Views of a Muzungu

The first working week has almost come to an end and I am a bit overwhelmed by all the impressions. I’ll try to keep the post short and simple, but not sure if I’ll be able to do so.

First things first – I wanted to explain how I got an internship in Rwanda. My good friend Tim (check out his blog on www.frompatotheworld.blogspot.com) just started his MBA at Stanford GSB and decided to do some social business in between his job with Lufthansa and Business School. So Stanford helped him to find some social businesses run by Alumni and he came to Kigali in July ’13. At the end of this stay he and Laurent talked about potential successors and they somehow ended up talking about me. Then I had an interesting 1h Skype call with Laurent and  we decided to give it a shot – so here I am!

Many people asked me what I am actually doing here, since most of my friends cannot see me working on a field harvesting mushrooms (I don’t see myself doing that either). What I actually do is improving the current established controlling system, setting up a reporting system and trying to implement that in the company. Moreover I will try to find a way to measure the social impact Kigali Farms currently has, which will be also the topic of my thesis! That’ll be quite difficult, but I’ll try my best to make it happen!

Enough about the business for now – will write about what Kigali Farms is actually really doing in one of the next posts.

Some things I observed in my first week in Kigali:

1. People have – from a western perspective – really strange food habits here. They put mayonnaise on literally everything, including rice, banana or meat and they love their hot sauce
2. Internet is ridiculously slow in the office, which makes it kind of difficult to do some proper internet research for the thesis, but in the end I’ll manage I guess
3. Kigali is a pretty developed city – most streets are in good condition, there are no big traffic jams (mainly because there are not enough cars to cause them), there is a lot of construction going on, e.g. a new convention centre and the city is actually totally safe – I walked around myself last night and never had the feeling to be unsafe at all!
4. There is a looooot of stuff going on here. I got to know a lot of people, mainly expats but also Rwandans, who just started a business, are going to start one soon or are helping Rwandan companies to export their products to the EAC  region (Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda) or Europe. This country is definitely developing!
5. The local language Kinyarwanda is incredibly difficult since people tend to talk phenomenally fast and the whole tone of the language is totally different to any European language. I haven’t been able to learn more than two words yet and I’m not even sure about the spelling: “murakose” means thank you and “muzungu” means white man (the direct translation would be “someone who roams around aimlessly”, which I find quite interesting). I often get the muzungu price when buying stuff without price tags.

Hope I could give you a good first / second impression of what I’m actually doing and what life in a Rwanda is like.

If you’re interested in Chinese culture you should check out Fritz blog on www.friedrichkalthoff.wordpress.com – he’s currently studying at the famous university Tsinghua in Beijing and is an enormously talented filmmaker!

Auf bald!

First impressions

 

So here I am, 14hrs after leaving Frankfurt Airport on Sunday night I safely arrived in Kigali. On the way I had to learn hard, that sleeping on a bench and having his bag under it with all the stuff in it isn’t a good idea in Africa. My wallet got stolen at Addis Airport – that means no credit cards, debit cards, cash or whatsoever. Luckily I still had my passport and flight ticket to Kigali where my boss, Laurent, was picking me up at the airport.

After a quick and cold shower I went to the office right away to start understanding Kigali Farms business and business processes. Will write about that in one of the following posts.

First impressions of Kigali:

1. It’s freaking hot. 28°C feel like a lot more in the sun and especially due to a high level of humidity.
2. There are so many people on the streets. Always travelling in Europe, the US or Australia never has given me the impression that other continents are totally different – Africa though, is a whole different story and I quite like that.
3. I should have learned french. Even though people talk english quite well they’d always prefer french due to historical reasons (Rwanda was a Belgian colony)
4. They place where I’m staying – Laurent’s house – is quite comfty but obviously not comparable to western / european standards – e.g. where not having warm water (at least I haven’t found it yet)

Overall I have had some great first days learning about the business. Gut feeling: definitely right decision to come here!!

Auf bald!

Bye bye Dusseldorf – hello adventure

Yesterday was my last day as an intern at KEYLENS Management Consultants. I had a great time working on three projects and learned a lot. I reckon especially the experience and gained knowledge on one of the projects will help me a lot on my project with Kigali Farms. Special thanks to my project team – had a lot of fun with you guys!!

Before leaving to Rwanda on the 13th of October some less adventurous but still pretty exciting trips lie ahead. I will leave Dusseldorf on monday to visit Hamburg for the first time in my life (won that at Talent Meets Bertelsmann in July) and then head further to the “Wiesn” in Munich. After staying at Fabian’s – good friend studying at ISM Munich – place I will use the geographic proximity to see some friends in the lovely swiss city Zurich. After coming back on the 10th of October I will then see some of my good old school friends in Dortmund just to fly over to Kigali on sunday night. Happy and especially exciting days!

Looking forward to seeing a lot of my friends and drinking one or maybe even two “Moaß”!

t minus 22

So this is it – Rwanda is only 22 days away and I am getting a little excited. Excited about moving away from Dusseldorf after 3 great months working for KEYLENS Management Consultants. Excited about leaving friends and family behind and moving to a third world country being on the african continent for the second time in my life (first time was Kenya, almost 20 years ago – no memories). Excited about the upcoming projects with Kigali Farms, Laurent (CEO and founder of KF) and the whole team down there. I’ll be leaving on the 13th of Oct for pretty much exactly 7 weeks, coming back to write exams and go on winter vacation with my friends and then move back to Rwanda in January for a – not yet defined – while. I am looking forward to getting to know a completely different culture which will hopefully broaden my horizon and help me to understand various (cultural) issues.