MATT: Haba na haba, hujaza kibaba (Little by little, fills the measure)

Hello friends and family. Thanks for continuing to support our blog. As the summer rolls on, I am finding it more and more challenging to find the time to write. But my fan club (pretty much just my mom and dad) get on me when I don't write enough, so ... voici un nouveau blog pour mes parents. Even though I bought a digital camera on the way to the airport, I have failed miserably at using it to create stimulating visual content for this blog. However, Courtney and I did go to the the Giraffe Park today and there are a few pictures that she will post in her entry tomorrow (so check back soon).

Everything is still going quite well with GoInnovate for Africa. We have accomplished all of our goals for the summer (establishing a network, vetting our plan and writing our own initial business plan/ model) and still have a few weeks to spare. I am working on gathering clips and pictures (ironic for me to be gathering pictures, I know) for future web content. Hopefully we'll have a website up and running before too long. We also have a few meetings left this coming week with government officials and "wazee" (wise elders in Kenyan culture who can provide many insights on local culture). We'll be meeting with the Director of Economic Affairs for the whole country in the Ministry of Economics on Tuesday and we have two other meetings with high-ranking government officials later on in the week who we hope will be as energized and supportive of our plan as everyone else who we've met. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Also, we are thinking about making a few changes to our operations relating to financing our entrepreneurs' ventures. A wise professor helped us think through the possibility of making only initial investments and developing a network of venture capital funds that have interest in east Africa to handle the larger growth financing a year or so out. I plan on talking to all of you great finance/ banking brains when I get home (Goldfarb, Zack, Barry, Jessica, Mike, Evan - brace yourselves). If you're interested in hearing more, Courtney and I can send you our new (more polished than the 2-pager we sent many of you) proposal in a week or so for your feedback. Please get in touch with me by leaving a message here or sending me an e-mail at mcstol@gmail.com. Thanks again to Tom Serres and his team at Piryx for working on "spiffing up" the look and feel of our proposal.

In other news, Courtney's dad arrived on Saturday and it has been great to have another Texan around. We've talked hunting, oil and bar-b-que for about two days straight and I'm starting to miss Texas more than ever. He's going for a safari to the Masai Mara for the next couple of days and I must admit I'm a bit jealous, although, I am planning a small safari of my own with a fellow Swede (a friend of Rachel's, the other roommate, from Harvard) at the end of the month. You can definitely expect a few pictures in my early August post.

And because I know this post has been a bit boring with too many details about our organization, I will leave you with a story to make you laugh and cringe: Our favorite Kenyan (who happens to also be our driver) Robert was telling us about a number of Kenyan things and happened to casually bring up circumcision as an important ceremony and rite of passage for young Kikuyu men. Apparently this is also true for most of the other tribes in east Africa. Anyway, matters of personal privacy are just not as important here as they are back home, so Robert went into a bit too much detail describing the extent of the pain during his own "public initiation ritual" explaining, "We want the pain ... and you cannot show any emotion. It is so perfect". Perfect isn't the word I would use. By the end of it, I was begging to get out of the car ... literally holding back tears with everything I had. Robert, laughing so hard he was starting to cry himself, took one look at my face said I would never be a "real man" in Kenya. I told him I was quite alright with that. He sighed and thought proudly of his own son that would "face the knife" soon. I said a prayer of thanksgiving for my dad.

Ninachoka na ninataka kulala (I am tired and I need to sleep). Thanks for reading.

PV,

M