Anderson .Paak: The Dreamer

Just one great song of many off an impressive album: Malibu.

Ode to Nokia

In a world of growth, you stay proudly small

Compact, simple, discreet

Jelly-like buttons and a sliding back

Great for bored fidgeting

Your games are a no-internet refuge

That insatiable snake

Height of design, the most useful of all

Your double-click flashlight

I wouldn’t change one thing about you, but

If I could, some advice,

Please lose your friend T9

Gorillas and Volcanoes in the DRC

We were originally drawn to the hike up Mt. Nyiragongo- the active volcano looming over Goma, a border town in the DRC. There are maybe 6 other places in the world where it’s possible to see an active lava lake. It’s located in Virunga national park, which has been the site of conflict at times during the unending conflict in the eastern DRC and was recently the subject of a worthwhile documentary on Netflix.

There are mountain gorillas living amongst the (mostly) dormant volcanic chain running through that area. Their territory reaches into Uganda and Rwanda, where you can also visit human-habituated families. We chose to see them in DRC as they’re only a few hours drive from the volcano, and it’s the lowest price for a permit.

Permits for both the gorillas and the volcano hike are purchased ahead of time through the Virunga website, where you also apply for your DRC visa. They have limited permits available per day so buy in advance. We opted for a basic package (which you pre-select): we had porters but we brought our own gear and food, which seemed like the best value. From home we brought some simple cooking gear (pot, spoon, spices) and it wasn’t hard to buy ingredients for a 1-pot meal and snacks in Kigali. We chopped our veg the night before we left for the hike so we didn’t need to bring a knife or cutting board. A couple things to be aware of when packing gear: it gets pretty cold at the top (multiple layers, hat and gloves), and there’s a high chance it will rain on you (dry bags, bags covers, etc).

We made the DRC visit into an easy long-weekend trip by working remotely that week from the One Acre Fund office in Rubengera, Rwanda. On Friday afternoon it was just a 3 hour boat ride across the Lake Kivu to Gisenyi, the sister border town to Goma, with Nyarigongo smoking in the distance. Gisenyi from Kigali is not bad either- just a slightly longer taxi or bus ride, for around $50 and <$10 respectively. If flying from an East Africa Community country, make sure to get your transit card when exiting immigration so you don’t have to pay the Rwanda entry visa.

Since we arrived around nightfall, we spent the night in Gisenyi at Inzu Lodge- good accommodation and food for not a lot of money. The next morning we were picked up by Green HillsEcotours, the tour company who provided our transportation during the weekend and helped facilitate the border crossing. They picked us up around 7:30am, as were starting the volcano hike mid-morning. Plan for a couple hours to cross the border and get your actual permits from the park office. The company’s price was a little steep- $120 for the volcano, $200 for the gorillas, but seemed on par with alternatives for 4x4s. You could get away with paying less by not using a 4x4 for the volcano transport, but you definitely want one on the day you drive to the gorillas. For crossing the border, make sure you’ve got an up-to-date yellow fever card (with your name and details filled in correctly) and you’ve brought print outs of your passport, visa confirmation, permit confirmations and the visa list emailed by the Virunga staff. Basically just print and bring everything they email you. We hit a couple snags so it was nice to have the rep from Green Hills there to help chase down some missing documents.

We were late to the trailhead because they picked us up late, so the rest of the hiking groups were waiting for us, but we still started more or less on time. The hike takes about 6 hours, and is somewhat challenging as it’s straight up the whole way- particularly so during the sections of loose volcanic rock. However, there are rest areas every 45 minutes so it never felt very difficult, apart from the 45-degree scramble at the end up to the lip of the volcano. It’s a stunning view on the way up out over Lake Kivu and the hills of Rwanda. We were lucky to have a very clear day with just one light shower during the whole hike.

The view into the crater is another level of incredible. You’re fairly high up, but at times you can feel the heat of the bubbling lava lake. Black with neon orange-red cracks, billowing smoke (or is it steam?), constantly moving, bursting, roiling- the lava is mesmerizing to watch. While the nighttime view may be the most striking, the best time for photos is early the following morning just before sunrise, when the crater is illuminated but the lava still stands in stark contrast.

At the top of the volcano, almost on the rim itself, are small wood cabins where we spent the night. All the materials used to build them were carried up by hand. They offer some welcome warmth after dark, but you still probably want a sleeping bag that covers close-to-freezing temperatures. We cooked 1-pot chili outside the cabins over a small fire from charcoal we’d bought at the trailhead.

Hiking down the next morning can be harrowing at times but only took about 5 hours, and the tour company dropped us at our hotel in Goma by lunchtime. We spent 1 night at Hotel Caritas, which was adequate- expensive but with a nice lake view. It was recommended to us and suited our needs. They can do $5 packed lunches for your gorillas hike but you’re better off just wrapping some things from breakfast. One expected but still surprising thing about Goma was the cost of living- you could pay $20 for a taxi ride at night. Dollars are accepted everywhere as a parallel currency, and there are even dollar-dispensing ATMs which we definitely took advantage of.

Green Hills picked us up from Caritas around 6:30am the next morning, and it was a fairly bumpy 3-hour ride to the gorilla ranger station. After a quick intro and a dos and don’ts session about gorillas (yes to slow movements, no to pointing and eye contact…), we headed into the forest. It’s basically bushwhacking so long pants are key and sleeves are nice. A raincoat is also a good idea. The length of the hike depends on where the families are that day; luckily we only had to go in about 20 minutes before finding them. You may ask yourself, at a $400 price tag for 1 hour (and even more in Uganda and Rwanda), is it really worth it? We were very close to not doing it, and I have to say I’m really glad we did. It’s a viscerally amazing hour. Watching the big males knock over whole trees, or the baby roll around and play, or them grooming and sunning themselves just feet away from us made me feel downright giddy. For a long weekend it’s not cheap, but they were both such incredible and rare experiences it felt like a much longer and very memorable trip.

alt-J: 3WW

New alt-J album coming out in June. If the first single, 3WW, is a good judge of character, it'll make for a great, laid-back summer soundtrack.

Harvesting 1 Year Old Fruits

I have a suspicion that I’ve started previous blog posts with a line akin to “the new year started with a bang”, but once again that feels like the reality. 15% of 2017 has already passed before the dust has even settled, and in 40 days I’ve already come and gone from Kenya 4 times. To catch my footing in this rush, I want to spend this post reflecting on the immense shift my work has undergone over the course of the last 12 months.

This time last year I was focused on 2 long-shot ideas: creating an operational partnership with an MFI in Ethiopia and convincing MIX Market to collaborate on and host our farm finance database. Mixed into my regular work, I was writing concept notes and memos, and holding calls to pitch our ideas. I was excited, but also increasingly frustrated as both initiatives became bogged down.

Now, a year later, I still feel a little amazement when I think about the status of each idea. I feel proud of what we’ve accomplished after the energy we’ve poured in, and what we’re positioned to accomplish going forward.

MIX Market database:

I was sitting across a table from my manager in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso when he shared this idea. Our new team would build a database of the best examples in the world of microfinance institutions working with smallholder farmers. We would go visit these examples personally to truly understand them, and we would construct the database with an average “operations manager” user in mind: simple to use, with relevant and practical information.

After personally visiting 24 microfinance institutions in 11 countries, I am deeply invested in this database. I have seen firsthand how many innovative ideas about working with farmers exist in the world, but also how great the need is for institutions to learn from one another. The wheel is being reinvented time and again, leading not just to inefficient use of resources, but an increasing perception that there are high barriers to working in the smallholder farmer space. Each time an agricultural product stumbles or fails it decreases an institution’s appetite to undertake this type of work in the future. This reality is one reason I feel strongly that creating this database, the first of its kind, could bring down barriers and unlock huge growth in the rural financial inclusion space.

If you had told use 2.5 years ago that we’d bring MIX Market, the go-to online resource for financial inclusion data, on board as a partner and host for this database I’m not sure I would’ve believed you. One of the amazing things about developing this into a formal collaboration with MIX, beyond accessing their decades of expertise in online product design and their networks, is the amount of web traffic (including those operations managers) that will be funneled past this information. From the results of an experimentation stage late last year, in which we tested the value and strength of our proposed solution through 2 dozen interviews, we felt confident in fully investing in making this database a real, functioning part of MIX Market’s data product lineup. I am approaching the product build and initial release in mid-2017 with a real sense of optimism and excitement and the potential impact this could have on the sector.

(Our current database coverage)

Ethiopian partnership:

This idea was also born around a table, but this time sitting across from the executive director of a microfinance institution (MFI) in Ethiopia.  This was late 2015- I was on a field visit with this MFI to develop content for the database, and had been thoroughly impressed with their work. Despite being a fairly standard MFI with no agricultural expertise, they had undertaken serious efforts to better tailor their financial products to the needs of smallholder farmers. They also expressed a clear commitment to investing further in these products and expanding their agriculture services.

Walking away with a sense there was strong alignment between our organizations, and that they would make a great collaborator, I wrote up a partnership concept note revolving around building their internal capabilities to deliver agricultural trainings to their clients. Now, a full 12 months after that note received initial approval, after wrangling internal stakeholders and navigating a turbulent 2016 in Ethiopia (politically and environmentally), we are officially engaged in a pilot partnership. We aim to roll out the trainings we’ve developed to a selection of their farmer clients during the 2017 growing season, from May to November. Based on the results for farmers and the institution, they might then scale the trainings to all their agricultural clients (50,000+ clients) I’ve enjoyed the chance to work so closely with a strong team at this other institution, to spend time on the ground learning from their staff and clients, and to be able to design something from scratch with exciting potential impact. I look forward to what the next busy few months of implementation bring!

(Finalizing our 2017 workplan!)

India: Great for Houseboats and Weddings

Weddings are great. I’ve had a blast at every one that I’ve been to, though I’ll admit that’s on the low end for my age group. Great food, music, locations- they’ve all felt like historic parties with a romantic subtext. When we were invited to our friend and colleague’s wedding in India, many things were different, but this fact held true. It was fun and beautiful, down to the last detail. Even our choreographed Bollywood dance and our shoe-finding mission were unlikely successes, but more on that later.

We arrived early with friends to do some traveling before the wedding. We started in Kochi, a city in the southwestern Kerala state. It’s a tropical area, lots of palm trees and nice beaches along the coastline, which is where we hung around. On our evening in Kochi we caught a wildly impressive Kathakali show, a small part of a traditional Kerala performance. It involved elaborate makeup and dancing. The face movements were particularly impressive; the actors had incredibly precise and minute control of their eyes and facial muscles.

On the recommendations of friends, we rented a houseboat for 2 days for the 6 of us. On it, we cruised along the network of canals, known as the backwaters, that penetrates inland from the Arabian Sea. It’s a mix of brackish water, where sea meets river, and serves as transportation routes for the villages where roads don’t go. At the same time, the water is used to irrigate rice, and green paddies stretch along the canals. Where there are roads and footpaths along a canal, they must take to the sky as mini-bridges each time it intersects another waterway.

The houseboat was a totally unique and relaxing experience. I’d never been on a houseboat before, but this was like a quaint guesthouse with a nice view that continuously changed. The canals are calm, so it’s smooth sailing- you barely notice you’re moving. There was a captain and a chef who cooked us fantastic meals, including the highlight: sadhya. Sadhya is a famous dish traditional to the Kerala region. Actually it’s a bunch of little dishes, in our case rice, beets, okra, and others, served on a banana leaf.

(Sadhya)

Day 1 of our cruise was quite busy. We accidentally arrived at the end of a local holiday, so boats were a little hard to come by at first and the canals were pretty active with holidaymakers. Both days were equally relaxing, the kind of leisure time where you can read while looking out at the passing water, palms and rice paddies, drift into a contented snooze lulled by the purring engine, then wake back up and pick up where you left off on the page. My kind of holiday, in short.

After we disembarked from our floating relaxation barge we made our way back to Kochi, stopping for a night at a simple AirBnB on a beach. We had a half-day in Kochi in which we did a quick tour of the town, seeing the iconic, manually powered Chinese fishing nets, and doing some shopping for wedding outfits. We then flew to Mumbai where we spent the next 2 days before the wedding. We wrapped up our outfit shopping, did a little sightseeing, and explored the wealth of niche, often very hip, restaurants, teahouses, and bars in what feels like a fast-growing city.

(Colored powder for incense for sale in Kochi)

On Saturday morning we convened with other colleagues and friends who had also flown in for the wedding, and made a 2-hour bus trip to the venue in Karjat, east of Mumbai. They had rented the entire hotel, and the decorations were impressive and immersive. So much was made from flowers, marigolds in particular. I’d guess over 20,000 marigolds alone were used that weekend. The whole setting was stunning, and made even better by the delicious Southern Indian street food and spreads at dinner. That evening we, the friends and colleagues from One Acre Fund and Kenya, performed our section of a wider dance tribute to the bride and groom. Thankfully we’d practiced a bit ahead of time so we weren’t a complete disaster and it was actually pretty fun. Luckily, or unluckily, someone captured our part on film (video coming soon).

We continued dancing (in a less choreographed manner) into the early hours of the morning to live drummers and a masterful mix of Indian and western music. The next day was the wedding itself, which was actually a couple hours of ceremonies and rites. While our friends were at the center of it all on the platform, the crowd milled around, alternatively watching, clapping, eating lunch, and chatting.  Our group, as friends of the bride, got roped into a shoe hiding / finding tradition, where essentially the groom’s hidden shoes, if found, can be ransomed back to his relatives. I am pleased to say we contributed to retrieving one shoe. We all had such a great time, we would’ve happily stayed for a second night. Sadly, we had to make our way back to Mumbai to head home the next day, though we’re already looking forward to the next visit, hopefully not too long from now.

(Bride and groom!)

Into 2017

2016 was fast and full. Two families visiting, work trips, fun trips, Madagascar twice in two months- it was over in a flash. 2017 may be even faster, with many new adventures. I feel like I'm at the top of the Tsaranoro valley again, looking at the new and beautiful landscape spreading out before me and thinking how much I'm going to enjoy exploring it.