Make a Gift to KickStart

As most of you know, I spent the majority of the year in Kenya working for KickStart International. My project was related to the foot powered irrigation pumps we sell throughout Africa, and I spent more than a month in Zambia and Malawi getting a first hand look at how our MoneyMaker pumps are used and the impact they are making on the lives of African farmers and their families.

There are plenty of positive statistics I could share as a result of our Malawi/Zambia survey where we interviewed over 500 farmers using our pumps, but I'd rather share one simple quote we captured while interviewing Dancen Kazimbi, a Malawian farmer using our MoneyMaker pump:

I'm planning on getting more land because what I currently have is not enough. With the MoneyMaker, anything is possible.

Anything is possible. Beyond providing extra income that helps feed their families, pay for their children's education, and improve their living situations, the MoneyMaker pump allows farmers and their families to think about the future. For the first time in their lives, these farmers can look past today's concerns. They no longer have to worry about what their family will eat today and how they'll pay for their daughter's school fees this semester. They can finally look to and plan for the future with a sense of dignity that everyone deserves and yet so few in the developing world experience. They can finally look to the future and dream. Anything is possible.

This past week, I got an email from my former boss asking me to pass along to anyone who might be interested in KickStart's annual appeal for donations. I didn't have a chance to meet Mama Edna, the farmer featured in KickStart's email (below), but I met plenty of farmers just like her and know first hand that KickStart's work makes sense. The organization has the tools, the passion, the talent, and the model to rapidly scale this solution to reach the millions of African farmers that are in need. These farmers don't want a handout, they want a way to make money and a means by which they can plan for the their and their family's futures. KickStart provides just that and you should help them achieve this by donating.

If you're interested in donating visit KickStart's donate page. And feel free to send me any questions about  the organization, their work, or my specific project. Would love to help.

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Meet Mama Edna

Mama Edna sells her fruits and vegetables from a kiosk in Sotik town, 125 miles from Nairobi. She says that buying a MoneyMaker pump changed everything for her family in a very short time – she proudly describes herself as a prosperous, serious farmer with a hired farmhand.

The year before, Edna was dependent on rainfall and a bucket for irrigation. Her crops often failed in the drought. Even when she could bring something to market, everyone else was selling the same produce and much of her harvest went to waste because there was little demand.

Mama Edna knew about the MoneyMaker pump but didn’t think she could buy it outright because she had to pay school fees for three children. She bought her pump with KickStart’s unique mobile phone layaway program “Tone kwa Tone” or “Drop by Drop.” Edna’s farmhand generates even more income from the pump with a car wash business next to the river.

The first thing Mama Edna says when asked about her pump is, “Kama siyo hii ningekwama” or “If it weren’t for this, I’d be stuck.” She sees a future where she will be a model farmer who supplies her produce to rural schools and hospitals. She says, “I am now the envy of the village, thanks to this amazing pump!”

KickStart uses your funds to build awareness of the value of pump ownership through radio advertising, Farmer Field Days and other events. KickStart also tracks the impact of pump ownership to measure nutrition, education, electrification, and other lifestyle improvements.

Your funds help Mama Edna and hundreds of thousands of farmers like her provide better nutrition, better education and a better future for their families, as well as provide additional jobs for dealers, distributors and farmhands.

Lusaka's Finest

I had the pleasure of visiting Lusaka’s finest last week while working in Zambia. One of the shining stars I had hired to do data collection work in the country managed to lose, within just a few hours, the $300 phone I had given her to collect and submit survey data during her field work. An excellent way to start, indeed. I didn’t have any hope of actually finding the phone with the help of the police, but in what has turned out to be 2011’s best decision, I had gotten insurance on the phone, and I figured a police report would help my case in reclaiming some of the phone’s value. Damn, you’re smart, David.

So on Saturday morning, I was off to the police station to report the phone as lost/stolen. If I had to rank top places to avoid while travelling in a developing country, a police station would surely make the list. It wouldn’t beat out a market bus station which I’d consider the worst –something along the rating of “I’d rather give my eyeball 15 paper cuts” – but it’d score very well, maybe one paper cut. Not so much because of the actual locations of these stations, but because there aren’t any positive reasons why you’d have to visit a police station and, well, you’ll probably leave the station with a stronger feeling of hopelessness and hatred than when you arrived (maybe this isn’t unique to the developing world?). I have to say, though, my recent visit wasn’t all that bad, probably because I didn’t really go in with a desperate feeling of “please help me!!” which would have surely led to very painful disappointment, and because I found the detective and the entire process to be pretty humorous.

I walked in to the small cement house, painted police blue, that sat in the shadow of Manda Hill, Lusaka’s upscale shopping mall, and found four people behind a large reception desk, all looking at me like I was some criminal. But after briefly explaining what had happened and what I was hoping to do, I was pleasantly ushered back into a bare office that offered a school desk, two desk chairs that had seen better days roughly fifteen years ago, and three remarkably huge case books with dusty black leather covers and pages upon pages of handwritten, unorganized notes of Lusaka’s previous crimes. Detective Nathan was in charge and told me to sit in one of the chairs as he flipped through one case book to find the next free page. He was a big boy wearing a shirt one size too small that had two cigarette burn like holes in the front, each of them just large enough to distractingly reveal bare skin. Apparently no uniform is required for detectives. Or maybe it’s casual Saturday.

He finds his page and asks me a series of basic questions, referring to me as “Americano.” Americano, when did you lose the phone? Where? What was the phone number? Do you have the serial number of the phone, Americano? He copies my answers into the book with, in my opinion, rather sloppy handwriting and as he’s writing my answers down, he continues to ask completely unrelated and absurd questions.

How does Lusaka compare to Texas? Hmmm...that’s a pretty tough one. Texas is very big and its major cities have huge populations. He sees me struggling to answer and gives me an easy out “so you can’t compare Lusaka with Texas?” No, you cannot, detective. Americano, you know Mike Tyson? He doesn’t have any money now? I would have laughed out loud at this one. Mike Tyson!!!?? But he asks me with a very concerned and troubled tone, like he’s pained by Mike’s reckless fall from grace and riches, and so I keep my straight face and very gently confirm to him that yes, Mike Tyson basically lost all his money at one point, but then reassure him that he’s slowly getting back on two feet. I ask if he’s seen Tyson’s starring and comeback role in The Hangover. Detective Nathan has not seen it, but he jots down the title of the movie so that he may remember and see it soon.

After jotting down all relevant notes about the phone, Texas, and Mike Tyson, Detective Nathan tells me he will do his best to recover the phone but will require a payment to “move around the city while investigating.” Excellent. I ask him how much he requires, and after a very long and considered pause, he says the equivalent of $35. I let out a small laugh and ask him if he’s planning on “moving around the city” in a limo. He smiles at this but doesn’t come down in his offer. I tell him I’ll pay him his amount if he can also provide some sort of report or paper that says that I have legitimately filed a case with the Zambian police, which is really all I need for the insurance (I have no hope after seeing the scribbled case notes that the phone will be pursued at all, much less recovered). He agrees and after payment (which turns out to be closer to $40 because surprisingly, Detective Nathan can’t come up with the change I need) has Officer Banda fill out a photocopied form that’s about as professional looking as what you could expect from a group of third graders playing cops and robbers. But it does provide the official Zambian police stamp, which just may do the trick for the insurance company.

I bid farewell to Detective Nathan and his comrades, still hopeless for the recovery of the phone and $40 poorer, yet feeling pretty good about what I purchased with that $40 – a form I can turn into the insurance company, a lunch or two for the entire station, possibly a new shirt for Detective Nathan, and with any luck two hours of laughter for Detective Nathan as he watches The Hangover. Not a bad purchase, and certainly enough to move “police station” down a few rungs on the top places to avoid when travelling list. Thank you, Detective.

Zambian Spiderman Is A Big UM Fan!

Spotted this little guy strutting around the Zambian Agricultural Show. I'm guessing the UM shirt that fits his 7 year old frame was at one time worn by a Tri Delt sorority girl.

Selling Pumps

My project is unrelated to selling our pumps, but I happened to be in Lusaka during the Zambian agricultural show this past weekend and was happy to lend a hand to my boss, our Zambian sales rep, and our distributors to help present our pumps. I actually wasn't too excited about it at first - there were a lot of things I'd rather do than sit in the hot sun, in the middle of a very large and dusty showgrounds with a carnival like atmosphere and shoulder to shoulder people - but I found it surprisingly enjoyable. My boss and I made up a good team, selling three pumps in one afternoon, and it felt good to do something that seemed so helpful, easily answering farmer questions about the pump and how it works. Of course not so easy at first, but within fifteen minutes I had it down. 4,000 liters of water in one hour, 10 meters of inlet pipe, 25 meters of outlet pipe, 4 spare piston cups, 1 year guarantee, irrigate up to 2 hectares in one day, 5 distributors and several dealers throughout the country. Any readers interested in becoming a small scale farmer?

I thought this would be easier

It felt good to get to Lusaka. Malawi had been a lot more difficult than I had anticipated, but I made it through and was sure Zambia would be easier. It’s much more developed, as evidenced by the Samsung Galaxy advertisements that dot the highway into town and the skinny jeans wearing teenagers that hangout at the shopping mall, which would make things, I presumed, a little easier and more comfortable. And most significantly, I had already done everything that had to be done. I had made a lot of mistakes on the first go of this work in Malawi, but I had learned a lot from that initial set up and was sure Zambia would go fairly smoothly. Sweet Lord, David, you foolish and naive piece of crap, have you learned anything in your three years working in developing countries?

Things started out innocently enough, but really took a turn for the worst on Monday when I started to feel pretty sick. It was a beautifully sunny 80 degrees and I had the chills. The only good thing about having a fever here is that the stupidly hot taxi rides, which usually leave you with a nasty ring of back sweat that creeps through your shirt, actually offered some relief as the baking inside of a 1980s Corolla felt pretty good when I was finding the outside temp to be too chilly for my depleting health. But at least you can self medicate in developing countries. And by self medicate, I mean take your medical advice from the Indian kid that looks about half your age standing behind the counter of the walk in pharmacy. Yes sir, I will take this alka seltzer/vitamin C combo that you have suggested and sold to me for $5.

So that’s what I did for the next three days, chug alka seltzer just to get through the busy work days before I could make it back to a shitty hotel room and collapse into bed at 6pm to try to sleep it off before the following morning. They were fitful nights, spent either shivering cold or sweltering hot, and as my physical health deteriorated by the day, my mental well being was shot by Tuesday. I won’t go into the details as to why (there’s just too much pain to relive), I’ll just say that feeling as if you’re constantly being misled or lied to is very, very hard to emotionally deal with. In any case, by Friday, I was at least physically feeling a little bit better, around 70%. At that point, with two data collectors hired and trained, I was nearing the home stretch. Just had to get the phones hooked up and send them to the wild.

Just get the phones hooked up. Shamie (one of the enumerators I hired who sports purplish hair and smacks her chewing gum during the interview), can you please give me the phone I gave you this morning, so that we may finish things up? Shamie? Where’s the $300 phone? How the f’ have you lost the phone within two hours of me giving it to you? You’ve got to be kidding me. Daggers fly out of my eyes and straight into her heart. I picture myself picking her up and lifting her above my head, spinning her around a few times before throwing her as hard as I can to the pavement, a quick kick to her midsection before leaving here there helpless. Instead, I just tell Shamie and Cuthbert, the other enumerator I hired, to go home while I figure out what next. My immediate next, after getting rid of both of them, was to find a bar. Two beers in, nursing my fever and emotional distress, boarding the next flight out of Lusaka and back to the US sounded like the best option for everyone involved.

But the following morning was a new day. I had decided that it was unlikely that Shamie stole the phone. I’ll never be 100% confident that that’s true, but I give her the benefit of the doubt for a lot of reasons, and though buying another phone in Lusaka wasn’t an option, I could leave her with my phone to get the job done. I called her and Cuthbert to meet up again in the afternoon for the final send-off. I spent the better part of the first 15 minutes of the meeting with Shamie lecturing about the seriousness of losing that phone, about making a sizeable deduction from her pay, about how disappointing it is to get started like this, and about how if something like this were to happen again, she’d be gone. And I spent the better part of the first 10 minutes of the meeting with Cuthbert lecturing about responsibility and timeliness after he showed up an hour and twenty minutes late. Not exactly the smooth start in Lusaka I had envisioned when I had arrived. Then I finished as quickly as I could, wishing them luck in the field, and getting rid of them as quickly as possible. I had better things to do with the afternoon.

I checked myself into the Southern Sun and spent the rest of the weekend reminding myself, with the help of the top notch staff, what it felt like to be in a place where things just work. No hassle, mental breakdowns, or frustration required. Checking into the hotel was me waving the white flag. Zambia wins. You are not easier than Malawi...not by a long shot. You are equally tough, maddening, and humbling. And as good as I thought it felt to arrive in your capital city, it’ll feel better to leave.

New Pictures

Finally posted my pictures from the past few months to my Flickr page. Highlights include:

A senior picture:


Africa's pay phones:


A traveling Urban Worm:


An elephant's butt:


And a shot that captures what traveling actually is:


Flickr has a really annoying feature (or lack thereof) that doesn't allow you to change the order of photos in your photostream. So, since the order of photos in the photostream is based on the time of upload there are a few pictures that aren't in the appropriate sequence if you're browsing from the main page. This is killing me (but probably something you really don't care about). Rest assured, if you browse by clicking on the sets, those photos should be in the correct (date taken) order.

Week in Malawi: Part One

Sunday, March 13th

I’ve been in the Lusaka Hotel for the past two weeks. It describes its vision as “to restore the hotel to be the leading city centre hotel in Lusaka.” This statement is prominently written on the service directory that sits on the desk in my room, a dimly lit, pink painted rectangle with a rather lumpy twin bed and a mosquito net that once upon a time, before being covered in dust and dirt, was probably white. I keep reading it while I brush my teeth each night and after three days at the hotel, I put the service directory in the corner, flipped upside down so that I don’t have to continue reading the “vision.” It depresses me. The hotel is a long way from leading anything, and I consider telling the staff that a good place to start on their long journey to become a leading hotel would be to install a real shower. As it stands, I’ve been “showering” each morning by squatting down in a pink tub and holding a stupid hose above my head.





For all its shortcomings though, the hotel has been an alright place to spend the last two weeks while working in Lusaka. It’s a good location for business downtown, and the staff is exceptionally nice and most, at this point, greet me by name. Amon, one of the servers in the hotel restaurant where I’ve had breakfast each morning, knows it’s my last morning. When he brings the bill over, he wishes me a good journey, tells me to friend him on Facebook, and says, “I’ll miss you, David” which is actually kind of cute despite it coming from a 28 year old man.

All the taxi drivers outside of the hotel know me as well. I’ve scattered my business around through the two weeks, picking up rides here and there with a number of different drivers. Throughout the two weeks, they’ve all been vying for my eventual trip to the airport since they can make a better amount on the long trip than the short trips I’ve been making around town. I’ve decided to go with Richard who is about my age, exceptionally skinny, listens to decent music, and offers something none of the other drivers can: a twin brother. We’ve enjoyed this common characteristic the last two weeks, and this morning, he’s waiting for me outside the hotel. We leave for the airport around 9am.

The flight to Lilongwe, Malawi is about 2 hours, an easy trip on Kenya Airways. I get to Lilongwe around noon. Customs is very easy, not even requiring a visa, and I manage to change some American Dollars into Malawi Kwacha before grabbing a taxi into the city’s Old Town where I’ll be staying at the Kiboko Town Hotel. During the ride into the city I notice that the road feels more rural than urban. There are none of the giant billboards advertising cell phone networks, Coke, and Samgsung, that dot the highways into Nairobi and Lusaka. Instead the road offers giant rolling hills of corn and mountains in the distance, all of which make a really pretty drive into town. After a twenty minute drive, the driver says that we’ve entered Old Town, and I almost respond by asking “where?” There’s nothing really around besides a medium sized shopping complex and two or three banks. With little traffic and very few people out in the streets, a striking contrast from the crazy streets of Lusaka, Lilongwe strikes me as a very sleepy, small town rather than a capital city.

After checking into the hotel, I take off on foot to find some lunch and mostly find that everything is closed. I end up finding a place about a five minute walk from my hotel and after eating, I return to my hotel to do what everyone else seems to be doing on this lazy Sunday. Lilongwe has greeted me with a giant yawn, so I waste the afternoon with a long nap.

Week in Malawi

I've been out of Nairobi for the past three weeks, spending two weeks in Zambia and this past week in Malawi as part of the project I'm working on. It's been a great trip so far. I've seen a lot and definitely learned a lot to help with my project. The next few posts will be a summary of what's been going on during this past week. Where I've been, the work I'm doing, and the country I'm visiting. A Week in Malawi in several posts...

Lusaka View From Above

After a long and miserably humid day yesterday, my coworker and I went looking for a bar to start the weekend with Zambia's thoroughly mediocre beer, Mosi. Just down the street from my hotel there's a 12 story Soviet style looking building that reportedly had a bar on top, so we walked on over and rode the elevator up to the 12th floor. Exiting the elevator, after a nearly five minute ride which felt less safe than I would have liked, we found ourselves at the entrance to the studios of Radio Phoenix, a local radio station on 89.5. We asked the older guy "guarding" the entrance if there was a bar somewhere. He mumbled something and either didn't hear us properly or was just dangerously indifferent to his job, sitting there as we ignored him and started climbing the stairs we found next to the elevator.

The stairs didn't go to a bar, they just went right up to the unprotected roof that we explored without anyone caring. And though we didn't get the beer we were looking for, we got some cool views and pictures of Lusaka.


Cairo Road, Lusaka's main drag, has a tree-lined pedestrian boulevard that cuts through the middle of the wide, always busy street. I've found the pedestrian walk to be one of the nicest features of downtown, which otherwise leaves a lot to be desired. My hotel is the red roofed small building in the middle of the picture, just beyond the second tallest building on the left hand side. I only wish it were as nice as a Red Roofed Inn in the states.


One of Lusaka's many confusing roundabouts clearly shows the Friday afternoon rush hour, complete with the blue minibuses you find throughout the city.

Mosi-a-tunya

Read any travel guide about Victoria Falls and it will say something like “you WILL get wet,” which would have been a nice warning to heed before I set out for the falls dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and carrying a backpack with a laptop, a Kindle, and an iPod. I was in Livingstone, Zambia, after a 7 hour bus ride from Lusaka, Zambia’s capital and where I had just finished up my first week in the country. Besides knowing that you had to get to Livingstone to see the falls and that the park entrance would run $20, I didn’t know what to expect, what to see or do, or, most crucially, what to wear when going to the falls.

The hotel told me I could take a taxi or bus to the falls, and I elected for the bus which departed from a chaotic mud filled market about five minutes away from the hotel. Bruno, a guy about my age with a severe gap between his two front teeth, walked me to the market while aggressively trying to sell me the poorly made knickknacks he kept pulling out of the deep pockets of his baggy jean shorts. When I wasn’t interested in buying anything he suggested that we trade my Detroit Tigers hat for a crudely carved wooden elephant. No thanks. As we approached the market and waiting buses, he was desperate. How about your socks? I declined though had I known what waited at the falls, I likely would have taken him up on the offer. Anything to rid myself of the poorly chosen and ill suited outfit I was wearing.

The bus trip was about 10 minutes out of town and by the time we reached the bus’ final destination I had gained another friend, Taurai, a Zimbabwean on his way home from his field work just outside Livingstone. I’m glad he was there because there was no clear indication where to go to get to the falls. As far as I could tell, we were at the end of a small road with nothing but surrounding forest. He guided me from the bus to the park and during the five minute walk, he convinced me that the falls were better seen from the Zimbabwean side, so I followed him to the border crossing which sat just 50 yards from the Zambian park entrance. Unfortunately, my Zambian visa was only single entry and not wanting to pay for an additional visa upon my return, I chose to bid Taurai farewell (he was headed to his home which was just a few kilometers beyond the border), and returned to the Zambian entrance to the falls. Thanking him for helping me get to the park, Taurai did what anyone might do with a new found acquaintance: “I’ll friend you on Facebook. Are you on Twitter?”

The Zambian park entrance was nicely marked and after walking down a small paved road, past a number of souvenir shacks each with two to three beckoning hawkers, I got to the gate and was charged the $20 entrance fee. I read on my ticket after getting back to the hotel that park guests were not advised to pay any unofficial guides within the park, but since I didn’t read this upon entering the park, I did exactly that, “hiring” Joe because I didn’t know where to go and more importantly because he was wearing a royal blue Henry Ford Health System t-shirt.



Turns out, you really don’t need a guide. The park is pretty small and the walk-able paths are all very clearly defined. Joe led me down each and every path, something I could have done very easily alone, and really didn’t offer much more than what you’d read in a guide book: with width of 1.7 kilometers and a height of 108 meters, Victoria Falls is considered the largest sheet of falling water in the world. It’s traditional name, Mosi-a-tunya, means “the smoke that thunders.”

He, of course, also offered the novelty of being led through the park, gazing at one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, by a Zambian man wearing a t-shirt whose first owner was a fellow Michigander. It wasn’t hard to convince myself that I had run into Joe’s t-shirt before, that its previous owner worked at a GM plant and shopped at Meijer. This little slice of home, stumbled upon just yards away from Victoria Falls, was well worth Joe’s tour charge of $15.

The falls themselves were awesome in the most traditional sense: extremely impressive and daunting, inspiring great admiration and fear. To describe them much further would be an injustice. Pictures too, as they often are, are underwhelming compared to experiencing it in person. Even when you end up leaving the park wearing jeans that may as well have just gotten out of the washing machine, shoes that won’t dry for two days, a water logged passport, a ruined leather wallet, and a firmer belief in God after finding your laptop, Kindle, iPod, and camera safely dry, shielded from the “smoke that thunders” by a trusty backpack worn underneath a fairly weak rain coat.







If you go, wear a swimsuit and flip flops and pack a poncho. Bruno may or may not be able to be found near the Jollyboys Hotel, though he’ll likely find you first. You can friend Taurai here, and feel free to hire any unofficial guide wearing a tshirt from home. Leave your electronics at home and it’s probably better to read a guide book first. Enjoy.

We Intend 2 Cauze

Found this bus ticket shack on my way to Livinstone, Zambia. I wish I had chosen to ride Shalom Bus.

We Intend 2 Cauze:



Shalom Bus Services We Love All:

Zambia is Burning

I'm heading to Zambia at the end of the month to meet with the NGOs and private distributors that sell our pumps. Admittedly, I know very, very little about the country besides the name of its captial city, Lusaka, and that the northern city of Mununga, as written about in Josh Swiller's Peace Corps memoir The Unheard, is frightening. I now also know, after reading about one couple's Zambian honeymoon, that the country is burning, a result of climate change that is causing drought and desertification in sub-Saharan Africa.

You won't find me on any roads at night, but during the daylight hours of my trip, I'm looking forward to learning more about the country and witnessing firsthand how our pumps are being distributed and used. I hope to return to Kenya with words other than "frightening" and "burning" to describe my visit.