Big Brother South Africa

One thing I've learned this week is how easy it is to build a relationship in a few shorts with complete strangers when you spend all of your time together. Vero made a comment this morning about how she always used to think it was silly that they cried when they had to leave each other on the show Big Brother because they'd only known each other for a few weeks, but here she is "on the verge of tears if someone even says her name" she's that sad at having to leave everyone (or go back to work, we're not sure which). When we go to college, this is exactly the type of experience that we have, a bunch of strangers thrown into a similar situation, facing simliar challenges, spending every waking hour together, forming bonds that last a lifetime. The sad truth is that we don't have many opportunities for these types of extreme conditions in our adult life.

Sure, we work with people, and we spend a lot of time with them, but at the end of the day, work time is work time and it doesn't count for much. In fact, I'm going to wager than an hour of time spent outside of work with someone is worth atleast, atleast one or two full weeks of work. The strongest relationships I've built at work have been through situations and experiences that happened outside of work, whether it was traveling, dinner, instant messaging, or even talking about a subject not at all work related...that's where the bonding happens.

It's very difficult to remedy this situation. In the real world, we only get a couple of weeks time each year to ourselves, and even then, you don't want to put them all together for fear you'll kill yourself the rest of the year, so you do a week here and a week there...and if you're fortunate enough to be able to do them with friends and continue to build relationships, it still is only a week. I know here, after a week I was just figuring out who I got along with better than others and getting a feel for all of the people here. It really took a few weeks for that "crying bond" to form, and now that it finally has, everyone is going their separate ways.

While I'm sure that most of us will see each other again, I can't imagine that it would be the same. We'll all have spent time in between without each other and maybe have to catch up instead of just living in the moment as a collective consciousness. Then again, maybe it'll be better, there will be significant others involved, new travels and experiences to have and new things to share. After all, if it was the same exact experience, would you really want to repeat it?

I only need to learn to walk on air once...after that it's like riding a bike.

Zipline video

Below is a video of Ethan filming himself going down the zipline. Everyone in our group did this, all 13 of us that went, despite a few folks shaking on their feet before they jumped. The video is great, thanks Ethan for sacrificing your experience so that others might live it through youtube.

Final Countdown

It's been a couple of days of intense work this week, but fortunately I was in pretty good shape when the week started. Unlike some of the other teams, my main deliverable isn't so much a report or a proposal, but a system. It's a ranking system for countries on their likelihood of investment in South Africa, so the bulk of my work has been done in the weeks preceding this, so when I started to work yesterday morning, it was really just up to the presentation of my findings. I did have a little bit of a bump because our client wanted not just a presentation but also a white paper (essentially a formal document explaining in detail). Yesterday I tied down on my format for the presentation and gathered my thoughts and created an outline.

I'm a big believer in presentation quality, and therefore I thought it was worth the extra time getting that right. It doesn't matter how good your work is, if you dress it up in rags, it's going to have to beg on the street for a job. Here's my title page as it is now and an example page from the presentation:

I've done my best to incorporate the logos of both IBM and the agency that we're working for, MEGA, along with the south african flag and colors of the flag, and then finally with local things from the area as the bullet icons, the flag, oranges, and a springbok.

Now don't be fooled, there's a ton of work to support my slides, including a massive excel model that analyzes over 6000 data points and their relation to each other to arrive at my conclusions. We present our projects and our four weeks worth of work tomorrow to our client.

On an unrelated note, I got pulled over by the police on our way back from a client meeting the other day. I wasn't speeding, or atleast not really. Turns out they have speed traps here just like everywhere else and there was one small stretch where the speed limit dropped to 80 kph and I was still thinking it was 100 kph, and so got clocked at 104. This encounter was very much different than my last encounter with foreign police in that this gentleman didn't have an AK47 around his shoulder, so I felt much more confident.

He lazily strolled up to the car and asked for my license and where I was going. I didn't have my international license on me, and just handed him my New York driver's license and said, "here's my local license, my international is at my hotel." He asked details about where I was staying in South Africa and I dropped the names of all the government agencies and police organization that my team or the other teams are working with, explaining to him that we're here for four weeks doing humanitarian work, etc. He said there's a fine for speeding, and I asked him how much, he had to go check.

Meanwhile, I'm kind of laughing about the whole thing. I've been pulled over a lot over the years and had my fair share of tickets, but another country might be a good souvenir.

He comes back to the car with only my license in his hand (Always watch the cops through your mirrors so you can see what they're doing and carrying) and proceeds to explain to me that the ticket would be 550 Rand ($70) and that I'd have to go to the police station to pay it. First thing in my head? yeah right, you don't give me a ticket and trust me to pay it, you'll never see me or my money again. Fortunately, he let me go with a warning...which really means he didn't want to mess around with the paperwork it would take to give a New Yorker a ticket. Chances are I wouldn't pay it anyways, I'm pretty sure NY and SA don't have reciprocity when it comes to traffic tickets, but who knows.

We've also planned another school visit on Thursday afternoon which I'm rather excited about. I've maintained a good relationship with the art teacher at the school, Maurice, and we call and text each other occasionally. He's a young enthusiastic guy and a lot of fun to talk and hang out with. He called today asking how many we expected to take to the school and then he told me about some workshops he had planned for us including art with the kids and preparation of some traditional African food. It sounds amazing! I'm sure I'll have more things to post tomorrow.

Swaziland Post

Scroll down, there's a new post below before Kruger about Swaziland.

That is all.

Panoramic Road and Kruger Night Drive

First, let me note that a post on Swaziland is still forthcoming, I'm waiting for some photos to put into my video that I filmed that day that I'll get from some teammates.

Now, onto the good stuff!

Friday, the MPTA, also known as the greatest organization in South Africa saw it within them generous selves to take us on an amazing weekend trip. It started with the panoramic drive on Friday, a night drive in Kruger, Friday night, and then a full day drive in Kruger on Saturday.

The panoramic drive is something that I've blogged about on here before, God's window, potholes, etc. What we weren't able to hit last time due to a fading sun was the Three Rondavales (I'm not going to try and spell that right), and really, I'm not sure if I even saw them, there was no one there to point them out to me. What I did get to see was the third largest canyon in the world, and the largest green canyon in the world. (This is the same canyon that we jumped into). Having been to the grand canyon about a year ago, these pictures are very reminiscent of it.

We of course went out where we weren't supposed to be, right past the "Don't go past this point" sign and played around on the cliff sides, taking some great photos.

It seemed like a good time for some meditation on a rock with this kind of beauty in the background.

Turns out this is one of my favorite kind of shots...I call it, "Goofing-around-pretending-you're-falling-off-a-cliff-when-you-really-shouldn't-be-since-you're-actually-on-the-edge-of-a-ridiculous-drop Photo" or a GAPYFOWYRSBSYAERDP Photo.

I believe these are the three Rondavales, the third of which reminds me of a line from Naked Gun and Police Squad, and also salt silos on the side of the road.

We also went to God's window, but that wasn't very exciting and it was a bit hazy so no good photos. From there, we went to an adventure park! We spent an hour on ATVs, 4 wheelers, quads, whatever you want to call them, where I was, I kid you not, yelled at in the first 30 seconds on the back of one. They had us going around a little test track and I figured I might as well open it up. I'm immediately flagged and told "Yeah yeah, we get it, you can ride, now slow down". A little lame, but whatever. It was this screwing around that got me put in the very back of our little ATV caravan through the jungle where I had a delightful time. Also, it should be noted that this was no where near the "You're going to die" tongue lashing that the Evil Knieval Brothers got, too funny.

After the ATVs, we went and did a 450 meter zip line where as you're careening down it, you reach speeds of 60 mph. That was a lot of fun. There are pictures of both of these activities, but obviously not with my camera since I was busy doing them, and not documenting. Doing and documenting is a big challenge...one which Ethan was able to accomplish: he filmed the entire zipline, I'll link to that when it comes online so you can see what it was like.

Then (yes, it's only 4pm!) we headed over to Kruger for a night drive. I had anticipated that we'd be stopping at the hotel prior to heading out on the game drive and thus had all my "layers" in my bags and not on my body at this point. It was such a lovely day that I was cajoled into a false sense of warmth that I would very quickly lose as the game drive got underway.

For those of you who are curious, here's the vehicle that we did our night drive in:

So again, South Africa in the winter is freezing cold at night, most especially when you're driving along in an open air vehicle looking for large animals. What an amazing night it was though! In safari talk, there are what's known as the "Big Five", the five hardest animals to hunt, find, whatever. Seeing all five of them is quite an accomplishment; they are the Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino, and Buffalo. The most elusive, of course, are the cats, in particular the leopard. Our drive lasted three hours, during the course of which we saw Zebra, Buffalo, Hyena, Elephants, White Rhinos, Impala, Gazelle, and all sorts of little animals, but the most exciting was when we came upon another vehicle spotting into the woods and lo and behold we saw a Lioness! But not only that, we didn't just see her, she came right up to the vehicle, so close that we heard her breathing and making little noises! (She was actually trying to cross the road and our driver kept pulling the car in front of her so she couldn't cross)

Amazing animal, and so close you really could have reached out and lost a hand!

I also have a video of the lion encounter which I'll try and post later, what an incredible experience, in particular after so many hours of watching discovery channel and national geographic with my dad growing up, to finally see one in person in the wild. Wow!

Video:

I have pictures of the other animals, but the lion was the only one that we saw the first day and not the second during our day drive. I'm still getting the hang of low light photos, so instead of blurry zebra, buffalo and elephants, I'll leave you with two pictures of a South African sunset in Kruger Park.

And if you thought this day couldn't be topped, just wait til you see the photos from Saturday...Hippos, Giraffes, Crocodiles, and a Baby Elephant!

Swaziland

I have no recollection of the events that happened on Friday, so they must not have been too big of a deal. What I will tell you about is Swaziland. I've put off this blog for a little while simply because I wanted to edit some videos to supplement the blog. The first one is a short slide show with the first part of our trip:

The second one is the one I've been working on a bit longer, waiting for the pictures. After eating our lunch with the monkeys, we went to a cultural show that lasted about 45 minutes or so where the Swazi people sung and danced for us. The show was absolutely spectacular and I quite enjoyed the music, which made it a real challenge to get the footage down from about 25 minutes to 5 minutes. Stay tuned at the end for a little romance...

It was quite a day in Swaziland, and I'm sorry it took so long to post the videos.

We also went to tour the recreated village which was pretty cool, but the dancing was by far the best.

Innibos Part 2

So, where we, ah yes, Innibos. If this sentence seems odd to you, go ahead and read the post before this.

After the Rooster Anatomy, we walked around and hung out a bit at the festival. Imagine your typical county fair and then pick that fair up, put it into africa, and you've got Innibos. While it's true the stuff surrounding the music was much different than a typical fair, they still had the same "junk" vendors and glow sticks being sold all over the place. We saw a couple of bands perform. On the main stage, seen here:

Note: These Innibos photos all shamelessly stolen from Ethan's facebook page. The mainstage performances that we saw were this odd kind of audience involved Karoke Jukebox type thing. There was a list of songs on the jumbo screen that were going to be played and they polled people in the audience to determine which song would be up next and who would be playing it...or something like that. It was all in Afrikaans which I couldn't understand a bit of, so it was a bit of a guessing game as to what was happening. Either way, the music on the mainstage was terrible. Very much not my style...neat to see, got it, move on.

We also visited one of the smaller stages sponsored by some soap company, so there was text everywhere about germs being eliminated or some such nonsense. The fun part about this band, which was playing covers like every other band.

They did some cover of what is apparently a very popular song, which I'll pretend is called the same as the chorus: "Notty Nauauaughtchgh (sounds like a cough)-a-lighta". I couldn't help but laughing every time they sang the chorus, Afrikaans is a very interesting language. Other Afrikaans I know? Thank you is BuyADonkey, and Watermelon is Vartlemoon.

A view from above the stage in the back:

After watching the show for a bit, we then decided to go have some more food and watch a different band in the back of the house...

On the way there we (Ethan and myself) stopped for a Spitbraai Chips and Slaai, which is really a loose meat sandwich, fries, and a salad it turns out. It was served to us by this crusty old carnie who served it to us through a smokescreen and then told us that we should really try a "sauce" because it was "really quite nice on the meat". Worst mistake ever. Any ideas what this delicious "sauce" was? No? I'll wait...No? It was Mint Jelly. Never ever again do I want my meat to also be able to freshen my breath. It really ruined my Spitbraai, but hey, it's all about the experience right?

The band we saw was great except for the oddly white and charismatic singer whose music was so blatant about it's meaning that I had a bruise on my face after the concert from being hit with it so many times. I now begin the quest of trying to find out who this guy was singing...I'll update on how that impossible search goes later. I've just emailed the head of production for Innibos to find out this guy's name, now it becomes a quest.

Surprise Party and Innibos Part 1

It's been quite a while since I posted a blog entry, nearly a week, and a lot has happened in that week, so let me try and go over what's happened since then, day by day...(let's also pretend the work post didn't happen since things happened between that and Mozambique.)

Also, it should be noted that I didn't have my camera out at all during this past week, save for the weekend, so I'm going to try and pull photos that other people have taken.

June 30, Tuesday

I walked into the sunset manor this morning to start work and was informed by our wonderful hostess Nadine, that Chris's mom had called last night to wish him a happy birthday. She also let Nadine know that Chris is a bit shy about that kind of thing and didn't want anyone else to know, so of course Nadine immediately told me, and I told everyone else, and before long, we had our breakfast room completely decorated for a surprise party, cake, candles and everything.

Chris insisted on cooking for his birthday which he didn't realize we knew was his birthday. He made border patrol casserol, which was quite interesting, in particular trying to find the type of latin elements that go into it. Let's just say that salsa is a high end luxury here, and good luck with tortilla chips.

Chris was surprised let's say...but the man has definitely got a poker face:

See that clear look of surprise on his face?

And in this one, is that a hint of a grin? I think it is...

We then proceeded to play Taboo that night, which was one of the games that we picked up to do in the evenings (the other was pictionary). Playing taboo with people whose native language is not English is absolutely brilliant. We had an excellent time, and despite having only been together a week or two, we already had very personal clues which allowed us to surmount the language barrier. The highlight of the night, (and to be honest, I can't remember if it was this night or the other night we played taboo, so i'll just pretend it was this night)...wait, first real quick taboo primer for those of you that don't know. The goal of taboo is to get someone to guess the word that is a card. You have to describe the word to them, which could be a person, place thing, whatever. The trick is that there are five common words on the card associated with the clue that you're not allowed to say, hence the name of the game, taboo. So Mary, our dear Australian gets the clue "Artificial". Now, things you might think of to say for that one..."Blank Intelligence", "No Blank Flavors Added", "Not Real" etc, you get the idea. Instead, Mary says this:

"Insemination.......*pause*....Insemination"

We got that clue...but it took going through a lot of laughs and other clues to get that one right.

July 1, Wednesday

I don't remember this day, but I'm going to pretend this is the night that we went out looking for a Portuguese Restaurant called Amigos. We never found it, despite it's name being on all of these signs, no luck. The 10 of us walked around a strip mall for a good ten minutes looking for this place but to no avail. We eventually learned...or kind of learned, that it might have had its name changed to Who's Who.

This restaurant, which was probably recommended to us by the prior team, I can't recall, was delicious. The chef, who came out to visit us at our table and take us through the menu was vibrant to say the least. It was clear that the restaurant and the menu was the brain child of this eccentric fellow and it did not disappoint. I'm having a little trouble finding the menu online...a google search of "Who's Who Nelspruit" first returned a gay dating site...so maybe the owner has a profile out there somewhere. Anyways, here's a link to the restaurant. Live piano music, things on the menu like Avacado Tower with Biltong (wild game jerky), Giant Lamb Shanks, and my meal, the chef's special, some kind of gamey dear that I think was called Redbok. The best part about the whole thing was that it was only about $13 a plate for dishes that looked straight out of the food network. I think we'll definitely be going back.

July 2, Thursday

This is the day that we all went down to Innibos, or 13 of us went down to Innibos anyways. What's innibos you ask? Well, officially, it's a music/cultural festival for the town of Nelspruit that annually draws in close to 150,000 people (99% of them white by the way)...unofficially, it's a county fair with several nice stages. Now, we all know the best part about country fairs is the fare available for purchase, the Fair Fare, this being South Africa, we were in for a real treat. That treat was named Roosterkoek, pronounced, Rooster Cock, which was as delightful as it was to order and talk about as it was to eat.

Shamelessly stealing from another website, here's a picture:

I got my Rooster Cock with Jam on it, and man was it delicious. Well, turns out I have to go create some financal statements for a paint company tonight, so I'll continue with Innibos in my next post and hopefully be a little more diligent about posting here once I'm caught up.

Our Projects

Having just recently sent this blog to several co-workers, I thought it might be worthwhile to explain in more detail the nature of the projects that we're working on here. As I've mentioned, there are 14 IBMers here, and we're split up into 3 teams.

One of the teams is working with the Mpumalanga Parks and Tourism Agency, which is then subdivided into two sub-teams. One of these groups is working on a marketing strategy to better show the potential destinations both in Nelspruit and the neighboring countries, Mozambique (talk about a challenge), and Swaziland. Their research involves meeting with the tourism reps in each of the countries and in generla understanding the tourism strategy of each of the countries and why people would want to go there. The idea is that the Mpumalanga area is uniquely positioned as a gateway to these two countries, and capitalizing on that is key. The other piece of the MPTA team is working on air routes, in particular charter flights from countries in Europe and possibly Asia. This then becomes a question of building up the airport infrastructure and partnering with charter airlines and then ensuring that there is existing infrastructure in the city and tourism industry to support large groups, e.g. there may not be a single hotel that can hold a charter group of 100 europeans or something.

Our Second team is only three people and working with the Business Against Crime organization. My understanding is that this is an alliance of prominent business and business people in cooperation with the police forces and private security forces to combat crime. The private security firms are something unique to South Africa that we don't really have in the US. There are armed and unarmed guards not part of the police force everywhere here. Parking lots are guarded by men standing in them looking to protect your car. You pay them 3 or 4 rand, roughly 50 cents and they guarantee that your car won't be robbed while you're in the store. (No guarantee that if you don't pay them that their buddies don't come break into your car). The largest security firm here employes 35,000 people. Another example of a private security company is the guy that sits out in front of our hotel from 6pm to 6am. Sometimes he patrols the grounds, sometime he just sits in a chair at the entrance, sometimes he steals Ethan's backpack. (This was eventually recovered at the cost of the security guy's job (Why Malvin? Why?!?)). Anyways, these guys are working some kind of content delivery/text messaging system that is able to get information to tourist via mobile networks regarding safety tips and messages. For example, it could be location based, where you walk into a market area and you're reminded by your cellphone that purse stealings are a problem here and that you should double check that you're holding your purse securely.

Finally we come to our team of five people: Zach (India), Chris (US), Veronica aka Vero-chan (Uruguay), Carolina aka Caro-chan (Mexico/Columbia), and myself working for the Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency (MEGA). The five of us are further divided into two teams. The first team, Caro, Vero, and Zach are working with a local paint company called Cosmic Paint, doing essentially a consulting engagement. They've been tasked with improving the business and making it profitable through whatever strategies they can, be it marketing, supply chain improvement, operational improvements or who knows what. This paint company makes four colors of paint I'm told, Green, Terracotta, and White. The fourth color is a mystery that we're still trying to figure out. They drive out to the factory each day and work with the owners and employees to better their processes. I'm hoping to be able to go out there later this week to work with them on their finances which seem in desperate need of help. This leaves Chris and myself who are working on foreign investment into Mpumalanga. Chris is working on sizing the citrus industry and creating a market/business analysis in the hopes that by defining the environment and infrastructure that exists supporting the seed to feed citrus and all by products, that some overseas citrus company may look to enter the Southern African market through acquisition. My piece is different still in that I'm looking from a country basis, which countries are most likely to invest in South Africa, and again in particular in the province in which we're working.

To do this, we've come up with several criteria to be used for evaluating the other countries including detailed product import export analysis (their key products are citrus/agro, steel, coal, and avacados of all things). This certainly plays into a delightful excel spreadsheet which of course puts me in my environment and scoring the countries will be fun to do. The ultimate goal of this project will be to assign a score to each country representing the likelihood of foreign investement from that country into Mpumalanga. The MEGA team can then use this to better target their foreign investment roadshows to maximize their budget efficiency and hopefully bring in some big dollars.

So that's that, we are working down here, rest assured. It's just one of those things where you don't post about what you do in the office because you don't think that other people will find it interesting. And really, jumping off a cliff or economic import indicators, which do you think is more fun to write about? I know, I know, me too, I love economic data, but it doesn't photograph well, as you'll note there is not a single photo in this post.