reader.  We will apply all the lessons we can absorb, and we will make a positive impact.

I have now been in Kenya for 1 week, and I’m starting to get a feel for life in Nairobi.  Here are some of my observations:

Climate

The climate in Nairobi is lovely.  While the city is less than 100 miles (south) from the equator, it sits an an elevation of over 5,000 feet, which keeps things pretty cool.  In my time here, I’ve experienced temperatures ranging from perhaps the low 60s F° at night to the mid 80s F° in the afternoon (~16-25 C°).  Locals often complain of the heat when it’s 75 or 80 F°, or the cold when it’s 65 F°.  They’ve got it pretty good here!

I have yet to see any rain; so far it’s been one gorgeous day after the next.  I am told that a short rainy season should be coming in the next few weeks, but that climate change has been altering old weather patterns, so nobody knows exactly what to expect.

The only thing that can mar Nairobi’s temperate climate is an abundance of mosquitoes combined with a lack of window screens.  The bugs are very clever about finding ways into the apartment, even with windows closed, starting around dusk and throughout the night.  It’s a constant game of who’s the hunter and who’s the prey.  Fortunately, the mosquitoes in Nairobi do not carry malaria, and they are not the hellish tiger mosquito breed that can bite through clothes and has invaded the eastern US over the last few years.

Commerce

Nairobi is a city of about 3 million people and the bustling commercial capital of East Africa.  It feels large, but not overwhelmingly so.  Unfortunately, the traffic here is best described as a massive gridlocked game of chicken.  There is little or no regulation of traffic, with free-flowing circles managing the flow of traffic on major roads.  Drivers often use sidewalks and non-existent middle lanes to bypass lines of waiting cars.  The roads are severely potholed in many areas, and unpaved in many others.  Travel times bow to the courageous.

Matatu tailgating

The city is spread out, so motor transport is a must for getting around town.  For those of us without cars, the options are taxis, public buses, and private “matatu” buses.  A moderate taxi ride usually costs between 5 and 15 USD, depending on the trip, the time, and the passenger’s bargaining skills.  As you can imagine, that’s a cost that can add up quickly.  Public buses cost only about $0.30 for a single trip, but I’m not very familiar with their routes yet.  That leaves the matatus, which are driven with reckless aggression matched by either peerless skill or, often enough, wanton foolishness.  The roads are choked with traffic, and all too many vehicles belch black smoke, so that an hour spent on the roads (without the benefit of climate control) here feels like it might be equivalent to consuming a pack of cigarettes.

But all this traffic helps to demonstrate the economic vibrancy of Kenya.  There are abundant luxury cars from BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Land Rover, etc, despite fuel costing roughly $5/gallon USD.   There are new apartment blocks going up all over town, and there are at least 3 shopping malls within walking distance of my apartment.

Shopping at a Nairobi mall, or dining out at a local restaurant is more costly than you might imagine for a developing nation.  A modest meal out can easily cost $10-20, even without any alcohol.  My trip to the grocery store for a weeks worth of food set me back about $70, which makes me wonder how Kenyans are able to afford the basics of life.

The one thing that is really cheap here is telecom services, as mentioned in an earlier post.

Safety

I have been warned numerous times to be careful about walking alone after dark, especially in certain areas.  Every apartment complex has walls with razor or electric wire and a guarded gate.  But so far, I’ve found Kenyans to be almost universally polite and welcoming toward foreigners.  I have felt safe everywhere I’ve gone.

Stay tuned for more observations, project details, and Kenya adventures in coming posts.

Evan

Meet Dan Chiteri, cousin to our friend Jon Chessoni at the Kenya embassy in Washington, and our new fixer in Nairobi.  He met me at the gate when I arrived at 3 AM and has been showing me the ropes in Nairobi.

Dan Chiteri, Read and Prosper’s new fixer in Nairobi

In the company of this big fella, I don’t expect I’ll have to worry about any Nai-robberies, and it’s nice to have a local friend!