MATT: Hujambo, rafiki!

In short, I love Kenya. In just under a week, I have something of an addiction to the Kenyans’ contagious smiles and laughter. Our meetings are also going so well. We’ve been meeting with incredible business leaders from the biggest institutions in Kenya, and everyone has been so positive and encouraging. CEOs of banks, professors from the top schools, successful entrepreneurs and NGOs alike have all given us a big thumbs up on our concept. Nonetheless, the task ahead still feels slightly daunting.

That’s enough of the business for this post. Now that you’ve got a bit more background about what exactly we’re doing (see post called “The Scoop”), I wanted to share with you a little about our lives in Kenya. First, Here are a few pictures of our awesome apartment, including our den, living room, kitchen and a bedroom:





Next, it’s imperative that I e-introduce you to one my favorite Nairobi friends, Robert. Robert has been friends with our landlord for years and is our trusty driver. We simply couldn’t do anything without him. He also substitutes as my Swahili teacher (Dan is the real deal … I’ll tell you all about Dan in a minute). He’s one of the kindest people I know and I feel so grateful to have him helping us all summer:


Dan is the MAN! He works for KCA (Kenya College of Accounting) in the offices where we work in downtown Nairobi as an IT guru (in the Fedha building – that means ‘money’ in Swahili). Dan has taken me under his wing as his full time Swahili student. I must be the biggest, whitest Swahili speaker he has ever seen:


We have such incredible space that KCA has provided for us. Sometimes it feels like God is really just smiling down on our plan … its impossible to ignore the way great things just “happen” all the time to help us succeed. As you can see in the pictures below, we have cubicle space for both Courtney and I, some typical consultant-ish space with a whiteboard and all the support we could ask for. In the below pictures below, the man in the suit is David, our main contact with KCA (and a true advocate of our project):




We are also working with Strathmore University, but I don’t have any great pictures yet. I do want to share with you the one major downfall of Nairobi: traffic. It is never ending:


Last, but not least, I wanted to reveal to you the top 5 treasures of Nairobi (of course, completely subjective based on my personal opinion developed in a week):
1) Smiles everywhere. Though people constantly look at us as if we were aliens, stares are almost undoubtedly followed by a toothy grin.
2) Swahili. Who knew it was such an awesome language. I’ve hired a private teacher to give us classes once a week for a few hours. I also love the way Kenyans respond when you speak it to them: more smiles.
3) Viking House. It’s a churrascaria literally a stone’s throw from our apartment. One of my roommates, Rachel, is a vegetarian, so I’m trying to limit the number of times a week I enjoy all you can eat meat for about $15.
4) Tea. Any time, all the time. Coffee works, too.
5) Music. Check out African Queen by 2Face Idibia. You can’t help but smile

That’s all I have for now. More to come very soon.

Sawa sawa and PV,

Matt