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