Wundanyi - The Switzerland of Kenya

Near the southwest town of Voi sits a little oasis tucked in the Taita hills called Wundanyi. I like to call it the “Switzerland of Kenya” because of the breathtaking mountain views and lush rolling hills. Juhudi Kilimo has a small field office in this town that I was able to visit recently.

I think Wundanyi is one of the few towns in Kenya where anyone can walk around the streets late at night and not worry about safety.

"Staff Olympics" after a long days work

We hope to expand in this region of Kenya and were conducting an outreach and training program with the help of SwissContact, our partner organization. I might buy some land and expand there myself someday.

In the office most of my days are spent with normal CFO responsibilities such as updating our financial plans and budgets or answering the seemingly endless questions from potential investors (I actually like that part). The other half of the day is take up by my general manager duties such as developing a strategy for rolling out the mobile phone money transfer system with Safaricom or identifying new assets to finance such as solar lights and bio gas plants. My side projects include designing a metrics-based compensation plan and organizing a training curriculum for our 36 employees.

In the midst of all this activity, I started to realize how incredibly global my day to day activities have become. We are a tiny Kenyan company but seem to operate with dozens of countries from around the world. In one day I met with a group of Italian rating analysts in the morning then chatted with a Brazilian agriculture expert and later had a conference call with a Colombian investor in India followed by another call with a French micro-insurance agent in Tajikistan. Now through Kiva.org we have hundreds of lenders from several more countries contributing directly to our client loans. At night, I went home and fell asleep listening to a free live broadcast of NPR from Denver on my cell phone just to remind me of the "simple" life back home.

A New Year

Christmas came early for Juhudi Kilimo. I purchased a tree for the office and suddenly the money started to roll in. Before the close of 2009, we were able to secure around $1.04 million in funding from fantastic organizations such as OikoCredit, MESPT, K-Rep Bank and Kiva.org.

The entire Juhudi family is especially excited to be one of the newest Kenyan partners with Kiva. If you have never visited the Kiva website, I suggest you do and register with our group “Friends of Juhudi Kilimo”. In the next few months you will be able to provide loans directly to our clients through the Kiva website.

Anyone in the world can now lend as little as $25 to our clients in rural Kenya. Our staff will be taking pictures and uploading stories about our clients so you can choose whom you would like to support. Since you are providing a loan and not a donation, you will get your $25 back to lend again or cash out. I will do my best to make sure your loan is paid back by our clients.

We also launched our new website: http://www.juhudikilimo.com/.

I spent five glorious days skiing with my family in the freezing temperature of Colorado. Since I have been in Kenyon I find it much harder to adjust to the cold.

Now I am looking forward to another great year in Kenya and enjoying its perfect weather.

December in Kenya

This post is long overdue. I give lots of credit to all those people who are better about updating their blogs regularly!

My Kenyan Thanksgiving consisted of a fresh 5lb red snapper from the coast and a fantastic sunburn. Still a much better deal than battling the cold and the snow of Colorado.

My last six months were spent fundraising and building our new company, Juhudi Kilimo. The first investor to jump into this relationship with us could be well rewarded. The only problem is… nobody wants to be the first to jump.

Juhudi Kilimo means “effort” and “agriculture” in Swahili and the company provides micro-asset financing for productive assets such as dairy cows, chickens and irrigation equipment to thousands of rural smallholder farmers all across Kenya.

Dairy cow in Murang'a

Water tank financed for irrigation during the droughts

A serious chicken farmer

Client training at Juhudi Kilimo

A Kenyan goat- fantastic for eating

"Asset" transport in the rural areas

We are also continuing to spend time with the East African Dairy Development Program in our Rural Enterprise Financing program to provide financing to a series of milk chilling plants throughout Kenya. The chilling plants bulk and cool the milk from rural dairy farmers and create a consistent outlet to sell milk for many of our smallholder farmers who have purchased cows with our loans. The plant also prevents the evening milk from spoiling before it can be processed by the larger processing plants. Currently, we are financing two plants in Western Kenya near towns called Kabiyet and Lelan. The Kabiyet plant started collecting milk in August this year and is now gathering 23,000 liters of milk per day from the surrounding dairy farmers.

The $140,000 plant is already profitable and looking to pull in close to $145,000 in profits this year. The farmers in the area are excited because they are now paid 25 Kenyan Shillings (about 33 cents) a liter instead of the 18 (24 cents) from local hawkers. If the average farmer sells 14 liters per day, that creates another 100 shillings ($1.30) in income each day. It might not sound like much but an extra $1 a day in the rural areas of Kenya can go a very long way.

The Kabiyet and Lelan plants are community owned with a local board, so all of the profits remain in the village and are distributed throughout the 3,000 shareholders from the community. The whole story makes me want to quit my job, buy a few cows and start a dairy farm.

I am committed to staying with Juhudi Kilimo for as long as they are able to remain operating to help drive the management and source financing. We are so close to making something spectacular with Juhudi Kilimo and we have already come a long way.

Colorado River, Istanbul and Juhudi

Colorado was warm, beautiful and full of good times. The fishing was
a little slow. My brother and I successfully navigated a pristine 40
mile piece of water in our drift boat along the upper Colorado River. The stretch included the passage of a wild rapid called Rodeo- an experience I do not need to repeat in the near future. It was also comforting to be camping in an area where only three animals might be deadly (bear, mountain lion, rattle snake) instead of 35+ around Kenya.

On my flight back to Africa I made a stopover in Turkey to visit
Istanbul. The majestic roof-top vistas of the Bosporus River and prominent
architecture of the mosques will remain etched in my mind for some time.

I think Istanbul has just made its way into my top 10 lists of favorite
cities. Since Istanbul straddles both Europe and Asia, I managed to
set foot on four continents in just four days.

During the last weekend before my official work start-date I took a
quick trip to Diani beach on the southern coast of Kenya. This time of
year yields the best weather at the coast and I took advantage of the
superb diving in the Indian Ocean. My friend and I rented mountain
bikes and managed to get stranded with four flat tires and no cash in
a little village about 15 miles from the hotel. A small group of
young boys evaluated our plight and then dug deep in their pockets to
produce the $1.50 needed to repair our tires. This money was probably
their month savings but they were eager to donate it to help some
complete strangers. Someday I hope to return the favor.

I am now starting my first week as the new CFO at Juhudi Kilimo.
The expectations are well beyond any of my capabilities but
I am excited to begin. We have an aggressive financing plan with
hopes of bringing in $2 million by the end of November.
Perhaps we will find some investors and donors as generous as the
village kids near Diani beach?

Kilimanjaro

I successfully made it to the top of the 19,341 foot summit of Kilimanjaro. It was a rough climb. My group chose the Machame route (also known as the whiskey route) which is one of the more challenging climbs to the top.

I was graciously joined by a fantastic Canadian family and a professor from the UK. Our group of five climbers required an entourage of 15 porters, two guides and one cook to carry us up the mountain.

The scene certainly brought images of the Colonial Era expeditions in Africa. I thought I had signed up for the budget tour but that even came with the full floral display on our dinner table which the porters took to each campsite.

Other groups on the mountain had as many as 200 people in their company with house-sized tents, elegant meals, gas generators and flat screen TVs. Each night was like staying in a tented village. Not quite the camping I had in mind.

The physical and mental challenges of the climb were intense and at many points I seriously questioned my ability to continue. It took us five days to climb and one day to descend back to the town of Moshi.

The more time people spend on the ascent the better their chances are of avoiding altitude sickness.

The ranger station at 14,000ft sold cold beer.

The summit of Kilimanjaro was one of the most spectacular views I have experienced in my life. It made the whole journey worth all the troubles.

Now that I have mastered the two tallest peaks in Africa, I will set my sights on the Americas, Asia or Antarctica.

One more job update:

I was recently given an enticing offer by a UNDP organization called AMSCO that places expatriate managers in companies across Africa. I will now be working under AMSCO instead of Accenture with my new role as General Manager and Chief Financial Officer of Juhudi Kilimo. AMSCO provides all the benefits of a UN employee such as diplomatic immunity and tax free salary. I will still be in Nairobi until December unless our team can finally raise some money to keep the company going.

I will be in the US for the next two weeks which includes a long fishing trip on the Colorado River.