I’ve often said that one of the greatest joys of my work is the exceptional people that I get to meet and to develop friendships with. Whether or not it’s Salim Mohamed and Sammy Gitau in Kenya, Murali Ramisetti in India, or Theresa Williamson in Brazil, I have been blessed to know so many people who are busy painting their visions of a better world into reality. So I’ve often wondered, “What it would be like to just go on a pilgramige to find and learn from such people?”

Well Exceptional Lives, the blog of Dublin, Ireland’s Clare Mulvany, is chronicling such a journey.

Clare describes her trip:

I am currently embarking on a ten month journey around the globe to interview ‘people who change our world’ about their life stories. I’ll be meeting ’social entrepreneurs’ working in a range of fields from education to business, dedicating their lives to making the world a better place for us all to live in. Nairobi is the first port of call, and from there I’ll travel overland to Capetown. It is then on to India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa and the USA.

Clare’s journey has taken her to many of the places where I’ve lived and worked on BoP projects, and she beautifully describes her encounters with social entrepreneurs through both written word and photography. Clare just finished the latest leg of her trip - 7 weeks traveling through India - and she summarizes the experience in her latest post:

Seven weeks in India. Seven weeks of what?

Of colour, lots of it. Colour as iridescent saris blaze around every street corner. Then the glossy black and yellow of taxis and the glaring orange of festival flowers. The piquant green of tea plantations. The lush green of coconut plantations. The lazy green of cardamom trees. The black of a girl’s oiled hair, the black of men’s moustaches, the pupils of eyes (you staring at them, them staring at you). The chorus of colour as Diwali swings into fare; fireworks painting the sky like a circus. The pink of pickle. The night blue of night trains. The bright light of bright days.

Seven weeks of bright, busy days.

There’s a lot of great material on Exceptional Lives, so much more than I’ve had the time to go through, but Clare’s stories and pictures are certainly worth immersing yourself in. After all, every exceptional life we touch makes our own more exceptional. As for me personally, it’s always inspiring to see someone put into words what you yourself have experienced but have been unable to express.

I’ve laughed. I’ve cried. I’ve been exhausted. I’ve been exhilarated. I’ve been learning. I’ve been trying to make sense of it all.

Travel does this to you. It enriches as it shakes. Perceptions start to shift and alter. You start to shift and alter. You take a step and the world unfolds with colour and learning. You take a step and the world takes the next ten.

The world? Well, it’s the people you meet along the way who point you in the right direction. Or a book you read which clarifies a point. Or a film you see which sparks a train of new thought. Or that kid you play football with. Or that mother you make eye contact with. Or that beggar you pass on the street.

Seven weeks. I know. I can hardly believe how much can be packed in. A lot has happened, and there is still a lot more to come.

I am thankful. I am lucky. I am learning.

I’ll share a couple of quick anecdotes that Clare’s stories bring to mind. The first is simply something a young man in Kibera (Nairobi’s largest slum) once said while we were living there, "To me you are like birds, you can land and then fly away when you want. But we are stuck in the mud." The second is from a homestay I did in the Indiramma Nagar slums of Hyderabad, India. I distinctly recall the moment when I - a supposed veteran of homestays in villages and slums - finally opened myself up to the poor Muslim family that had been hosting me… it was like the sun had risen, how much more I could see when I finally let them see me!

Clare Mulvany’s journey therefore reminds me that our ability to pass through so many lives is an incredible freedom that comes with great responsibility, not only a responsibility to pay respect and to bear witness, but a responsibility to touch and be touched. She seems to be doing that quite well.

I am thankful. I am lucky. I am learning.

Words worth repeating. Here’s to all of us touching more exceptional lives.

-Patrick

Links:

• Exceptional Lives
• Clare Mulvany’s photo stream on Flickr.com

Much thanks to Jean Russel for introducing me to Clare’s journey.

By Patrick Donohue, August 2005 “In Nairobi, stay away from the shanty towns, especially at night.” The door closes, Kibera opens, and East Africa’s largest shantytown swallows us into the night. It’s dark near Edwin’s place, a sight sapping blackness that is darker with the knowledge of the trenches and trips that lie ahead, a misstep can send you rolling down make shift steps to soak in the flowing runoff, Kibera’s sewage system. Edwin can see well enough in the dark and navigates the pitfalls without hesitation; I make a joke about mzungu eyes and then switch on my torch. I notice as we walk that the only other people using torches are the mzee, the old men or women. We walk through small alleys and walkways, passing row after row of mud houses with radios blaring, stray light seeping through cracks around the doors and below the roofs. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m walking across somebody’s front porch but I soon realize that’s exactly what we’re doing. The passing people are dark African shadows; it’s a surreal experience and I fancifully imagine that I can slip by without notice, achieving that anonymity I find impossible during the day. A mzungu in the dark, does he finally become a mtu, a person? To the young children I’m just a another mzungu, a white person, but the kids old enough to have seen kung-fu movies will shout out “Chinese”, “Jackie Chan”, or that distinctive “hi-ya” cry, matched with chopping hands and a comically fierce look. Onush, my colleague Erik’s host, later tells me that the children are probably afraid of me, fearing that I’ll open up some karate on them if they’re not careful. My fleeting hopes that my sun-browning skin will help me escape notice are dashed when I learn that some older Kenyans think I might be Indian, the much maligned minority of Kenya, disliked because they’re said to run all the businesses and pay Kenyans little. It’s too hard to stop and explain that I represent the Vietnamese-Irish people, a difficult mixture to appreciate in a land where your tribe is supposed to explain so much about you. For all that I wear my winter hat - not so much for the cool night, which for the bundled-up Kenyans is a biting cold - no, I wear my winter hat to hide my hair, too long to ever be mistaken as Kenyan. I think it might be working, the children aren’t shouting their mzungu bird call, their sing-song “how are you?”, and there are no sudden looks; but perhaps the night just offers a different pace and people keep their notice to themselves. Edwin jokes that people are probably too surprised to say anything. What would a mzungu be doing in Kibera after dark?

* * *

[Download the full “Kibera Nights” (PDF) here]

The above is the beginning of a story I wrote almost a year ago, about the time I spent living and working in Kibera, a slum in Nairobi Kenya that is considered by some to be one of the world’s most dangerous slums. I was there as part of the BoP Protocol pilot test in Kenya. Kibera is the slum that Fernando Meirelles’ film the The Constant Gardner is set in and also was featured in Sarah McLachlan’s video World on Fire. Enjoy! - Patrick

Another story about one of the BoP Protocol Pilot’s most important partners: Carolina for Kibera (CFK) last week was honored as one of Time Magazine’s “Heroes of Global Health” and Acting President Kim Chapman was featured at the Global Health Conference in New York. CFK is an incredible community-based organization in Kibera: one of the world’s largest slums on the outskirts of Nairobi Kenya. The organization’s programs target issues of ethnic violence, health care, safe spaces for girls, and environmental sanitation and income generation. All their work follows a common theme of participatory development and the organization’s operations in Kenya are run by Kiberans. CFK and its staff were critical to the Base of the Pyramid Protocol Pilot in Kenya and the resulting pilot venture between SC Johnson and the local community groups continues to be advised by CFK staff. Congratulations to everyone at CFK and keep up the great work! Carolina for Kibera Resources:

• Carolina for Kibera - web site at the University of North Carolina
• Interview with Kim Chapman - the News & Observer
• Heroes of the 2005 Global Health Summit - including Kim Chapman and Carolina for Kibera
• BRINQ Photos from Kenya & Kibera - including many photos of Carolina for Kibera staff, activities, and partners
• Base of the Samosa - an article on BRINQ.com and the World Resources NextBillion.net about the BoP and CFK

“I’d love to hear your impressions,” Theresa said to me as we boarded the bus outside of Rocinha, “about what you think of the communities here vs. where you lived in Kenya.” Here was Rio de Janiero, Brazil and in Kenya was Kibera, a million-person shantytown in Nairobi, where I had just spent the previous three months living and working. Theresa and I were catching a bus to the outskirts of Rio for a visit with local community leaders and to spend a “Day in the Community”, a regular event that brings together children and neighbors from six of Rio’s favelas, Brazil’s illegal communities. Theresa and I found a seat as the bus lurched forward and I sat there wondering about her request. What preconceptions had living in an African slum given me about a South American one?

The bus picked up speed and Rocinha faded into the distance. I leaned back into the seat and rubbed the palms of my hands over my face; my head was in a whirl, not just from the warm Brazilian hospitality and strong caipirinhas of my night out before but also from the eclectic route we were taking through Rio. We had started our trip in the beautiful and trendy neighborhood of Jardim Botânico, with lush green mountains and inland lagoon, switched buses in front of Rocinha, the Americas’ largest squatter city with its two hundred thousand residents and overflowing hillside houses, and were on our way to Asa Branca, a twenty year old favela I knew nothing about, yet somehow had inadvertently impacted months before. Theresa looked at me for a moment and gave my shoulder a squeeze, sensing if not understanding my confusion. I let my hands fall back to my lap and I smiled back at her, relaxing a little before turning my gaze back to the passing communities.

Theresa Williamson is the founder and executive director of Catalytic Communities (CatComm), a Washington D.C. and Rio based organization that creates spaces to empower community leaders. These spaces, both physical and virtual, are designed to share solutions and foster new relationships, in the process growing a local/global network that catalyzes community development and engagement. I never could have predicted that a chance encounter with Theresa nine months before in San Francisco would draw me into this world-changing network. However, CatComm’s mission of creating connections is mirrored in Theresa’s personality and so it was no real surprise that here I was, stepping off the bus onto a dusty street corner in a Brazilian favela with Asa Branca’s community leader, Carlos “Bezerra” Costa, reaching out his arms to greet me like an old friend. The strangest part of it all was that despite this being my first visit to Asa Branca, I knew that I had already been there. I had Theresa and CatComm to thank for that.

Bezerra quickly started us on a walking tour of the neighborhood and I began making comparisons between Asa Branca and Kibera. My first impression was that most Kiberans would be thrilled to live in a place like Asa Branca. Sure, like Kibera there were some scrap metal shacks for homes and a river with overflowing garbage behind the community, however mixed in amongst it all were charming, locally built houses, one and two story structures of cement or wood with red clay tiled roofs and green gardens in front. Even the shacks had potted plants hanging on their outer walls, the level of care bearing no relation to the quality of the building material. And, trash-laden river aside, the community was clean and the streets were smooth, there were no open sewage trenches and we’d even see the occasional parked car and speed bumps. This is what Kibera could be like if allowed to develop, I thought.

As we walked down dusty white streets past houses, stores and bars, I noticed that Bezerra would introduce Theresa to the people on the street as “a member of my family”, each introduction provoking Theresa to flash a warm smile. Theresa explained to me that the engagement with Bezerra and Asa Branca is one of CatComm’s longest running relationships; Theresa has personally been documenting the community’s development for years and Bezerra is a regular visitor to the Casa do Gestor Catalisador, CatComm’s community hub in Rio. Asa Branca is a great example of how a community can solve its own problems: while the city government ignored it, Asa Branca organized to install its own community sewage system and to raise its streets against flooding. That project and others are documented in detail in CatComm’s Community Solutions Database, available in three languages at http://www.CatComm.org/ The database is one of CatComm’s most important tools and is the main draw to the organization, but the power of Catalytic Communities is not just captured in the solutions found on its website, nor just in the Casa where community leaders meet. Actually, what CatComm does is only a fraction of what it creates, evident in the fact that I was now sitting down to have lunch with Bezerra and his family.

Allow me to explain.

(more…)

There’s nothing like a room full of blank stares to tell you that you have just used the wrong word, nobody there knows what you’re talking about and you need to adapt, but what do you do when that word is at the heart of what you do? When that glazed-eye-inducing offender is printed all over your business cards? Erik, Kabi, Edwin and I are in a meeting hall in Kibera, a shanty town in Nairobi, Kenya which, with an estimated one million people, is one of Africa’s, if not the world’s, largest slums. We’re running the second of four community engagement workshops in which we are preparing local community groups, entrepreneurs and social enterprises, on how to best approach and prepare for a partnership with multinational companies; in this case, how to partner with our main corporate sponsor, SC Johnson. This is what we do, we bring people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse resources together, “a creative collision of world views”, to create new market opportunities for multinationals and locally grown businesses for poor communities via a process of “mutual value creation”. Buzz phrase laden work, yes, but it’s actually all been going quite well so far, except that now our community partners are stuck on our name. Behind us, on a brown flip chart taped to the wall, is drawn a large three sided figure, a triangle really, with the words “Base of the Pyramid” written on top, or BoP for short. That’s us. A brave hand ventures forth, “Do you mean like a samosa?” For those not in the know, a samosa is a triangle shaped pastry of Indian or Persian origin, stuffed with a delightful filling of meat or vegetables. You can find samosas being fried and sold fresh on the mud tracks, pathways, and streets of Kibera; one of the tasty treats will set you back only about 5 shillings (7 cents). “Yes!” we say with a smile, thankful for a local translation, “The pyramid is like a samosa! The rich people are up top, that’s where most companies traditionally focus, but down below here in the base are some 4 billion people, a whole world that’s been…” There’s another hand up in the air now. “Tafadhali”, we prompt, “please.” “Why should people at the top of the samosa get everything,” one man asks, “when all the meat is at the bottom?” There are a few murmurs of agreement from the crowd, so the man continues, “And why a samosa? A chapati would be better, that way everyone is the same!” This time there are cheers. A chapati is a flat round fried bread, kind of like an Indian version of a Mexican tortilla, and like samosas, chapatis can be found fresh and hot all throughout Kibera. I love chapati, but I’m too much of a free market fan to buy into the idea of it as a symbol of world commerce, nor do I think it’s an accurate representation of how the world really is. Another man speaks up, “Can’t we just turn the samosa upside down?” “Upside down?” “Yes,” he explains, “turn it upside down, then all the rich people are on the bottom and we can force them up to the top!” **** “I’ve been wondering,” Salim Mohamed asks me one day, “What do you think of the phrase, Base of the Pyramid?” The question is asked in a way that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the chosen descriptor for our work. Salim is the program manager for Carolina for Kibera (CFK), an incredible organization in Kibera whose offices we’ve been using as our base camp and which has acted as our gateway into the community. Salim’s question about the BoP comes in the middle of a conversation about the G8 meeting in Scotland and the resulting attention the Western media is pouring on Africa. Most often mentioned in the news are the calls for the doubling of donor aid to Africa and the unconditional cancellation of 100% of Africa’s debt. Also covered by the media are the Live 8 concerts, a massive series of shows throughout the Western world designed to “raise awareness” about poverty in Africa. They’re tied in somehow with the “Make Poverty History” campaign, of which Salim is also skeptical, “Haven’t we already spent 50 years making poverty part of our history?” Salim asks, “and what is poverty any ways? Is it just one person having more money than someone else, how can you get rid of that?” True, Salim is intimately familiar with the problems of poverty in his community, CFK’s four major programs grasp and wrestle with such issues in Kibera directly, every day, but there’s the difference, the direct contact, feeling the texture of poverty, living amongst it, working with it. Think of the Japanese martial art Jujitsu, where you engage with your opponent, body to body, skin to skin, tying your motion to his motion, until flip, you shift, you turn, and you channel your opponent’s force in a new direction, a new way. Now think instead of just dropping a nuclear bomb on your foe. Which has the worse effect? Sure your opponent may be dead, but how much worse was the curse than the cure? As Salim and many others here have helped us learn, painfully at times, the problem with the term Base of the Pyramid is that it is an income base classification, you can use it to segment your population, to find underserved markets or opportunities, but the dangerous tendency is that by selecting a group by income, you then define them solely by income. You fall into the trap of defining them based on what they lack, rather than what they have, and it’s what they have that can be built upon. “My God,” we hear so often, “how can these people get by on less than a dollar a day?” It’s a fair question, an important one even, but it needs to be asked in a way where you expect, and are willing to accept, an answer, i.e. this is how they do it. It’s too quick to say that a dollar a day is too little, and even quicker to just say that the answer is more dollars sent from afar, or even more dollars generated locally. Look at Taka ni Pato (trash is cash), a program run by CFK in Kibera and funded by the Ford Foundation. The project enables youth self help groups in Kibera to turn the community’s trash into a source of income, yet CFK has quickly learned that too much cash flowing too quickly could kill the very groups they are seeking to uplift, the groups that are now providing a much needed service to the community. Just because a group has increased income, perhaps for the first time any income at all, doesn’t mean that the group is ready to do something productive with that income. Are they mature enough to handle it? Do they have the transparency necessary to keep money issues from tearing the group apart? Do they have plans for tomorrow so they don’t spend it frivolously today? As Ibrahim Sakuda of Faulu Kenya reminds us, “As more income comes in, groups need time and help to broaden their vision beyond what they currently do.” Raising income is critical in the Base of the Pyramid, but here in Kenya we’re discovering that income alone won’t create the change we seek: to improve the quality of people’s lives and to create sustainable markets for economic growth. There are other issues that need to be wrestled with, intimately, closely, patiently, while we also seek to raise incomes. Base of the Pyramid may be an income based classification, it may be how we describe what we do, but it need not be our sole focus, we don’t need to be defined by what we call our work, because rich or poor, who really wants to be defined just by how much money you make? Besides, if we define our pyramid differently, say on strength of community, on how many of your neighbors you know, or on the size of children’s smiles, who might be in the Base of the Samosa then? Additional Resources: The Base of the Pyramid Protocol The BoP Protocol Pilot in Kenya Carolina for Kibera Faulu Kenya

Well, we’ve been on the ground in Kenya for over a month now, field testing the Base of the Pyramid Protocol, a process to engage local communities in creating new business opportunities. More about the Protocol and the Pilot respectively can be seen at http://www.bop-protocol.org/ http://www.BRINQ.com/kenya/ There’s so many stories to tell, about our homestays in the BoP, Carolina for Kibera, the Kibera Youth Self Help Group, our days as trash collectors, washers, compost sifters, the fire which destroyed at least 10 homes and took one young life close to my host Edwin’s homes, his heroics that night and my helplessness, Edwin’s birthday, “Dr.” Salim Mohammed, managing director of Carolina for Kibera, Kenyans’ lukewarm reactions to the G8 and Live 8 concerts, and more. Really, more to come soon, but here are some photos from our first several weeks in Kenya, all photos are by bwana Justin, with many more of my own and Justin’s to come. Photos include visits in Kibera, one of Africa’s largest shantytowns, visits with KickStart (the NGO formerly known as ApproTEC) and SC Johnson in Kisumu, Thika, and Nairobi, and more. Sample Photos and gallery links below: BoP Protocol Pilot in Kenya, Set 1 Bop Protocol Pilot in Kenya, Set 2

There’s a texture to life that we miss in our discussions of poverty, our arm chair strategies in the U.S. on microfinance, disruptive innovation, and entrepreneurship. The BoP Protocol Pilot team has been been in Kenya for almost a month now, visiting a number of homes and organizations throughout western Kenya, from rural farms to urban slums. This article is the first in a series of installments about the texture of life we’ve been experiencing. Note, names and details are sometimes changed, all the stories are true. Mitumba “Cha bure ni bure” - free things are worthless -Professor Lelo, Egerton University, Njoro, Kenya One month before heading to Kenya I stopped by the Salvation Army to drop off a trash bag full of old shirts, pants, and shoes. Everything I donated was in good shape, it would certainly help some less fortunate soul, I thought, perhaps provide even a little bit of fashion too. Last week, sitting in Paulette’s front room, in her rented mud hut in Kibera, I found out where my discarded fashion may have ended up, in the many stalls and kiosks lining the streets of Kenya, as mitumba, donated goods for sale. Quality goods for a cheap price. A good thing, right? Perhaps not so good for Paulette’s husband, a Nairobi shoemaker whose market collapsed under him when a flood of cheaper, higher quality shoes hit the market. These days his business scrapes by on the occasional shoe repair. Kenyans, we have found, are remarkably well dressed, no matter what their station in life. Early in the morning a sea of well-groomed Kiberans walk up Kibera Drive, past the Nakomat and YaYa Center (shopping malls in Nairobi), on their way out to look for jobs in the city. Some walk more two hours each way, uncertain if work is there for them or not. I have yet to learn the trick of how to keep my shoes as clean as Kiberans do, how they resist the ever present dust and mud is a mystery to me. Paulette’s husband makes the migration every morning to his little shop space in the city, one cobbler among many: all of whom likely wear the very mitumba which undermine their livelihoods. Well dressed and without work. Paulette speaks with a subdued resignation, her days are filled with preparation and waiting. Preparing breakfast for her three children (if there was food left from the night before), preparing the children for school, buying and fetching water from the local water taps in Kibera (illegal hookups to city’s water supply), washing clothes on laundry days, waiting for the children to return for lunch, and always, waiting for her husband to return on a good day with a 100 shillings (about $1), hoping he brings enough back to buy food for dinner: maize and greens. On the hot days, waiting in the house can become unbearable, the stench of the overflowing latrine outside her door becomes overpowering. Latrines are sometimes cleaned by Kibera’s absentee landlords, by the better ones, though if the tenants are deliquent or refuse to pay rent, even the better ones let the latrines overflow. And even if you do pay rent, perhaps your neighbor does not, and the land lord doesn’t send in the cleaning crews. The day we visited Paulette was a mild one, a waft would only come by with the breeze. Paulette is a member of women’s savings group in Kibera. I remember reading about such groups while in the U.S., women would pool there money, giving 10 or 20 cents a day, each getting a chance to take loans from the pot, money which they would use to buy tools or resources to better their lives. What did Paulette use her turn at the pot for? “Food,” she said, “when my husband comes home with no money for the day, you can’t let the children go hungry, you just can’t. They can’t sleep if their belly is not full. So I take out a loan.” You don’t use the money for capital, for any income generating opportunities? “I don’t have any skills, ” Paulette declared, “I’m trying to learn tailoring, but there are so many tailors already in Kibera.” What if your husband can’t bring home money, and you can’t take out a loan? “We fight,” Paulette said, “but then I learn to keep quiet and cry a lot.” The best time of year is around Christmas, when everyone is preparing to head to their family homes outside of Nairobi, and everybody is spending money to look their best, which includes buying and repairing shoes. Paulette and her family often head to their birthhome in Western Kenya, and she saves up for a special meal for the children: fried chicken and chips. She smiles a little when recounting the memory, but then she adds, “But it’s a good time of the year for the thieves too.”

Well, it’s been a busy three weeks in Kenya, with the Base of the Pyramid Protocol Pilot team bouncing around western Kenya. If anyone doubted poorer communities had local geniuses or heroes, you should come spend some time in the parts of Kenya few outsiders ever see… we can’t seem to turn a corner without bumping into amazing people. So much is being done locally, yet so many challenges still exist. Among the heroes is our local partner in Nairobi, Carolina for Kibera (CFK), a local community based organization in Kibera: at one million strong, Kibera is one of Africa’s largest slums. CFK was started by a 22 year graduate of the University of North Carolina (and U.S. Marine) and a former orphan & Nairobi “slum dweller” (one of the most amazing men I’ve ever met). Started as a sports organization, CFK capitalizes on the football fervor of Kenya to encourage youths to take part in their community. To register a team in the Kibera soccer leagues, youths need to earn points through community service, programs which include local trash cleanups (badly needed), trash for cash programs, and other programs. CFK also runs the Kibera-based Tabitha Medical Clinic (started with a $26 grant) and Binti Pamoja, a reproductive and women’s rights peer group. The organization has mobilized some 5000 children and continues to grow, somehow navigating around the tricky political and ethnic issues which plague Kibera to create a stronger community. Oh and yes, there are many great toys to be found in Kibera. You should see the eyes of a grown Kenyan man when he recalls the wireframe rally car he built and raced as a child. So, check back later for more stories about the toys of Kenya. Patrick