South Africa Trip - March 2009 (Part I)

In November 2008, I got a list of potential projects for the Global Lab program at Kellogg. As a part of this program, a team of four students undertake a consulting project and work for twelve weeks with an international organization. A project in South Africa caught my eye; a Cape-town based startup wanted to deliver educational content through mobile phones and wanted our team to recommend the implementation strategy. It sounded too good to miss: Mobile phones and education, two of my favorite topics and that too in the beautiful African continent! I decided to enroll for this project.

While rest of the world celebrates the New Year for a day or two, South Africa has two weeks of celebration and holidays! Thus, by the time we had our first call with the clients it was already mid-January. We started working on the project and planned to visit South Africa in March. The whole experience was full of pleasant surprises! The first surprise came when I went to the South African consulate in Chicago get my visa and learnt that while Indians do need a visa to visit South Africa, we don’t need to pay the visa fee of $75 (Rs. 3700)!

Our team of three students left for Johannesburg on 15th March. Our fourth team member had to drop out at the last minute due to a family emergency. The fact that all three of us were from India does not reflect greatly on the diversity of Kellogg school, but it was a mere coincidence. It just happened that all three of us were passionate about the same project and the same country at the same time! I myself found it a little hard to believe this at first.

Our clients had planned every aspect of our trip – right from business meetings to dinners as well as sightseeing and we all were very excited to be there. The first thing that struck me was the refreshing smell of African air. There was something very natural and special about it. It resembled closely with the smell of soil right after light rainfall. The rich vegetation, African soil and humidity, all have to do something with it.

My next surprise came in the form of food. As a vegetarian, I was skeptic about my chances of getting good vegetarian food in South Africa. But to my immense pleasure, the food was delicious and most of the restaurants I visited had several interesting choices too. The amazing feeling of satisfaction that a foodie gets after a sumptuous meal cannot be described in words. I re-lived these feelings several times in those two weeks.

We spent the first three days in Pretoria. It is one of the three capital cities in South Africa and serves as the administrative capital of the country. The other two capitals are Cape Town (legislative capital) and Bloemfontein (judicial capital). Due to the high rate of crime, all houses had high walls and advanced security systems. Several houses had contracts with more than one security agencies just in case one of them colluded with the thieves! My client, Walter, had an interesting take on this, he had no security systems in his house but had twelve ferocious Canadian Shepherd dogs instead. It was an amazing site to see him approach his house, open the gates to let all these wolf-like dogs surround his car and then command them to enter the house with him. We concluded that no miscreant would ever try to attack him or rob his house!

In Pretoria, we met the Ambassador of Uganda, Mr. Kweronda Ruhemba and First Secretary to Malawi, Ms. Emmie Nkangama and discussed recent education reforms in Africa. These discussions were very insightful and thought provoking. We also went on a tour of slums with Pretoria police chief. Here, I got my third surprise! In the slums, we wanted to speak to people and approached a group of three teenage girls. After talking to them for a few minutes, one of the policemen offered to take pictures. To our utter surprise, one of the girls took out a swanky Nokia N-series phone and gave it to the cop to take pictures! She was carrying a phone worth at least $400 (Rs. 20,000) which was easily superior to all the phones that our entourage was carrying! I had to remind myself that this was a slum. She went on to say that a lot of her friends carried similar phones, but her phone was the best. We all were dumbfounded but learnt something very interesting about the widespread popularity of mobile phones.

After spending four days in Pretoria, we headed towards the jungles. Walter owned a game reserve near the Botswana border. Game reserves are private forests stretching from anywhere between few square kilometers to several hundred square kilometers. All animals in these forests belong to the reserve owners. There are several game reserves in South Africa and are quite popular among wealthy tourists and most of these reserves charge a hefty sum in exchange for a premium experience. Walter uses his game reserve to entertain his “important” guests.

The five hour drive to the forest was quite scenic. We got several glimpses of rich African wildlife from the road itself. It was time for my fourth surprise – the magical African sky! While driving to the jungle, I dozed off in the car. When I woke up after sometime, it was dark. With no road lights or city lights in the vicinity, it was pitch dark outside. I looked up at the cloudless night sky and all I could say was “wow! The stars are so bright!” I asked the driver to stop the car and got down on the road to get a better view of the big bright stars. It was the most beautiful night sky I had ever seen and I wanted to capture the moment forever. Having lived in big cities over last several years, I had completely forgotten those beautiful constellations about which my grandfather taught me when I was a kid. Due to the light pollution caused by bright city lights, people living in cities hardly get to see the stars in the night sky. I sat and admired the night sky for several minutes before someone called me inside.

(To be continued...)