Joshua's story

Believe it or not, when I'm not kidnapping children or baking banana bread, there's actually quite a lot of hard work that goes on out here. My specific mission is to work with five local entrepreneurs to launch or grow their businesses.

Let me paint a picture of our first meeting with Joshua. My team mates  (both male, one from Nairobi, the other from Salisbury) and I were sat on a low table and a plastic chair inside his General shop. The little building, made of wood, had been boldly painted blue. There were no windows, save for a hatch that customers could peer through to order their wares. This hatch had a metal gause over it for security purposes. Shelves lined the shop but they were largely bare as there were not enough funds to fill them. Those shelves that were stocked supported everyday household items like flour, soap and tea. We could see that the shop could play a very useful role in supplying locals with essential items without requiring them to walk to town. Joshua himself spoke good English, was aged around 30, married, with 3 adorable children. Also, when he wasn't running the shop he was a night watchman at a local savings collective, which caused me always to wonder when he found time to sleep.

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that Joshua already kept financial records. In a big book, a keen pencil showed logs of money coming in and money going out. Although Joshua had diligently recorded both of these, he hadn't ever added up the two columns. Unfortunately, when we did, we found that the shop was running at a loss. This was a shock to us all, especially Joshua. We had to come up with a plan of action and fast, before any more money could disappear.

The key to finding a solution was to look closely at the recorded sales. The fastest sellers appeared to be snacks like Mandazis and sweets. Let me quickly introduce mandazis for the British readers, they're like deep fried bread dough often eaten for breakfast; If you imagine a triangular doughnut without the sugar coating you'd be about right. Joshua was buying 6 mandazis for 50/= and selling them at 10/= each. We reasoned that the first thing we could do to cut costs would be to make them ourselves. As luck would have it, mandazi making is one of the skills Joshua already happened to have, it was as though fate had divined this course of action for us.

The next day I was up at 5am, ready for an incredibly early start. The mandazis had to be cooked early in order to catch the breakfast-time market which would begin at 6am. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't light yet and no unescorted young lady wonders around town after dark, so I waited impatiently for the sun to rise before trotting  across town to meet my team in Joshua's shop. There in the middle of the shop floor was a little stove (called a 'jiko') full of boiling oil and Joshua was preparing to deep fry his mandazis in it. He would drop in flat slices of pastry and within a few minutes they would puff up and rise, it was like seeing a cake bake in fast forward. The three of us volunteers watched like vultures, entranced by the smell of cooking dough and eager for our first taste of the new product. It did not disappoint, indeed collectively we were so pleased with the taste that there were very few mandazis left for regular customers.

The following day we returned, having resolved to eat no more than two each, ready to support Joshua once more in his early start. We were very impressed to see that even in 24 hours Joshua's skills had improved. The mandazis we had praised so highly yesterday looked sadly flat compared to the well risen batch we had produced today. This trajectory for improvement continued. Joshua was always tweaking the recipe to get a better texture, taste, colour or smell. He became very popular locally and was soon doing deliveries at his other place of work.

I'd like to say this was all plain sailing, but it wasn't. Improving the recipe comes at a cost, and no customer would be prepared to pay extra for a higher quality mandazi. Everyone knows that they cost 10/= each, that's just the way it is. Joshua wasn't particularly interested in his profit margins, he was much more concerned by the number of sales made. I felt like we were always in danger of spending more on ingredients than we made from sales, making the transition from a profitable business to one that runs at a loss. Joshua wasn't in the habit of telling me when he had changed the recipe, unless something had gone wrong and affected his sales, so I always worried that we wouldn't know if the balance tipped.

Compared to Kenya, the UK may be described as 'hyper-communicative' especially in a business setting. So I'd like to highlight that Joshua wasn't unusual in not keeping us abreast of every change he made. In fact, compared to many, he was very good at keeping us informed.

The spin off of not knowing when the recipe changed was that we couldn't spot problems coming. One day Joshua decided to make his dough the night before so that he could have a lie in the following day. As the milk in his dough curdled it created a sort of sour dough effect when cooked. I loved it, Joshua wasn't so sure and I'm not convinced the customers could tell. Less successful was the time he decided to substitute water for milk and the whole batch failed to rise. He was so ashamed of the flat tasteless mandazis that he didn't take the usual delivery to the neighbouring town and left for his evening job with a quick text to tell me that 80% of the day's batch hadn't sold. The team was busy with another entrepreneur in the market at the time, but we rushed over as soon as we could, met Joshua's wife and proceeded to stand at the roadside (where there was higher footfall) and sell the mandazis there. This was one of the few times when my white skin was a real asset as it attracted a good deal of attention and worked to promote our wares for us with one person even remarking that "it must be good if a white person is selling it". In this way we managed to weather the storm that setting up a new business can bring.

Near the end of our time there, we got the opportunity to pitch for a loan at 0% interest. This is something quite unusual in a country where banks would offer a businessman of Joshua's age and experience a loan at closer to 25%. While I was very nervous about the pitch (for all my entrepreneurs) Joshua did well. Armed with a thick wedge of paperwork that we had prepared, he went into the dragon's den style panel with a well deserved level of confidence and secured 16,000/= to spend on his shop. The money is going to be used to buy ingredients in bulk (which is cheaper than going into a supermarket), a bicycle (to do more deliveries) and a new stove (to cook more at once).

The bicycle was secured before we left. It's sky blue and the children love it. They think it's a motorbike and love to ride behind their daddy. The sight of them was enough to bring a lump to my throat. It's been a stressful, laborious journey but in that moment it was so obviously worth it.

A couple of days after I got back to the UK, I received a message from Joshua and as well as all the normal chat were details of the cost per mandazi and the profit per mandazi that he had calculated. We got there in the end!

Time to let off some (more) steam

After the day of pitching had finished, the UK girls went together to the cyber café (to apply for jobs post-Heathrow) and since that was not a very uplifting experience, we went out afterwards for “one drink”. They do a very dangerous wine here called kingfisher. It’s 8%, tastes like strawberry and is served in little beer bottles. After the first one we were all sitting around giggling and smiling, coming out with ideas like “let’s be sentimental!” after the second one we were trying to take photos of each other but couldn’t because no one would stay still. I was laughing so much I couldn’t speak. Helen* decided to ring Arthur and tell him that she loved him. Evidently her feelings weren’t reciprocated as she came off the phone saying that she hated him. Catherine decided to kiss Daniel, who loved this idea and unsubtly relocated them both several meters from the main group in a terrible effort to get some privacy. Some entrepreneurs came along and one painstakingly took 20 minutes to try and communicate in English to Katie that she was like a teenager. Helen decided she hated Daniel and we have a hilarious video of her explaining why (“becausssse ofmyyy sass!”). Happily he was otherwise engaged with Catherine and so will never know. Megan lost some post it notes, 1000 shillings and a packet of rolos and the pitching panel spilt a good number of secrets regarding who would and wouldn’t get funding. I was walked back by Megan who then took herself off into the night, met some men who claimed to know where her friends were and so she accompanied them on a very high risk 20 minute walk of Njoro town. All in all it was the night that was needed to help relieve the stress of the previous 3 weeks.


* Because we've all been so badly behaved in this post, names have been changed.

How to party like a Kenyan!

After the monumental low that preceded the pitching document deadline came the post-deadline party, which I attended in a state of wild sleep deprivation and spent a good deal of the night wondering if I was drunk or just manically tired. Katie and I were warmly welcomed back to the group of volunteers, who of course hadn't seen us in a long while (4 days is ages in that kind of close community!) It was held in a 3-sided marquee in a field, with a food buffet at one end and a DJ at the other. Tequila kicked the night off.

At about 7pm I found Melissa on the floor, amongst the bags, behind the plastic chairs, saying that she was drunk. I hadn't started drinking at this stage, so I wasn't in danger of spilling anything at all by lying down next to her, having a hug, and generally ensuring that she wasn't the only one sprawled on the floor. Tim was very quickly out of his mind, asked Amy if she wanted a hug and then bit her, which she thought was hilarious and dined out on the story for the rest of the evening, made better by the fact that her audience kept forgetting and needed to be told again. The tent was soon full of dancers. Hamish was struggling to stay upright, but still managed to dance by holding on to a tent pole.  I resolved to write a formal letter of appreciation to the DJ. Catherine, always dignified, was currently experiencing drunkenness for the first time; maintaining a meek countenance like no one else alive, she danced by herself in a corner, thereby saying nothing silly to anyone. Meanwhile, it had started to rain outside, heavily, in the way that I'd only ever seen in Kenya. The locals stayed sensibly under the tent shelter, but the volunteers (including several Kenyan ones) came out to dance in the rain. It's a wonderful sensation. It also makes you feel about 1.5x more drunk than you really are. A little like reality has been partly suspended and you're in a music video. I was soon soaked through and I didn't care.

I found Kenyan dancing a bit tough, but it was OK because so did my friend Jane and she is the benchmark for dance floor morality as far I am concerned. The reason that such a benchmark was needed, was that in UK terms, Kenyan dancing is incredibly sexual. If a Kenyan friend came to visit me at home, I couldn't take them to a night club because their moves would almost certainly be mistaken for premature foreplay. One of my Kenyan friends helpfully explained the etiquette: "you just have to give them a hard-on Clare, and then leave them". This very helpful piece of advice certainly explained why so many of the men were running round with erections, but it didn't make dancing with them much easier. I resolved that as long as I was well out of my comfort zone I was probably doing it right, but problematically this benchmark didn't stay steady and the more vodka I drank, the more challenging dance moves I was required to undertake to ensure that I was always being stretched in a risque direction. While Kenyans don't attribute any significance to dance floor antics and don't see it as particularly sexual, I eventually had to extricate myself from what I felt was becoming a threesome, rather than a dance, and went off in pursuit of more vodka.

Eventually it was time to leave. At least one of the party had to be carried out of the gate, because he was sound asleep, despite the very loud music. As I stepped out into the road, I was startled to find my friend Helen, squatting down and relieving herself in a pothole. At exactly the same time our taxi arrived. Helen hared past me with the speed of a Kenyan sprinter (perhaps not coincidentally) and left a group of us to laugh uncontrollably in her wake. When we got into the taxi, it was Catherine's turn, "I need a wee". This state of affairs got more urgent until we arrived at my house and I invited her into our garden to use our hole-in-the-ground, she stepped out of the taxi behind me but the next thing I heard was "MATT DON'T LOOK!" Never before or since have I heard her sound so fierce. Clearly Helen wasn't the only one to water the road that evening.

According to her roommate, Catherine was out like a lamp that evening but was so excited by her drunken dreams that her roommate was woken hourly to be told about them.

I wish there was a moral to this story, or something intelligent to conclude with, but really this is just an important progression in the story: We'd had a tough time and we needed a break.

I've hit Breaking point and now I'm broken

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that the stress of preparing entrepreneurs to pitch for their loan was slightly overwhelming. Luckily I have a diary which I can look back over to highlight to me just  how my madness peaked. There were early warning signs, "Today disaster struck, I got windows loaded onto my laptop at the computer shop and lost all my photos and the pitching documents. I felt a bit tearful but better for eating a pack of Oreos, a mug of Kenyan tea, bar of fruit and nut, plain dairy milk bar, dinner, a leftover chapati from Friday, some watermelon and a slice of mango. All this stress is not good for me!" I'll draw a curtain over the next day, after discovering that one of my entrepreneurs had changed his pricing system to run at a loss, I was in such a state that my team leader sent me home to get some rest. It wasn't a big deal in itself but it was the straw that broke the camel's back and rather embarrassingly the metaphorical camel was in the very centre of town at the time where there is very little privacy. Nevertheless, this enforced day off was necessary as I was totally burnt out, having not scheduled any rest days of my own volition in a month. Despite this day of rest, I was still writing ridiculously anxty diary entries, "My neighbours have recently started a new tradition of playing loud music from 9:45 onwards at night. I would like to know what has inspired this and then shoot it". Clearly there was still a little tension in the air!

Also, the fact remained, that while I was taking this day off, there was a lot of work that wasn't being done. My clutch of entrepreneurs were the only ones to have no drop-outs and unfortunately for me, all of them wanted to pitch for the loan that was on offer, this meant that the workload I was neglecting was already substantially larger than average. Let me explain what the big deal is: The loans were repayable at 0% interest, rather than the standard 25% that Kenyan banks would offer a small business like ours. Basically, it's a once-in-a-career opportunity for our entrepreneurs. Some of course didn't want or need the money, but many did and felt they could expand their business faster with a cash injection now and then use the increased profits to pay the money back. There was a central pot of money that all of the entrepreneurs on the program are able to pitch for, in a style very much like Dragon's Den. However, unlike Dragon's Den, their proposals were supported by an awful lot of paperwork describing their journey and their financial status, which it fell down to me to produce (as the only team member with a laptop). Having had my laptop's memory wiped just 2 days before meant that I had 5 pitching documents to write in 4 days. The future careers and lifestyles of all my entrepreneurs were weighing very heavily on my shoulders.

I spent the next 4 days indoors with fellow volunteer Katie, who also had 4 documents of her own to write. We sat at the kitchen table and ate huge quantities of bread (because it was within easy reach) and discouraged anyone from coming into the house or indeed making any noise at all. Our workmates didn't have laptops and so they too were discouraged from coming in and disturbing us. This was no time for discussion! It was much like being at university again, cramming for a deadline. The only noise in the room being the sound of our keyboard keys and Ludovico Einaudi's piano compositions (the favoured soundtrack to many students' crises). All the while my entrepreneurs were helping to make me more stressed by not opening their shops, submitting incorrect financial figures to me and altering traditional recipes. It was so difficult being removed from them all in Katie's kitchen. I so wanted to be out there, on the shop floor, explaining why it was important to let the customers in.

Although my workmate, Paul, wasn't able to do an awful lot document-wise, he did meet with one entrepreneur and convince him not to pitch. Thank God! One less document to write! Now, don't think that we did this out of laziness. The fact was that the entrepreneur in question didn't really need a loan, he just wanted to be on the bandwagon.

On the last night we organised a sleepover, not for social reasons but so that we could stay up even later and work together. Our super-supportive team leader arrived with a large tub of chocolate ice cream and her laptop at 5pm to help get the job done. The ice cream didn't last a full half hour under the tyranny of Katie and me, but was silently demolished. It's amazing what stress can do! I eventually went to bed at 3am, but then my wretched body clock got me up again at 7.

As with all things, this time passed. Katie and I both got our documents submitted, admittedly a little after the deadline. I'd like to say that our mental sanity swiftly returned but I'll let you be the judge of that! I'll dedicate my next blog post to the type of party that follows an experience like this...

Introducing English cakes to Kenya

This morning as I was snaffling my treasured Weetabix I noticed that some of our bananas were over ripe. Too much so to eat. As a result I decided to make banana bread out of them to avoid wastage. This sounds very sensible until I tell you I've never made banana bread before and my house doesn't have an oven. These 2 things combined are a challenging combination. I've also never made a proper cake in a microwave.

However, there were most of the necessary ingredients in the house, including rather surprisingly, bicarbonate of soda which was owned for medicinal purposes (and I can't imagine what that would be!). My host mum couldn't believe it when I told her that this white powder, when mixed with lemon juice, could make cakes rise. And if I'm honest I wasn't totally sure I believed it would work either, I was quite prepared to make an embarrassing mess, or even a good cake that was considered not to local tastes (they don't eat cake as we know it here). However, what eventually happened was that I made a smashing banana cake that everyone but me liked (I had poured the salt in free hand and had overdone it terribly ).

There is only one type of cake here in njoro: it is very dry and plain. I have mistaken it for a bread roll on more than one occasion. Imagine everyone's surprise then when I pulled a moist banana cake with raisins in it from the microwave, I'm not sure that mama had ever had anything like it. Georgina and I had 2 slices before dinner and then another one after when no one was looking. Mama says that we can eat it for breakfast tomorrow too, because there's no such concept as dessert here, when else would you eat a cake?!

If you ever find yourself abroad, with limited cooking utensils and the need to ingratiate yourself with your host, I would highly recommend this recipe:

Clare's Kenyan Banana bread

1.5 cups wheat flour
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup blue band (plus some to grease)
1/3 cup milk (long life is ok)
2 eggs
2 medium sized bananas, roughly mashed
2 lemons (if making this in UK, 1 lemon will do as they're bigger)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt (do not pour freehand!)
1/2 cup raisins or currants

1. Mix ingredients in order listed above except currents. Use a larger bowl than initially expected as the mixing aerates the mixture and makes it larger. When it comes to cracking eggs, note that Kenyan eggs have tough shells and plastic mixing bowls can be hard to crack them on. Maybe tap against a wall, or knife instead. If you're in the habit of tasting the raw mixture, do not be alarmed if it tastes strongly of bicarbonate, it fades with cooking.
2. Grease a microwave proof dish. Tupperware works well. Depending on what you have available you may need to divide your mixture and bake 2. Do not worry about using your hands to grease the containers - Kenyan households don't disapprove like a British onlooker would. Tip your mixture into the tubs. Sprinkle all your currents/nuts on top (they will distribute themselves while cooking).
3. Microwave on high for 7 minutes. Use a clean knife to check if it is done (no other senses! Sometimes it looks less ready than it is). If you insert a clean knife into centre and it comes out clean, then it's ready. If not give 2 mins more and repeat.
4. Allow to cool in container for 5 minutes, it makes it much easier to turn out.

Home alone - We've gone wild and eaten a Wheetabix

Overnight last night Georgina (my Kenyan sister) and I have been home alone. How very exciting! What do 2 young 20 something year olds get up to when they have a free house you may ask? Well, they share 1 can of beer between 2, cook themselves a (much craved for) balanced meal and then, because the television remote is free, they watch soaps on TV (the soaps here are fantastic because they are imported from Mexico and dubbed terribly (imagine a scene in which every single line is delivered as if it were the punchline, with feeling. Great, you've got it).  The story lines too are ridiculous e.g. stealing babies to somehow resolve a love tryst. They are so bad they're good, much like a Christmas cracker joke). All the volunteers here are quite addicted to the soaps, indeed, they're very popular across the whole country. We had a very happy evening watching a love pentagon unfold on screen, sadly it'll take 3 months to resolve, by which time I'll be long gone. In the morning I went out and bought Weetabix for us both, what a luxury. We had to eat the whole pack between us in order to hide any evidence and avoid offending our hosts (to whom it hasn't occurred that we might fancy anything other than bread) so I was feeling rather full. The lager can and Weetabix packet then both had to be cut up and hidden in the pit latrine to cover our tracks. What rebels we are!

Glad I crashed the wedding

I put on my most scruffy clothes in order to do some laundry in the garden and then I accidentally crashed a wedding instead.

This all came about when I came across a number of brides maids in the house and asked where the bride was. Instead of telling me, they decided to show me. The bridesmaids were an impressive sight. They wore floor length yellow dresses and to protect themselves against the chilly African summer they also wore 3/4 length blue jackets. I tried to apologise at this point for my own scruffy attire (the Velcro on my trousers was long gone and the flies wouldn't stay closed!) but they brushed off my excuses and said that white people always dressed as I had. Which I received with mixed feelings as the most inadvertently backhanded complement I'd ever heard.

The bride (who was the youngest of 14 children) was at home in the neighbouring street in her white dress. Unlike British brides, she didn't appear to be wearing any make up. She also wasn't particularly interested in having her photo taken and kept saying that she just wanted to see the groom. In this way we ran half an hour early, which would also never happen in England. By the time I had met the bride, the bridesmaids had already invited me to the wedding and seemed quite offended when I asked the bride if this really was ok. It's very hard to explain how much it's not ok in the UK to turn up to a wedding in the UK without an invite from the bride, groom or their parents. They were a lovely group of girls, largely with a good grasp of English. I asked the one sat next to me how the bride and groom had met and to my amazement she didn't know. No way would this happen at home! To my surprise I was invited to join the bride and bridesmaids for a photo, which I was flattered by (although I suspect it may have something to do with my skin colour) but I was glad to oblige (at this point mama came unexpectedly surging into the room to also get in shot before totally disappearing again.) After this there were some speeches. I couldn't understand what was going on as it was in Swahili so I just stood in the background. The speeches were being filmed and about 75% of the way through I realised that 'in the background' was actually a highly inappropriate place to stand because it meant that I was in shot, unlike the regular audience members.

Once this was over we went outside and I was amazed to find that the yard was full of people including mama. I realised then that the bridesmaids I'd been chatting to on arrival had escorted me into the VIP zone without me having realised it. I felt very unworthy but greeted mum and tagged along with her in the wedding convoy (everyone who had a car appeared to have lent it and allowed them to be bedecked with ribbons) so we drove off to church. Almost the entirety of the bride's reception had been females and at the church we were greeted by the men. Then the whole congregation clapped, cheered, shrieked and whistled the loving couple in through the doors. Mama hung back as the crowd danced after them and I stayed with her but once she was reassured that there would indeed be enough seats inside, we followed on. The service resumed and I came to regret my decision to attend as the sermon alone lasted hours. It was delivered in English by a preacher who had to pause after every sentence for someone else to translate into Swahili. This disjointed speech sounded even more unnatural because he bellowed the whole thing, as if every sentence was a punch line. This even included bible references such as,
"THE BOOK OF JOHN!"
        "kitabu cha john"
"CHAPTER SEVEN!"
        "sura ya saba"
"VERSE THIRTEEN!"
        "aya kumi na tatu"

While all this shouting was irritating me, it didn't seem to have captured the attention of the audience very well either as mama next to me sent a couple of texts.

Eventually the wedding reached it's climax. The audience was delighted, we were shouting and whooping and someone had brought a whistle to give a bit of extra gravitas to the vows. To my surprise, instead of saying "you may kiss the bride" the pastor said something along the lines of "you may feed the bride wedding cake" and a cake feeding ceremony commenced that involved a good chunk of the audience (sadly it ran out before it reached me). This ensured that good cheer was restored again before we were released from the church. I quickly decided that I'd had enough ceremony for one day and much to the disappointment of the bridesmaids I trotted off to be reunited with the rest of the volunteers, who were busy painting a children's home.