Believe in Jesus and you'll even make a good wife!

On the flight to Nigeria, I met a guy from Zambia who's going there to worship.  We began our conversation initially because he noticed that I "prayed" before meal.  I got into a habit of giving thanks before eating a meal...I don't really say grace, but just sort of give thanks, without uttering any words out loud, appreciating the fact that I'm lucky enough to have food in front of me while many others don't.  So this guy asked me about it.  He asked, so who do you give thanks to?  Yourself? God? The chef? All of the above?  I guess I never got into that level of details when I give thanks, so that sparked further discussions.

I thought it was interesting that he has to go all the way from Zambia via Mozambique via Kenya to reach Nigeria to go to church (I assumed there are probably many churches in Zambia, and I didn't really consider Nigeria a pilgrimage destination), so I asked him more about it despite of a little voice inside me warning me that this may turn into one of those awkward conversations where I have to explain why I'm not a Christian, and how they then try to politely tell me I'm a lovely lady, but should really believe in God and get salvation through the power of Jesus.  Despite the occasional awkward moments in our conversation, there were some interesting things that came out during his subtle attempt to convert me into Christianity.

First was the challenge to surrender oneself to a higher power.  This is definitely a biggest personal challenge when it comes to spirituality.  I like being in control too much that surrendering myself to anyone is difficult, let alone to some being that has not quite yet proven reliable to me in a personal way.  I believe there is a supernatural power, may it be the spirits, God, or whatever...but whatever or whoever "IT" is, has remained purely an intellectual exercise...In general, I believe in karma, and believe that most of my accomplishment was the result of hard work, good planning, and lots of luck/help from others.  Without one of which probably I wouldn't have get to where I am today. That's a lot of pride, I know, and I suppose you could argue that the last element of luck may be what God has put in place to help me; but truly, if I did pray, but take no action/put in no hard work, would I still achieve the same result?  I believe not.  With that said, the message I have been given over and over again in Africa is that if I have faith, God will answer my prayers, just like that, and THAT leap of faith is just too hard to take because there's too much to lose if it doesn't work.  The risk is too big.

I suppose I have demonstrated the capability of having faith.  I have faith that a plane is going to successfully take me from Nairobi to Lagos, but that's because Kenya Airway has a good track record of doing that successfully.  I have faith that if I work hard, some positive results will happen since that has always been the case for me.  The truth is, I have not had many incidents where things just miraculously happen to me for God to be relevant enough in my day-to-day life, and frankly I would feel irresponsible to just throw God all the difficult problems in my life and expect Him to sort it out for me.  I mean, he probably has better things to do, like, fixing the economic crisis or the middle east conflict or something like that.  If I can sort something out, why bother God?

If you take answering prayer out of the discussion, then a main purpose of religion is to maintain social order.  So I asked the Zambian guy, if I'm a good person, why does it matter if I believe in Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad or anyone else?  He responded, how do you know you're good?  I guess that's a question I never asked myself.  I never thought I was "perfect", but I do believe I know "right" from "wrong" most of the time, and try to be a good person the best way I know how.  I recognize that sometimes my pride and laziness get the best of me when it comes to certain things...nonetheless, I never questioned or thought that I may be innately a "bad" person since I have not stolen, killed, cheated, do drug...etc.

This led us to a more fundamental question I think is maybe a key difference between why this guy and I believe or do not believe in Jesus/God - are human fundamentally good or evil?  (it's really quite amazing the kind of conversation that takes place on a plane ride with a complete stranger) I argued, if you believe people are fundamentally evil, then "God" will need to set the rules (i.e. 10 commandment...etc.) to discipline people and punish negative behaviors which give people pleasure (if they are inherently evil)...However, if you believe people are good in nature, then we inherently know what's good, and will feel awful if we do bad things...in this case then, "God" plays more of a role of a mentor who will provide support so we don't get confused in the face of various temptations to do bad things (and feel bad afterwards, kind of like the shitty feeling you get after a crazy night when you know you did stuff you shouldn't have done)...In the later case, you may argue, God's role is less critical if people have enough discipline.  I tend to believe people are generally good, which I suppose might be why whether God exist or not matters less to me.

I always find amusing the polite smile African gives a foreigner even when they intensely disagree with you.  That was the exact expression I got from Mr. Zambian.  He said to me, "I believe people are fundamentally evil, without God, the world will be like hell."  His statement shocked me back to reality, and highlighted the one thing I failed to recognize.  For me, life has been good, I have a lot of resource at my disposal so I can control my own destiny.  For him, life has been nothing but a series of unfortunate events, from both a national history and a personal survival stand point, he has so little resource and control over his life, if there is no God, what else can convince him that staying good pays off, and believe there will be justice?  I suppose that leap of faith helps a lot in hopeless situations...and it could be liberating to give that responsibility out to a higher being when one has so little control over his surroundings.  Maybe that is why people are more religious in more desperate situations...and maybe I should feel lucky for having the luxury of this intellectual/spiritual debate that I am having...

As we part, he said to me..."I really hope you will believe in Jesus one day, you might even make a good wife!" As much as I don't see the relevance between the two statements, I found it quite cute, and maybe, that's my path out of singleton, haha.

Alternative career planning strategy?

Lately I began questioning my approach to career planning to-date.  Don't get me wrong, I think I've made good decisions, enjoyed the work in all my previous jobs, and have grown a lot professionally.  No regrets there.  However, my approach has always been very structured, "planful", and goal oriented.  I first identify what "my interests" are, what "my salary requirements" are, where "I want to be" in 5 years.  Then I would narrow down my options and backed out a path whereby specific education/credentials or experiences in certain companies would be identified and pursued so that I can explore an area of interest or fill certain skill gaps.  This way, I am sure to be able to put a certain bullet point on my resume to get to the next job I've got my eyes set on.  This approach has worked very well for me, but I noticed a few potentially troublesome themes: (a) my career is all about developing "me"; I pick a job because it serves my desire to get to the next job, which will get me to the next job vs. I'm doing this job because I love it and it allows me to fulfill a purpose now (b) since a job is picked to get to the next job, I'm forever postponing that perfect job that I will stay with (c) this method of career planning puts control 100% on me, which means that it is possible that I overlook certain opportunities simply because I wasn't in the right mindset when that opportunity came along or I was too focused on a different direction. (d) this approach assumes the career path will forever lead/advance somewhere; however, the reality is, the path will end at one point since not everyone can be the CEO.  So, when career progression feels a little bit like playing the Angry Bird game where you're always working to pass the next level, how would one feel when there's no more next level?  Will there be a sense of void? or sense of defeat? How can one recognize the end of the "path" when it's presented to you?

After working in Africa for almost 4 months now, I see so many opportunities, and so many places I could contribute my skills.  I'm definitely not the smartest person I know; however, I am probably among the top 1% best educated people within a 100 mile radius here.  With that comes a sense of responsibility to do something good/useful with this precious knowledge and skill I've been bestowed.  Already, I felt that I'm making an impact and helping a small organization progress little by little.  And while doing so, I am also learning and growing.  I'm learning about things that I wouldn't normally put on a corporate individual development plan or consider "career development" based on my typical way of career planning.  I'm learning about people, culture, and random things that I can never articulate on a resume.  How do you put into a bullet point when a lady int he village tells you how your lights have transformed her life?  How do you summarize in a "situation-action-result" format in a few words the craziness one will have to put up with to get a certain paperwork through to be able to do your job?  All these are unexpected experiences that I would never actively seek out if I'm left in charge to "manage" my own career.  However, all these are invaluable experiences that not only made me grow as an individual, but also allow me to do something bigger than myself.

So the question is...rather than continue to seize full control and manage my career the way I would manage a business, would it be better for me to give the control away to the universe and forget about career paths, to throw away career development plans, and just go where I are needed most and where my skills will make the most impact (with certain base criteria such as "being able to financially support myself" of course)?  Will this be a career suicide or career liberation?  What do you think?

The "mad tea party" in 9ja wonderland...

Those of you who know me, know that I'm a planner...and those of you who knows Nigeria, would know that planners and Nigeria probably won't mix well together.  Well, last week was the true test of my mental capacity.  I experienced the kind of feeling you'd imagine a sane person would experience when she's mistakenly put into a mental institute...or how Alice felt when she was trapped in the Wonderland...nothing made sense, and things just spiral down so quickly that you began to question your own worldview up till that point!  For the first time in my professional career, I felt completely lacking control for the simplest task in the world, and felt the need to pray and leave the success of my project/business in the hands of God (or whatever higher power there is).  Somehow, He pulled through for me.  I love 9ja as a country, but this time, I couldn't wait to go back to Kenya, where things may be pole pole, but at least made a bit more sense.

The trip began with a trampede at the immigration control at Lagos.  Multiple planes landed and hordes or people were quickly cramming into a very small space while people are passing through the passport control people VERY slowly.  The space filled up very quickly, and soon people were pushing each other down the stairs.  At this point, it's probably a good idea to turn off the escalator, but of course it took a bloody accident for that to happen.  I only heard a loud thump and a silent gasp by the group, and saw a pool of blood afterwards...didn't really want to imagine or inquire what happened to the woman who fell down the flights of escalator stairs.

I was sent to monitor our very first sets of capacity building training in Nigeria...a set of training that d.light has been discussing with our Nigerian partner since May.  (i.e: plenty of time to plan).  The agreement was that we will send money ahead of time to fund the training, and our local partner will take care of the logistics (i.e. print training materials, invite distributors, book tickets/hotel reservations...etc.).  Our first training was in Enugu, Eastern part of Nigeria...we had a morning flight scheduled to leave Lagos at 7:10a, arriving in Enugu 9a, and training will begin at 10a with 60 people, some of whom traveled 5 hours to get there.  I showed up at the airport, only to realize that all the training materials have just been completed the night before, and are coming with us as excess luggage (vs. sent ahead of time).  All the paperwork + the normal Lagos chaos caused delay and a sense of panic inside me...I had enough mental power at that time and did a pretty good job suppressing my worries, and thankfully, we got on the plane at 7:10a exactly.  Cutting it close, but manageable... Whew...Enugu training went on, minor glitches here and there, all was well!

Next stop, Kano.  The night before we were supposed to go to Kano, I found out that not only do we not have our plane ticket to Kano purchased, don't know if there are tickets available to Kano, but our local partner also did not have enough cash on him to pay for our tickets if such ticket becomes available to us!  His master plan was...we fly half way to Abuja (closer to Kano, but NOT Kano), try to get into town (hours away from the airport) to find his bank and take money, come back to the airport to see if there is plane ticket available..and doing all these within a few hours because it was Friday, and bank close early.  Mind you, on top of the normal weekend traffic, we are in peak travel season as everyone is going home for Christmas.  In addition, Kano airport has a very basic runway (think Casablanca), and often has cancellations or delays if the weather is bad (which is often).  My jaws dropped as I discovered this news, and had nothing but questions in my head on how could this possibly be happening!  What will we do if we cannot get to Kano?  I'm spending $700/day to pay for this trainer to come train, and now he can't even train!?  What are the people going to do traveling all the distance there only to find out there's no trainer?  What the @#$%^&!!!?  Trying painstakingly to keep my cool, I asked, so what's our back up plan...the response I got was, "we'll see when we get there"...WE WILL SEE WHEN WE GET THERE?  This is what happens when we always plan 1 hour before the disaster is about to happen!  How about for once we plan ahead so we won't NEED to see when we get there and know exactly what will be there?  Why don't we have money?  What happened to the money I sent?  (at this point, I was politely reminded that I "ask too many questions"...and should just wait, and believe that things will look up...)

Thing did look up, by God's grace (yes, even I believe in God at this point, there's no other explanation), we got the last 4 tickets for the last flight from Abuja to Kano at 9 pm (who knows at what premium price), but this airline is notorious for canceling flights, and I've heard horror stories about that particular flight into Kano.  At this point, I have no idea what I can possibly do within my limited ability as a hopeless mortal, so I am just praying that it will fly, I didn't care how long it will delay, as long as it get us there so we can train the next morning.  Thankfully, J.C. pulled through for us one more time, and we got to Kano...late, but we got there.

Next morning, people began showing up for the training, but we had no clear idea who all these people were, how many are coming, and how many are late.  People were tardy for 2 hours on average, and we made the best out of what we got.  At this point, even my amazingly even-tempered Kenyan colleague was getting upset (while I'm already reached the edge of hysteria and appalled at how horribly managed everything was). The lack of accountability, initiative, and just this general need to be "the boss", is getting in the way of progress and results.  One hilarious example I could give is that as part of the training, we give out a certificate of participation at the end (side note: certificates are huge hits in Africa).  We wrote in the names of the participants to this pre-printed template, and laminates it before giving out.  We sent this fully grown man to do the lamination.  He came back with the certificates laminated, but there's a huge part of the laminate just hanging out and the thing is looking awful...I asked, can the shop not trim these edges so it looks more finished?  He answered "no"...I asked, can we trim it ourselves?  He asked "how?"...I asked, is there a scissor?  He said, "no"... I asked, in this entire hotel with all the conference halls, there is not one single scissor we can borrow for 5 minutes?  He said "no"... I said, please ask again...5 minutes later, the man has not returned, I walked downstairs, ran into the guy wandering around the hotel, then grabbed him to go to the business center, I asked the business center guy, is there something I can use to trim this laminated certificates?  The shopkeeper said..."like a scissor?"...I said, with a huge relief that I've finally talked with a sane person, "YES, like a scissor..." while having an image in my head of myself banging my head against the wall...

On a daily basis, I feel like one of those parents who asks her son to clean his room, no response, ask again, no response, and by the 10th time, the son says, "fine, I've done it", only to find out that he just shoves all the dirty laundry into the closet and considered the task done.  I suppose there's always the challenge of how you might show someone a better way when (a) his exposure doesn't allow him the bandwidth to open up to alternative options, and (b) his ego is in the way of seeking help for better solutions?  How do you show someone what he's missing when he's been perfectly happy with how things are now?  Same type of struggle happens in the world of new product commercialization.  How do you explain the benefit of the Internet to someone who lives in the age of telegraph?  There's a Chinese metaphor of the sentiment of an iron-smith lamenting the iron does not turn into steel after so much hardwork...I haven't lost hope yet, but I really hope that all these work and time spent will not result in nothing...

Kenya Nzuri: Lamu Weekend Getaway - Donkeys, Dhows, Doors, and my Chinese Brothers?

After much anticipation, the trip Lamu finally came to fruition! Lamu is an island off the Northern coast of Kenya close to the Somalia border and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

With Kenya's war in Somalia, there has been several Al Shabaab attacks in recent months, and a couple kidnappings in Lamu.  As a result, we had some debates on whether we would cancel the trip, particularly because we were going there during the weekend that the Lamu Cultural Festival is taking place.  I was glad that thing quiet down, and we stuck to the original plan!

The Kenyan coast is so different from the rest of the country.  Lamu is one of the best-preserved Swahili town, and the town has a large Portuguese and Arab influence. Swahili women are all covered up in these black buibui, and men dress in traditional clothes very similar to the ones in Kano, Nigeria actually.  Legend also has it that the Chinese explorer Zheng Hue's ship sunk near Lamu, so there are quite a lot of Chinese porcelain influence, and actually were evidences that people in Lamu has some DNA link to Chinese people!  Who knows!?  Being called a "sister" all of a sudden take on a whole new meaning here!  It's also quite ironic that the Chinese is now working to turn Lamu, the site that sunk one of its greatest historical navigator, into the largest port in East Africa as part of their String of Pearl strategy.

The most interesting thing to me is, people in Lamu are surprisingly punctual, definitely an anomaly for Africa!  And just when you think Kenyans can't be friendlier, the folks here took hospitality to a whole new level.  Everywhere we walked, people welcomed us.  The relaxed atmosphere also was a breathe of fresh air from Nairobi. In fact, when we were shopping at the local silversmith's store, he nicknamed us "Nairobbery" because we were so aggressive in haggling that he felt we were robbing him (yet, he still smiled and gave each one of us Lamu mangoes to take home when we left)!

The narrow streets of Lamu are adorned with coral walls and beautifully carved mahogany doors.  donkeys were everywhere (as it's the main mean of transportation to navigate the narrow streets)...I was obsessed with the donkeys, and was disappointed that I couldn't witness (or participate) in the donkey race, but guess that will have to wait until next time. (for those interested in history of donkeys in Africa, thanks to my friend Emily, here's a good resource).  It's funny how people gladly share each other's donkeys.  I supposed the liability is much lower when you lend someone your donkey vs. your BMW.  

One other amazing thing is that it feels as though foreigners own most of the more expensive properties, while the locals gets pushed to the Swahili side of town.  We were first intrigued why the dhows in the competition all have flags from countries like Holland, Italy...etc., then we realized that it's because the dhow's owner were not local...they buy the boat (for roughly 1 million Kenyan schillings), then let to locals to sail, and the dhows bear the flags of the owner's home country.  Same for the houses, many of the nice old Swahili houses were renovated and turned into vacation houses or hotels.  It's quite surprising to see the % of houses on Lamu island and Shela that's owned by foreigners.  

 

      

The sunset dhow ride is definitely a highlight of a Lamu trip.  Riding on the traditional Arab sailboat was definitely a nice "Sinbad" moment...when the day gets dark, the stars in the skies were absolutely amazing, and I saw not 1, but 2 shooting stars...definitely a first and awesome experience!

Most tourist or expats stay in Shela village, which is about 10 minutes boat ride from Lamu.  The beach there is so deserted it feels like a whole different world. Almost like a scene from the 2nd Pirates of the Caribbean.  We splurged a bit at Peponi hotel for lunch, which was beautiful and serves delicious food!

To me, Lamu exemplifies the ideal small town living, everyone seem to know everyone, and life is so simple that people look for a reason to get together and have a good time.  It's probably the closest thing to paradise I've seen so far!