Running and serving in Senegal (part 5): getting more familiar

My last post mentioned that a small group of us was heading to Saint Louis, in the North of Senegal, just below the border with Mauritania. This colonial city was once the capital of the whole French Western Africa zone (Afrique Occidentale Francaise). Despite a speedy driver, it was a long and bumpy road up there and even more so on the 20-mile dirt road to the National Park and Bird Sanctuary of Djoudj. 4 hours from Dakar to Saint Louis and slightly more on the way back on Sunday evening, thankfully I was able to work on my Agile Method talk for our conference at UCAD on Tuesday afternoon.

While in Saint Louis, I did run through various neighborhoods, starting from Hydrobase where we were staying (the part of the lagoon Mermoz was used to make a stop with his hydroplane between Europe and South America). The road was going through the most populous part of the city, the Fishermen Quarters, and I never saw so many young kids at once. Actually, I was happy to run rather than walk through this crowd, I think running is the best way to visit Senegal, if you can accommodate the overwhelming heat, as locals won't bother running after you. I meticulously followed the suggested tour map of my guide book (from Lonely Planet), stopping at many picture opportunities yet passing a few calèches, the local horse cart for tourists. I must say that the city needs a lot of restoration to make it appealing, nothing like Dubrovnik which is a pearl despite the recent war.

Then I ventured further East, across the long Faidherbe Bridge, into other populous neighborhood "shining" by the garbage all over the place. I'm sorry to have to say that, but, with the amazing sense of hospitality of the Senegalese as well as hundreds of miles of sandy beaches on the Ocean, Senegal owes to take the environment more seriously to make the country more appealing to tourists.

We saw mostly pelicans at the Djoudj park, similar to those I see in the Bay Area when running at Alviso or Shoreline, but thousands times more! Most of the other birds will only migrate down to Djoudj later this winter.

While the rest of the group was touring the city on the Calèche, on the circuit I had done in the morning,

I spent some time with one of the coders who lives in Saint Louis, Ousmane.

Back to Dakar, we met the Coders again on Monday evening after spending the day finalizing our report, tools and recommendations. Tuesday was marked by our conference at UCAD the largest university in Dakar with 80,000 students (!) and 6,000 staff. Professor Alex Corenthin got us an amazing asset, allowing us to use the huge amphitheater of UCAD 2, with 1,200 seats. Unfortunately, and despite the efforts of Léger and I to visit schools on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning to "recruit" participants to this free conference, less than 50 participants showed up. Very unfortunate as it turned out to be a great content put up by 10 of our group. That was yet another manifestation of the famous "Insha'Allah" (Inch'Allah in French) which I initially interpreted as a polite salutation when I arrived in Senegal, but is really a way to avoid commitment and let God decide for you. I saw more than 100 students at IAM (Institut Africain de Management), many of them telling me "We will come" before adding... "Insha'Allah" and God had indeed other plans for them apparently. I hope the next CSC team in Senegal is more successful with that critical part of our project.

To add to the Public Relations fiasco, IBM Africa decided not to conduct a press conference, as opposed to last year's team in Thies, we missed a major opportunity to get the IBM name out of the shadow it is today. Microsoft of course, but also Google, are quite famous here, too bad we couldn't get the word out beyond the mere press release.

On Wednesday, the US citizens of our group met with US Ambassador Lukens, thanks to my son's (Alex) connections at the Department of State. We enjoyed learning about the role and activity of the Ambassador, in particular the challenge of coordinating hundreds of employees working on many project to support Senegal. I invited Amadou Daffé, Co-Founder and CEO of Coders4Africa who had just landed on Wednesday morning, coming all the way from New Jersey to meet us and discuss the findings of our engagement on Thursday (Amadou on the left of the group, below, as we are all "tied up" for the final presentation at ITA).

On Friday, we had the final presentation to our 4 clients, at ITA where we had the kick-off 4 weeks ago. It was great to hear about the work of other teams and see opportunities for connecting our clients, such as H&C and Coders4Africa around the use of SME Toolkit, or Coders4Africa and DAPSA and ITA for some IT services. 4 weeks already, what an amazing experience and opportunity to learn about a different culture and focus on sustainable development for the present and future generations of Senegalese!

And more pictures of course... Here are the expanded list of direct links:

1. Beach cleaning (Sunday October 13)
2. Team building (Sunday October 13)
3. Kick-off @ ITA (Monday October 14)
4. Tabaski (Wednesday October 16)
5. All-hands with Coders4Africa (Friday October 18)
6. Ile de Gorée (Saturday October 19)
7. Safari @ Bandia (Sunday October 20)
8. Western Corniche run (Sunday October 20)
9. Metings with Coders4Africa at iDEV (Monday-Friday October 21-25)
10. Saly (Saturday October 26) (I actually need to upload pictures from my BlackBerry)
11. Pink Lake (Sunday October 27)
12. Sup'Imax SMEToolkit presentation (Wednesday October 30) See also the great pictures from Mr. Didier Diop, Director of Sup'Info Group, on Facebok.
13. Djoudj bird national reserve (Saturday November 2)
14. Saint Louis (Sunday November 3) 
15. Back to Dakar
16. Running tour of Dakar (Friday November 8)

I'll write one more post as a conclusion of our great Senegalese experience, after the dust of my unpacking in California settles...

#ibmcsc senegal

Running and serving in Senegal (part 4): deeper African experience

It has been an interesting 3rd week here in Senegal. First, on the running side, here is a new place you can enjoy while visiting Senegal. It used to be a very popular place as the finish area of the Dakar Rally (Paris-Dakar) but, unfortunately, since 2008, that car and motorcycle race can't cross North and West Africa anymore because of terrorism threats. And, with the two French reporters killed in Mali yesterday, you can see that the situation is still extremely bad.

That place is called Pink Lake (Lac Rose). It gets its name from a spectacular phenomenon which turns the color of the water to a bright pink when conditions are good. We were told that the water will be so salty that we would easily float like in the Dead Sea or Mono Lake in California but we were just after the rainy season so the lake had twice the usual amount of water and that must have diluted the salt significantly as I didn't feel much of a difference with normal sea water.

After a swim in the lake, we walked to the Ocean and its amazingly strong waves. Back to the resort, and while the rest of the group had lunch, I ran around the lake, 8 miles of trail including one mile of deep/soft sand which gave me a glimpse of the challenge that runners face in the Marathon des Sables.

The week in Dakar has been marked by the shortage of water all week. The water plant providing running water to millions of people in Dakar had a major pipe failure 4 weeks ago, just before we arrived in the capital. They had now to replace the short-term fix after getting a new part from France. All week, we had to take showers with some water we had saved on Monday. On my runs, I had seen many women walking with heavy buckets of water back to their basic "homes", and families washing from these buckets, it was our turn to live this experience which makes you appreciate the comfort we have with running water. Not to mention that, in our "developed" countries, we even flush the toilet, wash cars or water backyards with potable water!

This weekend we are going to Saint Louis at the border with Mauritania and the estuary of the Senagal River which is the source of water for most of the country, so we should find water!

Fortunately, while showers were more challenging to take,  the temperature decreased a bit and the sky was cloudy most of the time. Now, the irony is that, despite the temperatures being still on the high/hot side, I caught a cold on Tuesday. Air conditioning of the restaurant on Monday or Tuesday? One of the taxi drivers we got on Tuesday? One of the annoying vendors who were catching/grabbing my arm at the open market we went at on Tuesday? Too many possibilities to figure out and it doesn't make a difference... I was able to keep working but had to skip the run on Thursday as I got quite tired, even shivering on Thursday night. And, yes, the cold showers didn't help either.

On the work side, we had a few fruitful meetings in addition to the focus on finalizing our report, findings and recommendations.

On Wednesday, we invited another partner of our CSC program, Hermann from H&C, to present on SMEToolkit, not only to the Coders4Africa group but students from the hosting organization, Sup'Info and Sup'Imax. We had a packed room of 70 energetic Senegalese who bombarded Hermann and I with questions related to entrepreneurship. As a great speaker, Hermann used quite a few quotes in his presentation and here is the one I liked the most: "Entreprendre c'est vendre!" (Literally, albeit missing the French rhyme: entrepreneurship is selling). Indeed, all along the presentation, you could see uncomfortable smiles in the audience every time we were talking about making money or profit. Before closing the presentation, I reminded the audience how important it was to get more comfortable with the business aspects involved in creating and managing a profitable business, certainly a big cultural shift. One which is actually central to our CSC engagement as a matter of fact.

We also met with the management of Sup'Info to understand further their needs in terms of creating pragmatic IT skills through partnerships with the key IT players.

The highlight of next week will be our conference at UCAD (Dakar University) on Tuesday afternoon. Thanks to my son's connections (Alex), the US Ambassador confirmed his attendance to kick start the event! We will talk about the present and future of IT, the impact on IT professions, and I will also talk with Dean on Agile methods.

Unfortunately, we won't have a press conference on Friday, unlike the one that the CSC Senegal 1 team hold last year, so most of the buzz about our mission will only come from our team member blogs. Which contain more details about food and personal details than corporate-level content...

More pictures in my Picasa album; here are a few direct pointers to specific sections so you don't have to rewind from the beginning of the tape:

1. Beach cleaning (Sunday October 13)
2. Team building (Sunday October 13)
3. Kick-off @ ITA (Monday October 14)
4. Tabaski (Wednesday October 16)
5. All-hands with Coders4Africa (Friday October 18)
6. Ile de Gorée (Saturday October 19)
7. Safari @ Bandia (Sunday October 20)
8. Western Corniche run (Sunday October 20)
9. Metings with Coders4Africa at iDEV (Monday-Friday October 21-25)
10. Saly (Saturday October 26) (I actually need to upload pictures from my BlackBerry)
11. Pink Lake (Sunday October 27)
12. Sup'Imax SMEToolkit presentation (Wednesday October 30)
13. Djidj bird national reserve (Saturday November 2)

Talk to you again in a few days then, as we approach to the conclusion of our great Senegalese experience

#ibmcsc senegal

Running and serving in Senegal (part 3): common sense?

End of week 2 in Senegal already, half way through our engagement in Africa, and taking full advantage of the opportunity to make an impact in this emerging country while learning from the local culture and discovering the Senegalese as well as their country.

Running-wise, quite a few miles this week. No run on Monday to catch-up with some sleep deficit, but 95 kilometers total from Tuesday to Friday and a good long run (21 miles, 33 kilometers) in a new place, Saly! Saly is a very touristic place with many 5-star resorts and beaches along the Ocean. Half the group stayed overnight to enjoy the occidental comfort and party ambiance, the other half, included myself, returned to Dakar on Saturday night to go to the Pink Lake (Lac Rose) on Sunday.

I did run 6 miles South of the Lamentin Beach resort, down to the harbor which, unfortunately was disgusting with all the garbage on the sand. At one point, a young girl cut in front of me to throw the whole content of her trash bin in the Ocean. While the Ocean feeds these poor families, it's quite disconcerting to see such lack of consideration for the environment. With that, I turned back and, after stopping at the resort to say hi to the group which was enjoying the beach, I continued further North for another 5 miles. The beach stopped about a mile away from the resort on that end, replaced by rocks and private villas "les pieds dans l'eau", so I ran inland on nice sandy roads and very local and traditional neighborhood. I could tell from the weird look of the people that tourists don't venture in this area.

While going through Saly, I got quite a few "Allez le sportif!" from locals trying to get my attention and sell me something. As I stopped to buy (bargain...) a bottle of cold water, one guy approached me to introduce me to their local running champion. Remembering the pleasure I had to meet elite runners in Ethiopia, I decided to give it a try. I eventually met his friend who didn't even know the length of a marathon. Sure enough this was a scam and we ended up in a house where they asked me to buy some rice for the local community. Exactly as the guide warns tourist, and conforming to what my sister, Marie, told me, sharing about her experience of two humanitarian medical missions in Senegal. I left the scene without being ripped off, good ending, phew!

While I was running and fighting the oppressing mid-day heat, I was thinking of Alex who was running his first marathon this Sunday, the Marine Corps in DC. And, yes, despite limited training and no competitive goal, he not only made it but in a very respectable 3:46 (8:38 min/mile)! Very proud of him especially as he has never been fond of running while in High School. On Saturday, thanks to his job at the Department of State, he got an invitation for Agnès and Max to visit the White House Garden, cool way to welcome the visiting family in town!

Work-wise, this has been a very productive week as we spent time interviewing and consulting with the three selected project teams of Coders4Africa.

We first met, first on Monday then again on Wednesday, Pape Samba and Yazid from the Kenefa team. Kenefa is a project to build a platform to gather public information related to healthcare providers in Senegal.

On Tuesday, it was the turn of the QuickCollect team to get grilled. The team was augmented with a few other coders whose project hasn't been selected for our engagement. QuickCollect is a platform for building online and mobile-accessible surveys. While the idea is extremely appropriate for the emerging countries in general and Senegal in particular, this is a space which has quite a few players already, Datadyne's Magpi being not the least important and visible competitor in the space.

You can see a demo of the QuickCollect project on YouTube.

One Wednesday, we met the third team to discuss the most intriguing Daral project, another platform aiming at addressing the issues of the farmers and their cattle.

You can actually watch a video about Daral on YouTube too. Even the BBC was in Senegal recently to interview the team in Dakar and the farmers in Foundiougne (coincidentally the small village my sister Marie provided medical support to a few years ago!).

Poor coders, we bombarded them with tough questions about their business ideas like potential investors would do. Of course, with all our consideration and to help them assessing the viability of their initial options or come up with new ones. And in a methodical manner which we will further document next week and teach them so they can apply it after we leave.

Overall, I remain intrigued or puzzled with what our work will produce. On one hand, the teams are so eager to learn from us any tip which can help them building successful (i.e. revenue-generating and profitable) businesses. On the other hand, none of us have created a company in Senegal, so I wonder how applicable our generic business concepts will prove to be. While things may be common sense to us, what does "common" means across our cultures, mindsets and backgrounds which are so far apart. At least, our client is actually aiming at infusing the Occidental entrepreneurship spirit in Africa, so we are certainly aligning with that objective.

To the point of changing mindsets and behaviors through education, we met the Managing Director, Mr. Didier Diop and Professor Léon Coly, of Sup'Info, one of the many private colleges/universities in Senegal (mostly Dakar).

We are going to meet the IBM Senegal management team next week to discuss partnership options with local institutions, while Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Oracle, HP are quite active already. To address a demand from these institutions to access to all the worldwide IT leaders.

As you recall, our group (14 IBMers) work on 4 projects across Dakar so, between the geographical spread and our own project constraints of meeting the coders after their day job, in the evening, we mostly meet for excursions on weekends or for our weekly group coordination meeting where we exchange experiences and opportunity to make connections between our clients.

I keep adding pictures to my Picasa album; here are a few direct pointers to specific sections so you don't have to rewind from the beginning of the tape:

1. Beach cleaning (Sunday October 13)
2. Team building (Sunday October 13)
3. Kick-off @ ITA (Monday October 14)
4. Tabaski (Wednesday October 16)
5. All-hands with Coders4Africa (Friday October 18)
6. Ile de Gorée (Saturday October 19)
7. Safari @ Bandia (Sunday October 20)
8. Western Corniche run (Sunday October 20)
9. Metings with Coders4Africa at iDEV (Monday-Friday October 21-25)
10. Saly (Saturday October 26) (I actually need to upload pictures from my BlackBerry)
11. Pink Lake (Sunday October 27)

#ibmcsc senegal

Running and serving in Senegal (part 2): we are game!

9 days in Senegal, one third of the say has passed already, time flies. Along with the numerous... flies and feared mosquitoes in this oppressive heat and humidity. But the spirit of the team is high especially after a few have recovered from various fevers, headaches and/or diarrhea. As usual, our Indian contingent is resisting the best to any food poisoning but they are not the only ones. On Saturday night, I even risked a Salade Gourmande (green salad, medium-cooked liver and poached egg) and I'm glad to report I'm still fine two days later, phew! Not quite the rustic conditions we encountered in Ethiopia 4 years ago.

On the running side, nothing extravagant since my last post. I kept running most of the mornings on that 5K loop in our upper class neighborhood and logged 68 miles (109 kilometers) since I arrived in Dakar last Sunday. I've been gaining a bit of speed showing some heat acclimation but I still have hard time sustaining low 7 minutes/mile pace on my 10-mile runs. Even when I start at sunrise and the temperature is "only" 80F...

This Sunday, we had a group excursion in the morning and left the hotel by 7am so I was left with the afternoon as a slot to run and it was really really hot. I ventured outside our neighborhood and ran 10 miles on the West Corniche (La Corniche Ouest) down to the luxurious Radisson Blue hotel and attached mall, passing the embassy of Indonesia and United Arab Emirates, a military base and the beach we had cleaned up the previous weekend. Nice views of the Ocean on one side, and quite some smoking car traffic on the other, yet a good and wide sidewalk most of the way.

I wanted to climb to the top of the Dakar lighthouse hill but it seems the road is closed to traffic. I did climb the other hill of Dakar however, at the top of which is built the controversial monument commemorating the African Renaissance.

Let's come back to the Corporate Service Corps (CSC) experience because, even if the pictures don't really convey this, we do work quite hard on our projects. For one thing, our client is a very hard working and serial entrepreneur and it's an honor to assist him in his amazing challenge of helping Senegal grow through the development of young Senegalese. Our assignment requires that we meet and work with these "Coders4Africa", most of them being only available to us in the evening, after their day job. It reminds me of the Silicon Valley spirit, except that there is no money available here to transform ideas into gold... let's see what we can figure out in 3 weeks to make that happen...!

We learned a lot already about what success means in the local culture, about what "having enough" means in particular, something that our "developed" countries should get back to rather than creating such insane debts by always wanting more. I must say it is still quite challenging to not impose our own assumptions of financial success or finance-driven analytics.

After getting back to the hotel around 10 pm on Friday evening, we were able to take our weekend off and get two very special excursions to keep discovering Senegal and Africa.

The first, a must when in Dakar, a place that most of the Nations' heads have visited to pay their respect to the African continent was Ile de Gorée on Saturday. We took the ferry from the Dakar harbor to cross the 3.5 km separating the island from the Senegalese capital. What a unique place to relate to the immense cruelty which got 20 million slaves "shipped" to America over three centuries, 6 million of them dying during the cross-Atlantic journey. First, the number seems so surreal, larger than the population of many countries. But, to me, the fact that this practice lasted for 3 centuries (300 years!), at a time we knew about the great civilizations such as the Egyptians, Greeks or Romans, or others further East, at a time we even had our own Renaissance or industrialization era, it's good that the greatest leaders have been visiting this place to pay their and our tribute to the African continent and people. With a special intention to my Mom who has actively supported this movement, here is a plaque from the founder of Aide à Toute Détresse - ATD Quart-Monde:

After this humbling visit to the launch pad of slavery, we changed backgrounds and, in reference to the title of this post, went for a safari, almost a game although we did shoot animals only with our harmless cameras. At the Bandia Reserve (government-owned land but operated by a Lebanese family like many successful businesses in Senegal).

I was able to upload quite a few pictures onto my Picasa album and invite you for a tour of a few key representatives of the African wildlife: giraffes, zebras, crocodiles, ostriches, monkeys, giant turtles and various birds.

The album counts 500 pictures by now, so here are a few direct pointers to specific sections:

1. Beach cleaning (Sunday October 13)
2. Team building (Sunday October 13)
3. Kick-off @ ITA (Monday October 14)
4. Tabaski (Wednesday October 16)
5. All-hands with Coders4Africa (Friday October 18)
6. Ile de Gorée (Saturday October 19)
7. Safari @ Bandia (Sunday October 20)
8. Western Corniche run (Sunday October 20)

And I've also added a few comments and notes on some of the pictures to guide your tour, enjoy Senegal's legendary Teranga, the Wolof word for the art of hospitality!

This week, we are focusing on meeting the coders, learning about their expectations and challenges, teaching them some business sense and tips to create their business plan and think of ways and recommendations to make Coders4Africa even more successful.

#ibmcsc senegal

Running and serving in Senegal (part 1): first days in Dakar

For those following this running blog, first you should already know that I'm going to be blogging from Africa for a few weeks. And, my apologies, I will also include some non-running topics to avoid creating another transient blog for just a few weeks. Indeed, as part of our engagement, IBM invites us to share about our experience and, since running is an integral part of my life, you'll get the two facets, running and work, in the upcoming posts.

For those who are visiting this blog for the first time, welcome, hope you will enjoy!

This is a first post about my IBM Corporate Service Corps assignment in Senegal. This is an amazing program from IBM, providing an opportunity to employees to spend a month in a developing country to assist local organizations with technical and business skills and make an impact through targeted consulting engagements. Since 2008, more than 200 teams have been deployed to 30 countries and the program has received praised for its positive impact around the globe, starting with a case study from the Harvard Business Review. We are the second team in Senegal.

I arrived this past Sunday in Dakar, as scheduled, at 5:30 am. Most of the team flew in on Friday and got a tour of the city and some orientation on Saturday but we already have a great team spirit among the team, every body was very helpful to get me up to speed. As a matter of fact, Sunday was full of team building and additional orientation activities. As soon as I got to the hotel, I went for a run from to discover the neighborhood as the sun was rising. No better treatment against jet lag (7-hour time difference with home) and after a red eye from the US and 5 hours of sleep!

Our hotel is on the Pointe des Almadies, at the most western end of Africa. Literally. It gives quite a feeling to think that this is the closest point to America, yet that we are so far away and there is so much ocean between us. No wonder why this point was chosen as a platform for sending slaves across the Atlantic, specifically from the close by Ile de Gorée which we should visit this coming Saturday.

Pointe des Almadies has been deeply transformed over the past 10 years. From a very poor area, it has become the residence of a few of the country's wealthiest, a few embassies starting with the gigantic US one, the UN local headquarters, several international schools and few high scale condominiums. As a result, the area is rather safe with numerous guards at every building. Mamour, from our local host organization, Pyxera Global (which was still named CDC Solutions 3 weeks ago), was nice enough to drive me around to show me the neighborhood. It turned to be a 3.15-mile loop, close enough to a 5K loop, perfect for some good running. The temperature was already quite high, so I just did two loops. The weather is going to be very predictable with temperatures of 79F/26C at night and 88F/31C during the day, and a humidity between 76 to 90%, definitely on the painful side for running, or even standing outside and in areas without air conditioning.

On Sunday morning, we went to a local beach, not for a swim, but for some cleaning. The project was also meant to get us to meet with kids learning English, but they ended up being off for the upcoming Tabaski religious celebration. We have been quite efficient, collecting 15 large bags of plastic trash. The local fishermen were quite impressed and pledged to continue to keep the beach as clean as we left it. To their defense, it seems that most of the garbage comes from the Ocean and, after three days going back and forth across the capital, there is certainly a lot of trash everywhere. The trace of the Western "developed" civilization...

Monday was our official kick-off hosted by ITA (Institut de Technologie Alimentaire, literally the Food Technology Institute). Our group counts 14 members coming from 7 countries (Japan, China, India, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and USA), and representing nationalities: Japanese, Swiss, Dutch, Belgian, French, Indian, Chinese, Canadian and American, a perfect illustration of IBM's global aspect.

We are split in 4 teams to address 4 projects and challenges, or opportunities as we say in the US, specific to Senegal. Our team will assist a wonderful and fascinating organization, Coders4Africa, in their local development in Senegal. Here we are, with the manager of our client, Léger and one of his sisters on the left, then Dean, Phil and Tomomi.

By the way, you can get additional and detailed news from our team on these three other blogs: Tomomi's, Dean's and Phill's.

On Tuesday, I woke up early after yet another short night, and was able to run 5 loops before a quick breakfast and driving to our client's office (they provide us with a car and chauffeur which is very convenient). We met several of the "coders" whom we will be working with these 4 weeks and had fascinating discussions about what they managed to achieve during their three month-training, as well as the cultural specificity shaping their projects and development plans.

Wednesday was Tabaski (or Aid al-Adha in Arabic) which is the major Muslim holiday in Senegal, a country which is about 85-90% Muslim, so quite a big deal. The celebration of sacrifice during which each head of families kill a goat and gather/host the extended family. A sort of Thanksgiving which transformed Dakar in a dead city as most of the inhabitants go to their family in the suburbs or native country side. Léger got us to visit 3 families so we can experience this unique and joyful celebration. We ended the afternoon with a tour of the city including the Corniche and the Presidential Palace (see pictures).

After working on my "home" job in the evening, clearing off emails, and in order to catch-up with my blogging, I skipped the night party that our team was invited to, and look forward to hearing about this other experience from the team tomorrow morning.

The Internet bandwidth is quite limited and slow here so I can't include too many pictures in the post, but I invite you to visit my Picasa album to see more of Senegal! And I will "talk" to you in a few days to share more news about this amazing discovery experience.

#ibmcsc senegal