African Insights Blog - Newsletter:
The African Entrepreneurial Spirit is alive and well…. here is an example
I was driving home, during the late afternoon rush hour from downtown Nairobi toward Hurlingham when the traffic that was merely crawling along at a snails pace came to a total stop. It was hot, people were irritated, some getting out of the cars and looking up ahead, while others attempted to use the sidewalk as a new road, a common practice in many parts of East Africa. An elderly man walked by and laughingly shouted Hakuna Matata Pole Pole…meaning “no problem – take it easy.” For the most part Africans have lots of patience, are very gentle, until they go behind the wheel of a vehicle, then it seems as if another person is birthed within them; they gestulate, shout, drive like they have gone mad and when the traffic comes to a halt…it is a major irritation. Horns were honking, voices raised, people shouting, all wanting to go home to have dinner and a Tusker’s (Kenyan Beer) but instead the cars around me were overheating and so were the people inside the vehicles.
Ever so slowly my car inched forward until I came up to a large sign in the middle of the road “Volunteers at Work – Drive Slow.”
After some more waiting…I
could see the volunteers at work…. busily stretching their hands out toward
the cars as they moved by
.
Here and there a few shillings being exchanged but for the most part, shouting
in Swahili and English toward the volunteers. You might ask yourself,
‘what’s going on?” The answer is simple…it is the Kenyan Entrepreneurial
Spirit at work and alive and well.
Work is a hard thing to come by in Africa unless you have had parents who could afford to send you to school and then there are having the right connections to get a job that is decent and pays a living wage. The result is that people make do, become creative in order to survive since there is no government assistance of any kind.
You can sell things to tourists and downtown Nairobi is filled with people who come up to you and try to sell you bracelets made of copper and lead (telephone wire) or genuine Elephant hair bracelets (usually plastic – try putting a match to one, if it burns you will see the tell tale smoke of smoldering plastic), or ebony carvings, but when you pick one up they feel light as balsa wood. The reality is that they were painted with shoe dye the night before, be careful not to get it on your clothing. There are also the students who attempt to raise school fees by signing you on, that can be real, but it is a tough way to make the payments that are due several times a year. Then there are the road volunteers, that special breed of construction workers fixing the ever-deepening potholes of Kenya.
Potholes are a real problem throughout Kenya and most parts of Africa. I have blown some tires going into the abyss like craters and at the same time my body moved heavenward only to be stopped by the roof of the Toyota Hilux Truck. Everyone knows that Kenya’s roads are a disaster and everyone complains, wants something done, but the government has no money, so along come the road repair volunteers.
They key to being a road volunteer is to pick the right site where lots of traffic moves through. Don’t worry about the police; they are busy standing near speed bumps waiting for a violator from whom they can extract a bit of extra cash. The next step is to make a sign in English about volunteers at work. Then one needs a few tools, such as picks and shovels and one or two partners.
After or before rush hour you go to your designated site. It does not matter whether there is a pothole since you can create one in minutes with your pick. Do it in the middle of the road and yet blocking a portion of both lanes so traffic has to slow down for you and you can get some money for your labor. Once the pothole has been made or a pre-existing one brought back into existence, you keep busy by hauling dirt from the side of the road and dumping into aforementioned pothole.
At the end of the day, you should have enriched yourself by a few hundred shillings and at the same time provided a valuable service to fellow Kenyans. You can always come back tomorrow but it is best to change locations since the police may catch you on their way to or from their speed bump watch…at the end of the day, you have joined the ranks of Kenya’s entrepreneurs. What a way to make a living…hmmm…jon
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