An Indian Week

Please stop honking. Why are you honking?

I ended up going to India last week for a conference in Pune on the Sanitation Economy (aka nerdy toilet folks talking about how to make toilets more profitable). I had decided to pad my trip to Pune with a day at both ends with a stay in Mumbai since I had never been before and had heard so much about it (and since that's where I'd land).

I landed in Mumbai on Saturday and was reminded that India is hot. Very hot. I foolishly thought that Mumbai was going to be balmy and spring-like during the winter months. I was wrong. Mumbai was hot and humid like any other time I've been to India. I felt like it was jarring transitioning from the dry 78F/26C sunny days in Nairobi to the 97F/36C and humid heat of Mumbai.

Also, the air quality was pretty awful; while Nairobi at the time had an AQI of 9 (which is pretty good), Mumbai's was at 170 (which is really bad). And don't even get me started on the noise pollution in India (though this article is about Delhi) - it's honking all of the time, all day, every day, no matter where you are, and music is played in arbitrary places everywhere. It can give you a pretty big headache if you're stuck in the constant traffic on every street.

I was staying in the shopping street called Lamington Road and walked around Southern Mumbai for my day in the city. I walked to the beach area and strolled about 10 minutes before I relented and got a cab to drive me to India Gate...but in those few minutes of walking I saw run-down buildings  with humidity taking tolls on their external structures and dirty corners with questionable smells that I have come to associate with most major cities in the country.

I took a 1.5-hour boat ride to the Elephanta Cave, which is a UNESCO Heritage Site on an island off of Mumbai. While on the boat, I was dismayed watching the other riders; many of the people on the boat were eating bagged snacks and were (1) throwing pieces of food into the water to the seagulls then (2) discarding the bags and wrappers right into the water like it was a giant rubbish bin. I think if we're going to talk about saving our oceans and changing behaviors to manage climate change, we have a long way to go yet.

On the island, I hired a young tour guide to show me around the famous caves for an hour under the bleaching sun. We walked in the sweltering heat and climbed slowly up the 100+ steps to get to the caves at the top of the hill. It was pretty great once we got up there - there are several scenes of giant Lord Shiva's life carved into the cave walls, all intricately detailed. My guide explained that the cave carvings were around 1500 years old. Unfortunately, the Portuguese once stationed on the island 500 years ago and took to shooting at the carvings for target practice. The good news is that they're still amazing to see, even with a few bullet marks in Shiva's thighs.

After about four hours of touring, I gave up on braving the heat and sought refuge in a beautiful coffee shop nearby with WiFi and worked for a few hours before grabbing some Persian food en route to the hotel for bed.

The next day a colleague and I shared a car for the 4-hour drive to Pune. I slept for this drive, so there's nothing for me to share.

Pune is different than Mumbai. For one, it's much cooler - about 10F/6C degrees less than Mumbai. Pune is also much cleaner and better planned than Mumbai, as Pune has a strong campaign to clean the city with the government's Swachh Bharat mission and use smart technology to keep the city running. They have clean public toilets on the sides of the street, as well!

Someone on my trip explained to me that much of Pune's residents are the wealthier people from Mumbai who tire of the city and want to move somewhere cleaner/nicer than Mumbai. They may still do their business in Mumbai, but they live and breathe in Pune. Honestly? I can't blame them.

I didn't see too much of Pune since I was at a conference most of the time, but I liked what I saw.

The conference was also lovely and went well. I was busy with networking and talking about new projects with sector partners. We also visited the Pune Smart City Control Center, which was neat.

A few conference attendees and I shared a ride back to Mumbai afterward. The hotel one of my riding partners stayed at managed to lose her bag for three hours. After the chaos, they sent us to Mumbai in one of their cars and with bags of food - all complimentary.

The next day before I went to the airport, I tried out a pleasant coworking space near the terminal for a few hours. I left in a rickshaw to get to the airport, meaningless waiting in the airport for 3.5 hours for my flight.

And now I'm back in Nairobi.

This trip helped me realize what I have loved about India in the past, and it's not been the cities. I love the natural beauty in much of India, and the rural areas are peaceful. The cities in India, though? I could do without them right now. Pune is better than many I've been to, but I'm still not that wild about urban India if I'm honest.

Employment in Kenya

Source: Kachwanya.com

Something I just want to note somewhere is my pile of thoughts about employment and capacity in Kenya.

I've been really impressed - and delighted - by the high capacity (or ability to improve capacity) in Kenya. My teammates are brilliant, the ability to innovate is strong, and people's ingenuity is remarkable. And my experiences with other professionals have been probably better than what I have had in many US towns (and even in NYC).

What breaks my heart is the gap for some to get jobs worth their abilities. Many different people have explained to me that lots of Kenyans take years (YEARS!) to get jobs after graduation from university because the job market is inadequate. I've met colleagues who were once between jobs and had to look for a long period of time to find their next gig. This is particularly true for the youth; while a third of the working population is youth, youth also make up over two-thirds of the unemployment market.

What's more - sometimes the jobs they can get in their trained professions don't pay enough to make it worthwhile to choose over jobs that don't require their skills. A lot of people take jobs with drive shares like Uber or SafeBoda because the gig economy is real and many find it to be better money than more stable office jobs.

Take my driver, C. He drives a couple of us every day to and from our homes and the office. He's a really sweet guy, and sharp. I just found out he's a trained lab tech - a job I think is too complicated and skilled for me to get my head wrapped around ever.

And yet, he chooses to be an Uber driver over a lab tech. Because there aren't jobs that he could easily commute to from where his family is. Because it doesn't pay well. Because the perks just aren't there to make it worth his life's commitment. So C is now my driver and talks to me on our car rides about fecal sludge management, the chemistry of alcohol, and the science of health products and everything. We pay him $15 daily to drive us in a 2-hour commute through Nairobi.

I remarked this to some of my work colleagues here and they were sympathetic. They told me that if they got paid a bit less or had a car, they'd make the same choice.

This means that there are a lot of Uber drivers available for my tedious trips across the city. And a lot of them have shared interesting conversations with me about sanitation and the economy.

I know there are similar issues in places around the US, but I was surprised in such a booming economy with so much growth and potential to suffer from these issues. It seems that part of the issue is that the population rate has been outgrowing the economic growth rate, and some businesses are trying to get leaner and take on AI that can make some people redundant - and that could spell more unemployment problems in the near future in the country, or more brain drain.

Hello from Kenya

A public toilet in CBD

Hello from Nairobi! I landed here two weeks ago and will be here working on a project for the next six months.

I haven't written much about my visit yet because, well, I've been pretty busy. I work all day on my local consulting gig and then moonlight on a separate consulting project that I'm finishing up remotely. Much of my first two weeks have been going back and forth from the office working to my house working more (hopefully without annoying my two roommates) and then sleeping. All in all, my current consulting lifestyle is pretty dull.

But I feel like I should try to put together something about my initial time here so far. Whatever I put together today will have to be small, but it will be something. I'll put it in a list so I can do it quickly and get back to my projects. More in December, I guess?

• Leapfrog Modernity: I visited Nairobi for 20 years maybe 7-8 years ago. It's definitely changed a lot since the last visit. I landed into a much more modern airport; the one I had visited previously was one story and oddly riddled with potholes on the pedestrian walkways between gates, but the new airport looks like anything you'd see in Europe or the US. But there are other things that show how Nairobi (and other bigger African cities) are leapfrogging decades ahead from where they were a few years ago, thanks to the internet.
  My main form of transportation is Uber cars, which is cheap and fast...but Uber here also provides services for motorcycle rides (aka boda bodas), which is a staple form of transportation in any developing country I've been to. Boda bodas are cheaper and faster than cars (because of the traffic) but are a bit more dangerous (because of anything related to motorcycles), and they're now really easy to book without having to argue about prices (something I have hated to do).
  Not only do they have Uber, but they also have Uber Eats! I haven't used it yet, but my housemates use Uber Eats pretty regularly. It looks like most restaurants are offering Uber Eats in my area, which is convenient. I probably won't be ordering from KFC or Dominoes, but getting Ethiopian delivered sounds like a great future plan.
  Part of the modern leapfrogging also means that there are cashless places here that I've already stumbled into. Granted, mobile money has been a thing in Kenya long before we started hearing the word Venmo in the US, and many people here who aren't banked even get paid by their jobs via mobile money for their purchases and bill payments.
  And Nairobi is developing everywhere. I see highrises getting built all over the place (though some think that many of the empty construction sites are fronts for Chinese money laundering or something), and most of the buildings I go to that have restaurants I want to visit are still pulling the plastic wrap off of their windows, they're so new.
  And the roads are getting built better. The dusty roads are getting paved and there are even new overpassing highways across town. The rides are smoother than in other places, for sure.
  It's really amazing to see how quickly cities are growing outside of the Western world.
• Clean: I've been pleasantly surprised with how overall clean Nairobi is. I've been to other cities in other developing countries and have felt overwhelmed by the dusty streets completely drowning in trash. While there is some dust and some trash in Nairobi, and most of where I've been traveling around has been largely wealthy areas for ex-pats wealthy (probably mostly white) immigrants or the wealthy local population, I'm very happy to see that it's not so bad and some areas even have legitimate sidewalks (like my street). It smells better than NYC, too, which is a good thing.
• Good Events and Pretty Food: While I haven't been getting out much and have been subsisting mainly on eggs and the beans/rice lunches provided at work, I have gone out a few times. Every restaurant I've been to here so far has been really pretty and has tasty food. Last weekend I went to a new restaurant that has vegan/gluten-free/raw/veggie/dairy-free options (most likely they're catering to the massive ex-pat wealthy immigrant crowd), and it was as tasty as any health-focused restaurant I've been to in NYC. Right now (as I type) I'm in a popular Eritrean cafe and am eating a delightfully tasty veggie platter for $10. And the list of other places I've been told to eat at while I am here continues to grow the more days I'm here. Nairobi is booming with food.
  And I'm excited to get myself further immersed into the booming arts and theater culture here once I'm one contract down come December.
• Suburban Division: Nairobi reminds me of Brisbane, Australia in one particular way - it's divided up into separate suburbs that somehow loosely orbit around the Central Business District (CBD). CBD is where the government buildings are and I've seen a few public toilets (like in the picture) patiently offering busy bureaucrats easy on-the-go relief (though they don't have that many, they have probably more than NYC). I live in a mostly wealthy local and immigrant area called Kilimani, surrounded by other slightly different wealthy local and immigrant areas. We have sidewalks, sushi joints, and shopping malls. The only thing about the setup of the city is that it's not entirely walkable, so Uber is my best friend as I travel around the town. Otherwise, it's pretty easy.
• Traffic: It's bad. No matter what. There are cars for days, here. While there are public bus services and matatus that get you to different places while crammed into the vehicle with a lot of other people, a lot of people use the bodas and Ubers to get them around if they don't have a car themselves. This means there are a lot of cars everywhere, even/especially on new highways. Commutes to and from work take much longer than they should - my commute probably at least doubles most days to get to the office because of the traffic. Sometimes, just to keep moving, my work's carpool drives through the famous and massive  Kibera slum, which is harrowing on a different level because of its narrow roads and life spilling across them everywhere. I'm now learning to appreciate Audible so I can listen to books while I patiently sit in my commute's carpool for hours a day.
• Stable Weather: While the East Coast and Midwest start getting clobbered by snow and unpredictable daily temperatures, the weather here hovers between 60 and 80 every day, which is pretty pleasant. I wear a sweater in the morning to work, and on the way home I've got my hair up and am sticking to just a tee-shirt. I've stopped looking at the weather forecasts - the only thing I have to watch out for is rain, so I carry an umbrella all of the time. Otherwise, I'm pleasantly outside when I can. I do miss the pumpkin season, but it sounds like that season was shortlived at home anyway.

What am I doing in Nairobi? I'm working on an urban sanitation project. The organization I'm working with gets people living in informal settlements (aka slums) access to reliable and safe toilets that are regularly emptied and its fecal waste is safely treated to make fertilizer and animal feed. It's pretty damn cool, and I'm here helping them get better clarity about their data, measurements, and methodologies for assessing their performance and impact.