Half Way There

Time is really flying by. On one hand and I feel some comfortable here that I feel like I’ve lived here forever (other than the fact that I’m still not fluent in Kiswahili), but on the other I feel like I just arrived yesterday. There is so much more I want to do here and yet I’m already half way through my time here. Four weeks from now I will be at the University of Sydney attending my first day of classes. So, I’m going to make the most of my remaining time here.

I think I did a pretty good job of making the most of my time in Kenya this past week. My goal of last week was to go from the 87 applications for the EBM position down to 12 finalists. I read through all of the applications for the 4 villages. The most entertaining and revealing part was the documents that people attached. I received everything from botabota (bicycle) race participant to intramural volleyball champion to a business school diploma. One candidate listed “foot baler” as one of his activities. After reviewing all of the applications on Monday and Tuesday, I selected about 7 of the best candidates in each village for interviews on Wednesday and Thursday. All was going well, I had my 29 picked out and was ready to call them each to notify them of the interviews, until the biggest thunderstorm I’ve seen all summer appeared out of no where. The power went out (big surprise) and the rain beating down on the tin roof of the office was so loud I could barely hear my coworker 10 feet away from me, much less the candidates on the phone. Nevertheless, the storm finally blew over and I was able to get in touch with all 29 semi-finalists.

Wilson (my boss) and I visiting a school in Khayega on our quest for EBMs

I received a nice wake up call at 6:30am on Wednesday from one of the candidates letting me know that he was at the place where the interview was going to be held. I told him the interview wasn’t until 10 and he said he knew that, he was just calling to let me know that he would be waiting there. The interviews went surprisingly well. I jumped on a matatu that morning headed for Khayega, our first village we were recruiting in. I talked to the chief who had kindly reserved a room for the interviews. Once all of the candidates had I arrived, I had all of them fill out the form that Village Enterprise uses to document new businesses (name, members, skills, business description, inputs, outputs, expected profit) as I read them a scenario of a hypothetical business group. It is important for all of our BMs to be able to fill out this form so it was a good check to see if they were able to do the more formulaic part of the job. I also wanted to gauge their teaching skills since a large part of a BM’s job is teaching. So, I taught them each one by one how to grow mushrooms (thanks to my host dad for the info!) and had them each teach the skill back to me. I have now taught the same 5 minute spiel 29 times so if you would like to learn how to grow mushrooms, let me know and you can be my 30th. After looking over the forms they had filled out, hearing them teach me how to grow mushrooms, and talking to each of the candidates about their relevant experience, I had what I needed to pick the top 3 in each village.

EBM Candidates in Ilesi filling out the written portion of the interview

I spent the day Friday reviewing all of the applications and my notes from the interviews and finalized the list of the 12 finalists. I called them all it wasn’t much fun to tell the ones who didn’t qualify that they were not finalists but such is life. I’m really happy with our group of finalists. We have a few teachers, a few social workers, a few entrepreneurs, an agri-business major, a few hospital counselors, and a few that just want to help out in their community. I’m getting attached to some of them and am hoping we can take a few more than the 4 we set out to hire. Once I had finally confirmed with the 12 the time and date (next Wednesday at 10am), I was ready for the weekend. More on the weekend’s trip to Nakuru to come.