Picking Teams

July 13, 2012

I have always hated the feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and expectation surrounding choosing teams, but this week was different. It brought the most exciting moment of the Innovation Institute thus far: picking our design teams! These are the groups of 4-6 community members with whom we will work for the remainder of our time here. The entire week was devoted to the selection process and to preparation for our first meetings together. The process went like this:

1. Reviewing Assets. In the two weeks of Immersion, we interviewed 40+ members of the community to better understand the assets in the village. This includes physical resources, knowledge, abilities, VABES (values, beliefs, assumptions, and expectations), etc. Before we picked our teams, the scholars met and catalogued not only the assets of the people whom we had met but also those within our Think Impact team.

2. Defining Criteria. Next we individually reflected on the most important attributes of an ideal team member, reflecting on the ways in which our own strengths and weaknesses as leaders and managers will also affect our teams. Each of us used different techniques to do so. Emanuel had a ranking system based on scores in a number of different categories, while I used a table to organize the most important information from interviews. Beyond tactical considerations (i.e. who has a bicycle or knows how to sew), there was consensus that the most important qualities were understanding of and alignment with the Think Impact mission, an entrepreneurial spirit and forward-thinking mindset, and genuine curiosity and enthusiasm for the project.

Notes on assets of various community members

3. Scholar Discussion. We then came together with individually-prepared list of our top fifteencandidates. I had decided to select a team of entirely women, while Tom was interested in having a team of all men. We discussed team dynamics, village relationships, and team goals before creating a paper version of an Excel optimization model that would have made my Darden Learning Team proud. Given that we had all identified slightly different goals and criteria for our teams, there was surprisingly little overlap in our target lists. We each narrowed down the lists to a top 5 with the aim of having a final team of 4-6 community members.

Our team working in the village government office space

4. Design Team Invitations. Armed with our target lists, we were joined by our translators to devise an “invitation pitch” to the community members. Preparing ahead of time with our translators makes meetings infinitely more effective, and Gilbert and I outlined and rehearsed talking points before setting out across the three villagesin which our invitees live. I was shocked at how eagerly people accepted their invitations and how clearly they already understand our objective of our work from our earlierconversations (thanks to Gilbert and friends for such excellent work!).

Prep with our translators

5. Prep for the First Meeting. We spent the remainder of the week preparing for our first design team meeting on Friday. Talking with other scholars, it was interesting to see the many ways in which people found to connect with their teams. One scholar planned the human knot as an ice breaker, while another brought in specific items to spur conversation around assets and issues in the community and another facilitated a game of charades across the language barrier. I chose to storyboard my meeting with drawings of the most important things I wanted to convey (i.e. goals and expectations). Together with this, I tried to learn a few key words in Kinyarwanda, with the hope of connecting with my team directly instead of just through the translator.




Power Point slides by hand :-)



This was a very involved, methodical process, and we worked with each other every step of the way. Picking teams when you have clear goals and a strategy to get there is not as much stressful as inspiring. By the end of this week, we will have had several team meetings, and we will have identified the challenge we want to tackle as a group. I’m feeling confident that I have assembled a wonderful group of women, and I’m looking forward to our discussions this week!

 





My notes from Immersion and profiles of community members





These are a Few of My Favorite Things

July 11, 2012

It would not be a successful trip abroad if the soundtrack did not include at least a few songs from one of the greatest movies ever: The Sound of Music. When shuffling through my iPod a few days ago, I came across a mix from study abroad in Germany in 2004 with “Do-Re-Mi.” Later that afternoon, I caught myself walking around the village humming, “Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens.” In that spirit, here are a few of my favorite things about Rwanda.

1. Cooking with Mama Shalom. The time after our Think Impact work ends for the day and before we sit down to family dinner is my very favorite time of the day here. Preparing dinner is a very involved process over roughly three hours, and I have learned to plant myself near the portable charcoal stove in the back yard outside the kitchen to help Mama Shalom shell ground nuts, peel potatoes and bananas, and stir the pot. Mama sometimes sneaks me an ear of corn or a piece of pineapple while we wait, and we mostly sit in silence except for the repetition of food names in English and Kinyarwanda as we add each successive ingredient to the pot. Neighbors stop by to say hello, and I imagine that they are laughing that I do not know how to cook ubugali (cassava bread). Even so, it is in these moments that I feel most fully present here.
2. Singing and dancing with the neighborhood kids. One day I came home determined to teach the kids a new game from America: hopscotch. Much to my chagrin, they already knew it, and of course they had added more rules, twists, turns, and jumps than I remember from my elementary school days. As soon as I step out of the house, I immediately find a throng of around 20 children at my side every single day. They are eager to teach me a new song, to follow me to a meeting, or to show off a new word they just learned in English class. I have never been particularly good with small children, but early on, I decided to simply jump right in with them. We belt out “Come to Jesus” and “Old McDonald” in the back yard, and I think they are determined to help me master the traditional Rwandan cow dance before August. Sometimes the mothers gather to observe and laugh at this spectacle, but I am laughing and enjoying every minute of it.
3. My name is Meriana. One our first day in the village, a round-faced, barefooted, boisterous two year old chased us down the street yelling, “Muzungo, MUUU-ZUUUU-GO, MU-ZUUUUUUU—NGO,” meaning “foreigner” or “outsider.” These antics became a daily routine, as our new friend, affectionately nicknamed “Muzungo Baby” appeared every time we passed his house. This not isolated to our friend, however, and we often hear echoes of Muzungo following us around town. Slowly, however, this is changing. When we returned from a scholar day trip away last weekend, a pack of kids came running to greet the car yelling my Rwandan name, “Meriana,” and they of course proceeded to follow me home. Instead of hearing Muzungo from the banana fields on our morning runs, I am hearing “Meriana” from the faces we pass. Slowly we are becoming people and not just Muzungos to our new neighbors, and this makes me smile. The best part of this story? Muzungo Baby has learned to say “Good Morning,” AND we learned that his real name is RICHARD!
4. The African Stars and Moon. Since my days camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and my nights on the farm checking on the horses before bed, I have always had a special appreciation for the peace and tranquility of a sky filled brightly with stars without the distraction of city lights. Here we are a 90 minute drive from the capital city of Kigali, and the nearest town with electricity, Rwamagana, is approximately 10 miles away. When the sun sets at 6:30pm, the horizon changes from rich hues of gold and red to an expansive dark ceiling dotted with thousands of stars. Last week was a full moon, and it was so bright that we did not need headlamps to prepare dinner outside. It was spectacular. I am often alone when I go outside to brush my teeth at night. At home we usually do not take the time to look up at the sky, but here I pause. There is something majestic and intoxicating about the blanket of stars that surrounds me, and I head inside for bed feeling thankful, grounded, and ready to tackle another day. 

Where is the Market?

July 9, 2012

One of the books on my summer reading list here is John McMillan’s Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets. I’m about a third of the way through this as we finish the first phase of the Innovation Institute, Immersion. I know that we are in a developing country, but thinking about this book in conjunction with a scholar workshop we had on the innumerable hidden and financial transactions around us, it is amazing to see how the markets in the village are designed, organized, regulated, and function, both formally and informally. 

McMillan discusses markets that bring together buyers and sellers to create gain for both parties. He quotes a dictionary definition of markets as, “a meeting together of people for the purpose of trade by private purchase and sale.” There are many examples in Nyarbuye that fit this definition in the most traditional sense. Shops in our village sell salt and sugar, cell phone minutes, and tomatoes. We have a salon, a carpenter, a bicycle repair shop, and even a water delivery service. All of these are registered with the government and pay taxes, and some have a few employees. We also have many co-operatives, including a women’s handicraft group called “Rights of Women” and an agriculture group called “I’m sick of poverty.” Even health care has a market through the government’s Mutual Health Care program. A bank from the nearby town Rwamagana comes to Nyarbuye to extend loans specifically to women, and neighboring communities gather near the football field on Tuesday afternoons to exchange their goods. Financial transactions and markets are everywhere.

Perhaps more interestingly, the village also relies heavily upon the more informal trading mechanisms upon which the community is built. You can see this in the family that trades for milk while its cow is pregnant, in loans between friends to buy medicine for sick children, and in the financial roles and responsibilities divided between husbands and wives. Even in Nyarbuye, a futures markets of sorts exists, and financially astute individuals are buying sorghum and firewood to store for other seasons in which they predict higher prices will prevail. It is in this latter type of transactions that we are learning much about the fabric that actually holds this community together.

What have we learned from this new knowledge and understanding about opportunities for innovations? We scholars have been reviewing our notes from interviews and experiences during the Immersion Phase, and several major themes regarding opportunities for new or redefined markets have become obvious. These include the following:

• The need for electricity for work, studying, and the completion of daily tasks;
• The high transaction costs of getting water from Lake Muhazi, in terms of time and in the costs of illness from dirty water;
• Difficulty in saving for high fees for secondary school;
• Not just a lack of financing options but a cultural hesitation to take out loans;
• The problem of “small land,” or insufficient acreage to produce a surplus to sell at market;
• High costs of health care and distance to doctors;
• Availability and cost of agricultural inputs;
• Affordable transportation (i.e. bicycles).

What’s next? As we move into the second phase of the Innovation Institute, Inspiration, we will continue to read, observe, and learn about the myriad of diverse markets in the community. We will be forming design teams this week comprised of 1-2 scholars and 4-6 community members. These teams will them think about how to use the village’s assets to create an innovation that will improve and add value in new and creative ways. Stay tuned!

Team Meeting

A parting shot of our team after a sunset meeting by Lake Muhazi! 

Shared Austerity

July 5, 2012

Walking in the bright afternoon sun with my roommate Gabriela (a rising second year in Cornell's MPA program) and feeling the dust accumulate layer after layer on the sunscreen on my skin, we planned our big event for the evening: the much-anticipated washing of our hair. It had been four or five days since our last shampoo, we couldn't really remember any more, and as we watched dinner simmering on the stove, we asked Mama Shalom for some water for a shower. Staring longingly into the basin containing roughly 2L of water, Gabriela came over and said, "How am I supposed to wash my hair with so little water?" Before dinner we compared water saving techniques and enjoyed the fresh scent of our shampoo in our equally curly, clean locks.

Then it was time for another normal dinner in our house: a cassava-flour-based mashed potato-like dish with sauce of cabbage, beans, and tomatoes topped with fresh avocado. We had all finished eating, and at the time in the evening when our nightly cup of chai tea with fresh milk from the cow usually magically appears, Mama said in Kinyarwanda, "Amazi, oya. Muhazi," trying to communicate the following: no water tonight, we will go to Lake Muhazi for more in the morning. Confusion during dinner conversation is simply a part of our nightly rituals, so Gabriela and I looked at each other in disbelief. No water? What? We offered water from our Nalgene bottles, which she promptly refused many times. At our insistence, the kids finally finished off what we had with us, and Gabriela and I stared at each other in embarrassment and shock.

The Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) model championed by Terry Bergdall at Northwestern  on which Think Impact draws heavily describes the idea of "shared austerity." It is defined as, "being genuinely present in the local situation," with the aim of "building a foundation of trust through empathetic respect." This has been precisely the goal for the two weeks of Immersion of the Innovation Institute. Yet despite our best efforts to attend community events and church, to dress in locally-appropriate attire, and to understand the daily highs and lows of village life, I have never been hungry, my clothes are clean, my sleeping bag is dry, and I know that I have a 20L jug of safe water at whenever I am thirsty. People here have told us more times than we can count that water is a problem, but when you see gorgeous Lake Muhazi in the background all day, it is hard to understand exactly what that means. I think this dinner was the first moment that I realized that our neighbors might be going to bed thirsty. Somehow something had just changed for me, and, all of a sudden, I felt like I knew the village in a different way.

Shalom, Jolie, and Agape (the kids) all had water from our "secret" stash before bed, and I the family supply was replenished at sunrise before breakfast. We are very lucky. My team is already talking about the lessons we will bring back to the States with us, and I hope I never forget this dinner. Water is our most precious resource. We can never take it for granted. I know both Gabriela and I will both think a little differently before we complain about our greasy hair next time. Isn't that what shared austerity is all about?

Mi Casa

July 4, 2012

One of the many interesting things about visiting and interviewing so many community members is that we get to see the variation in construction and design of different houses around the village. Here’s a small glimpse of our world.

Rwandans are very private people, and houses are generally surrounded by a hedge row, allowing you to only see the front door from the street. Houses are constructed in one of three ways: mud bricks, mud over a wooden lattice-like frame, or concrete covering a mud structure.

Upon entering the front door, most houses open to a living room with a small table and a few chairs or stools for visitors. This is the setting of most of our meetings. Floors are either dirt or paved, and depending on the family, some walls are painted. Windows are made of glass or wood, and some families have wooden doors separating the rooms.

Most daily activity actually takes place outside of the houses. Kitchens are out back with either wood or charcoal stoves. The cows are inevitably in this same courtyard area, as they are almost considered part of the family. It is here that crops are dried, meals are prepared, the children play, and visitors gather in the afternoons and evenings.

Below is the blueprint and some pictures of our very lovely home, which is definitely one of the nicest in our village. 

Bedroom that Gabriela and I share

View of the "back yard," cow stall, and kitchen area from my window

Blue print of our house

The team plays cards in the living room for my birthday!
Note neighborhood kids watching through the window.

A Day in the Life of a Think Impact Scholar

July 2, 2012

It has now been two weeks since I left the States, and while it is hard to say that any day here is “normal,” here is the basic routine of Scholar life in Rwanda:

·         5:30 am: Wake-up

o   Often my family is already out in the fields cultivating by the time I wake up.

·         6:00 am: Run to Lake Muhazi/Exercise

o   Lake Muhazi is a giant u-shaped lake that surrounds our community. All roads here lead to Muhazi. It is about an 11 minute run past the church and school and through the farming fields to get there. We watch the sun rise on the horizon over the lake as we run. It is simply beautiful.

·         7:00 am: Team Check-in for the Day

·         7:30 am: Breakfast

·         8:00 am: Translators arrive

o   We have 4 translators in our village, and they are invaluable resources both in sharing their own knowledge and in translating during our community interviews

·         8:30 am: Observation, Exploration, Shared Experiences

o   Essentially everyone in the village cultivates their crops in the morning. While it is still cool outside, we wander from place to place, helping to harvest ground nuts and cassava one day and learning to do household tasks or visiting different cooperatives on others.

Cultivating maize and groundnuts with Mama Shalom

·         12:00 pm: Lunch at Home and Interview Prep for the Afternoon

·         1:00 pm: Interview Community Members

o   In the first few days, we focused largely on the local formal businesses, including the carpenter, shop keepers, the tailor, and so forth. In reality though much of our richest learning is also coming from observing the informal sector and hidden transactions amongst community members. We are interviewing family members in different settings to get a glimpse of how people live their daily lives.

Gilbert (translator), Gabriela, Tom, Emanuel, me, Audrey (adviser), and Emanuel (translator)

4: 30 pm: Team Debrief and Curriculum Workshops on Methodology, Tools, and Frameworks

·         6:00 pm: Downtime, Bathing, and Dinner Preparation

o   The sun sets around 6:30, and almost everyone is home by then. The evenings are filled with visits from neighbors and with the kids who want English/Kinyarwanda lessons and singing and dancing time.

·         8:30 pm: Dinnertime with the Family

o   Sitting in the dark, we laugh, learn new words, and try to share stories in combinations of French, English, and Kinyarwanda until we are all practically falling asleep.

My fantastic host family
From L to R: Gabriela (scholar), Shalom, me, Mama Shalom, Jolie, Papa Amiel

·         9:30 pm: Reading, Journaling, and Prep for the Next Day

·         10:00/10:30 pm: Sleep!