MY AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: The Lost Boys

#LEAPOFHOPE

I remember watching a LOST BOYS movie one afternoon in Nairobi. My roommate, brother and friend Githinji Mwai​ had uploaded bunch of movies on my Laptop to keep me busy before leaving for Christmas-2014. I had no money to travel to Pokot and join my family like everyone was doing. Nairobi was starting to be vacated as people takeoff for the holiday to visit their relatives in the rural. So, instead I was dumping myself into more working hours and Githinji realized that I needed to do something different. 

My footage working at HAO Hub in Nairobi.

                                                      

I watched the lost boys of Sudan. The movie started with a village familiar in my mind. I related with the state of the shelters (they are huts not houses). I related with the children playing and herding. I related with the satisfaction of the locals despite the apparent scarcity. I related with the women going about with their chores. There was life-Until something happened that I didn't understood.

All I was watching were shootings and displacement. Children, young as 7 years of age, we trekking thousands of miles through different Countries to Kenya. I was crying profusely. I was hurting. I thanked heavens that my role at Hifadhi Africa ​is to link humanity with opportunities for progression and not destroying and subjecting innocent children to torture and unimaginable poverty condemnation. I was crying loud like I was possessed. I was possessed-by a demonic movie. A true story based movie. I promised to rededicate, like Charles, Jovenal and I had, 60% of our lives into building an Organization that will encourage community empowerment, equality and individual success. To be the reason behind smiles of joy. To father blooming careers. To quench thirst in arid lands. To cause peace and coexistence. To increase maternal healthcare access by the minority.

Fast forward into 2015, and unto our second week at Arizona State University under the Young African Leaders Initiative-YALI. I met a young, slim man from South Sudan. We briefly conversed and he mentioned to me that he was scheduled to give us a talk. We parted ways. It was a networking dinner for the Mandela Washington Fellows organized by our host university. There were many people to talk to and less time to chat about whether it was raining or not in Africa. After all, I was interested in knowing about America while he was interested to hear more about his motherland Africa. We exchanged smiles and contacts before parting ways. “I will read your book before the session with you guys”. He said something along those lines. 

Director of Lost Boys-Jany Deng and I.

Jany teaching MWF 2015 at ASU.

As fate would have it, Jany Deng was among the children I was watching on the movie in Nairobi. He survived brutal war and massacres. Over 2,000 of his countrymen did not. Jany and I would spend the rest of the next weeks together, including hiking at the Grand Canyon. I also got to meet his family and friends. 

 

Jany, John from Texas and I at Grand Canyon hike

Jany, Abba from DR Congo and I at Grand Canyon hike

He’s been in the States for 20 years now yet he’s still so young. You may be tempted to calculate his age while trekking from the horn of Africa to the further corner of Kenya. You may be tempted to calculate his robed years as a child. You may be tempted to hear how he eventually made it here and what he does. Well, ask Jany. I can just tell you for now that he is the executive Director of THE LOST BOYS. The organization named after the movie I was watching in Nairobi. He does what I do-dedicating the rest of his life to building capacity among minority communities. Keep it here for more articles.          

My American Experience.

#LEAPOFHOPE

First of all, I would wish to thank all of you-the millions following us through YALI Networks across Africa, the Kenyan Youth looking upon us to borrow a leaf on how to model themselves into civic leaders, American friends we’ve known and worked together even before this program, the good friends we’ve since come to appreciate and learn from here in U.S and at the U.S Embassy in Kenya, the two governments of U.S and Kenya through their Departments of State and Foreign Affairs respectively.

Indeed June 18^th will remain a special day for me personally and I think to most of my Fellows too. It was indeed that day you wish to experience. I had just given out money from Hifadhi Africa fund a community based organization called Pokot Education and Peace Support Organization (PEPSO). Hifadhi Africa and PEPSO program coordinator David Lomoywara had agreed to initiate a number of community projects starting with “Smile A Feet”. This is a project seeking to donate shoes to school going children in Kenya from less privileged background. Hifadhi Africa Organization had no money but we knew what such a project will impact admission intake in the Country especially among minority communities. My Directors Charles and Jovenal agreed with me that small efforts go long distances and that this partnership will transform lives bottom up. Coincidentally, Eric Legg, an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University would yesterday teach us on the importance of focus on community recreational sport and youth development.

 

My first flight would take me to Brussels airport in Belgium. I had left Nairobi at 10:45p.m only to touch ground the following morning!. I was fed, given warm sheet and head phones. Kenyan Matatu crew should have been on board with me, they would have learnt something on customer care. There were no major happenings at Brussels apart from admiring planes alighting, boarding and taking off open mouthed. I moved around classifying them according to their brand companies. I was also fascinated seeing crowd of 80% white people. In Kenya, we usually have small number of white people at any given time. I left for Washington that afternoon. I had gotten used to the security check in system and terminal gates. Peeping down from above the clouds, I saw oceans below me. (I wasn’t scared, Pokots don’t fear water. We need water for it’s the most mysterious thing after God Himself). It hit me that we’re actually crossing to the great America. It never happened in my wild dream that a son of a Pastoralist could do that?   

  

I had already made friends. Stephen, the first person to welcome me to USA (albeit 13,000 meters high!) wished me well. He was seated beside me from Belgium. The feeling when you realize that you are actually entering USA!

We landed and proceeded for the security check in. No petrifying search and scanning as I was expecting. No Marines everywhere as I was contemplating. No hard YES/NO questions as I had been told. In fact, I was addressed as a SIR. That was a shock. After claiming our bags, I wandered around to familiarize myself with the airport area-Washington Dulles International.  

It later took me 4 hours’ flight from D.C to Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, Arizona State. I had gotten used to both on a plane and security check in processes, so I afforded to sleep. At the airport, a team from Arizona State University-who were to be my host were already waiting for me. 

Don’t make me describe the car I was put in. And I mean “I” because the car was exclusively to ride me alone. Among those who picked me was a girl from Nigeria while my driver was a guy originally from Somalia.  

To be continued……….

KNOW YOUR LEADER: POST-INDEPENDENCE

 While most of us have been born into these "digital-aged governments", we lack knowledge of our brilliant post-independence leaders. KNOW YOUR LEADER is my new series to highlight them. Not to write about them because there is nothing that have not be written or said about them. First to grace is Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987). A son of the Continent.

"Sankara become President at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power. He immediately launched one of the most ambitious programmes for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent. To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he even renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso ("Land of Incorruptible People"). His foreign policies were centered on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to "tie the nation together". On the localized level Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities construct schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to women's rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, while appointing women to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant".

E-commerce: Its Development and Future Perspectives

E-commerce, also known as Electronic commerce is a business industry where transaction of products and services are conducted electronically or online using internet applications like e-mail and web services. It is basically application of technology in the daily transactions of businesses by companies that include marketing, sales and exchange of data to aid in the financing and payment so that it does not necessarily require physical presence. It presents an effective and efficient way of communicating within organizations and is therefore more useful way of conducting business.

The success of e-commerce is mainly associated with its numerous advantages over retail shops that make businesses adapt. These benefits include reduction in cost of operations because online shopping does not necessarily require physical presence, therefore cutting down rent and other costs that are eminent for retail businesses. With online shopping, customers are also able to compare prices in the market before committing to purchase a product or service. E-commerce also allows small businesses to mix and equally compete for global market share with established businesses. Online shopping also greatly reduces time wastage.     

E-commerce was massively adapted with the innovation and introduction powerful personal computers that powered a whole new world of intellectual, social and financial interactions by enabling linkage to global information networks. Businesses were using primitive computer networks prior to that to conduct electronic transactions called Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). The innovation of universal standard for sharing business information electronically by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) known as ASC X12, followed by many other breakthroughs like the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) triggered this shift to the new era.

Introduction of networking services for home PC users like the CompuServe enabled not only emailing but also chatting and electronic Mall where users could purchase items directly online merchants was another notable reason.

Currently almost all major business entities across the world use online credit card sales and digital identifications. There is also heavy investment on their part in regard to security of their online users. Many governments and military of stable economies are also investing more than decades before in new technologies for even more effectiveness and that can only serve as indicators of more engagement in e-commerce. This conscious investment can be attributed to the extreme growth in smartphones, tablets and other portable devices; e-commerce has been growing at least twice as fast as total retail sales since 2008.

The future of e-commerce is therefore where businesses appreciate personalization and curated content like Near Field Communication (NFC) that allows a user to transact through his/her smartphone or filtering and recommending products based on customers’ previous purchases. To cope up with competition as a result of e-commerce, businesses have to depend on product differentiation and keenness to end-product to keep customer loyalty.

The growing confidence of people to use their credit cards online is also another indicator that e-commerce has a lot to offer in terms of expansion. This exponential growth in online transaction, spending and ecommerce penetration will be expected to cause drastic changes as the global markets mature leading to further impetus for a favorable online scenario.

Growing online e-commerce will also lead to increase in creation of new jobs and business opportunities for people with the necessary skills like e-marketers and online customer support staff. Programs like Search engines, SEO Services, social media co-ordination, secure online payments, handling the integration of online accounts therefore are some of the services which will be in demand to support this e-commerce trend in the future.

In conclusion, the future is bright for entrepreneurs and businesses who are either planning or have already adapted e-commerce worldwide. There are so many opportunities that online business transaction presents to all its users which has led to confidence in investing in these opportunities by championed by institutions like Amazon and eBay.

Many governments and military agencies are also following this foot print by adapting technologies in their daily operations in the attempt to create effectiveness and efficiency.