Work

A lot of people ask me what sort of work I do here at Global Cycle Solutions.

Well, to be honest, my work changes constantly. Last week was really exciting because I was out in the field. This week was a bit less exciting because I was mostly based in the office. I had to do a bit of accounting. I sent out heaps of emails, some which proved to be dead ends, while others proved very fruitful (and in the long run, these communications are as crucial as the work I did in the field last week, if not more so).

I also visited a few NGOs and other offices around town to raise our profile. In general, we like to work with organizations that connect really well with Tanzanians. For most of those, when I go into the office, I don't meet an ex-patriate, but rather a Tanzanian. When they first see me, I know they are wondering what kind of foreigner I will turn out to be (maybe a lost tourist asking for directions, or an aid worker with little to no idea of realities on the ground, or maybe, just maybe, someone who might have something useful to say). At the start, speaking Kiswahili with them was difficult for me because I did sound choppy, and they would usually switch to English. I felt that I achieved a breakthrough this week, because when I was speaking with people, not only did they stay in Kiswahili the whole time, but they also spoke at their regular pace, rather than a deliberately slowed pace like most people do when we communicate with a non-native speaker. I was pretty proud and I felt that it reflected well on the company as well.

The hard part here is that unemployment is really high. People move in and out of jobs really quickly, since the ones who have skills are often poached by another organization. I've had that happen twice so far where I formed a relationship based on a personal interview, but follow-up emails led nowhere. Upon returning for another face-to-face meeting, I am told that my contact no longer works there. It's really startling in fact. And it certainly complicates doing business here.

The most important part of my work, though, is basically brainstorming. Coming up with coherent ideas on how we can best use our resources and figuring out how we can execute them. Right now, we are figuring out how we are going to get our machines into people's shops around Tanzania, and how we are going to get customers into those shops to buy the machines. It seems like a pretty straightforward scheme, but with the challenges of infrastructure here and our drive to keep overhead costs down, it is an exciting challenge.