Category: Africa
Saturday
Today, we had the opportunity to experience the Nairobi market and shop for souvenirs. Kenya is very entrepreneurial, and the different merchants were very eager to have you look at what they had to offer. There were many options and a verity of sculptures, wood carvings, paintings, bracelets, rings, necklaces, sandals, bags, spears, earrings...the list goes on and on.
Throughout our time in Kenya, we have had the pleasure of staying in a variety of accommodations. Our travels took us north to Marsabit, west to the Maasai Mara, and east to Zanzibar, Tanzania, but our home base was the Partners for Care headquarters in Nairobi. Initially compared to the White House in terms of security and luxury (ahem, Kurt), the PFC house has become our home away from home as we made our way around Kenya. But getting in is not easy….
We had to get up at 4:00 am to get to our flight to ZANZIBAR! That was okay for me because I was up at 3:30am watching the first quarter of the 3rd game of the Easter Conference Playoffs! (This trip has been difficult for my fandom, but I have survived thanks to my slingbox back home and waking up at 3:00am to watch the games.) We got to the airport but Molly, Seth, and Santiago's flight was canceled, and they had to find a way to get to Zanzibar.
On consulting projects abroad, it is very typical to work during weekends in order to keep up with the required timeline. Last Sunday (May 24), my team and I worked very hard to get the first draft of our report completed. After everyone uploaded their assigned sections to the cloud, Jake was able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together before 5pm. There were some sections still left to include, but we decided to work on those during the following week. Overall, we were very happy with the progress of our deliverable!
Last Monday May 18th Akshay and I went on a trip to Downtown Nairobi. The purpose of the trip was to explore the textile retail market and assess the availability of several components required to assemble the PackH2O in Kenya. We were also interested in obtaining information about industrial sewing machine retail prices.