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February 2, 2005

Maastricht to Maasai Mara, or, Tanned in Tanzania

Safari, in Swahili, means ‘journey.’ At the end of January we journeyed to Tanzania. MsM partners with ESAMI, the Eastern and Southern Africa Management Institute, to offer MBAs in the region. I came to act as examiner on master’s theses, and to preside over a graduation of 230 students from all countries in E & S Africa (except South Africa).

ESAMI is in Arusha, in the north central highlands on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Arusha’s 400,000 residents makes it Tanzania’s 3rd largest city! The country’s economy is shockingly small and anachronistic. There is one phone directory for the whole country; it's the size of a small-town directory in the U.S. Thirty-five million people, dam’ few phones.

So we get here late on a Sunday night. I go directly to work the next morning and hardly get outside the examination room for the next four days. Luckily it has a pleasant cross-breeze and a great view of Mt. Meru.

Meanwhile, Hyon gets intrepid, trotting off to find Africa. The first day, she made her way to a village partway up Mt. Meru and hung with the Maasai for the day. This was brave not only because of the strangeness of the country, but at five foot one, Hyon has really felt the fact that the Dutch are the second tallest people on Earth. Who’s the tallest? That’s right – the Maasai. Later, she organized our safari to Ngorongoro Crater National Park, negotiating a day trip for the two of us for $250 U.S. including lunch and admission to the park, which is a 3-hour drive from Arusha. Good job, Hyon! The trip would have been a bargain at double the price (and several other operators were eager to offer it at double the price).

I heard interesting Master’s presentations from Tanzanian, Ugandan, Kenyan and Malawian students, most of whom already have high positions in government ministries, parastatals, and NGOs. Remember Coming to America, where Eddie Murphy plays an African king who looks for true love in Brooklyn, hiding his identity and getting a job at a burger joint? One of his expat subjects recognizes him and grovels on the floor while Murphy urgently whispers, “Get up, don’t do that.” Well, at ESAMI, a former commanding general of the Ugandan Army enrolled as a student. A humble guy, he didn’t put his full history on his application, and nobody knew who he was until some other Ugandan students recognized him and started saluting him.

Julius Nyerere unified 125 tribes into the Tanzanian Republic by encouraging the use of Swahili. (This worked for everyone except the Maasai, who still speak only Maasai.) At ESAMI, any display of tribalism is discouraged; they are Tanzanians and Pan-Africans. This didn’t prevent families at the commencement from breaking into ethnic song and dance when their graduates were handed their diplomas!

Arusha

We give Arusha top raves as a vacation spot. Pack your sunscreen, malaria pills and DEET - and go! A profusion of birds, butterflies, flowers, rainbows, a sensual feast. (That’s even before you get to the many national parks nearby.) Brightly colored clothing on really lovely people.

A daily jumbo jet from Amsterdam serves Kilimanjaro airport, and KLM throws in the 40-minute shuttle ride into Arusha. To be sure, half the people stay on the jet for the last leg into Dar es Salaam, but that’s still a lot of tourists into Arusha. You can stay in Arusha and make day trips, or stay one night there before leaving on multi-day safaris. We enjoyed the Impala Hotel and its nearby restaurants, but there are ample 5-star places if you’re more inclined to luxury. Or you can stay on a coffee plantation. Or at the Mt. Meru Wildlife Sanctuary and Lodge, which is totally Isak Dinesen.

Mild weather year round (tho it’s equatorial, it’s high-altitude), scenery that can’t be beat, hot milk served with your coffee and tea, reserved but friendly people, good cheap food, fantastic ebony carvings and Maasai blankets to take home, lions tigers and bears, what more could you ask? OK, I’m lying about the tigers and bears, but read on….

Ngorongoro

If our driver Isack hadn’t been such a speed demon, I’d be inflicting even more roadside snapshots on you. We were lucky in many ways: it was just before rainy season, not high tourist season, a bit less rain than the usual January (global warming?), and more lions and rhinos than ordinarily make themselves evident.

The photos below can’t convey the sounds of Ngorongoro: an elephant ripping huge bunches of vegetation from the earth and stuffing them into his mouth; birdsong; cowbells on Maasai cattle (the name Ngorongoro comes from the sound the Maasai think the bells make); hoofbeats of zebra and wildebeest, thousands of flamingos taking off at once (“flutter” is too wimpy a word for it).

We saw lions, hyenas, baboons, vervet monkeys, wildebeest, cape buffalo, Thompson’s gazelles, Grant’s gazelles, zebra, giraffe, elephant, jackal, warthog, hippopotamus, black rhinoceros, eland, black mamba. Now, you can see these animals together at the Africa park in Waco, Texas, but they’re much more interesting in a natural ecosystem. All those species have inhabited the 20-km.-diameter Ngorongoro caldera since it cooled down enough for grass to grow, 1.2 million years ago. The Maasai can graze cattle there and safari vehicles are allowed on specified tracks, but that’s it for human intervention.

Many species of storks (if their numbers are any indicator, look for a baby boom soon in your town), black kite, vultures, crowned herons, cattle egrets (o’course), ibis, white and pink flamingo, ostrich, something that looked like a kingfisher but 10 times bigger than any kingfisher I’ve ever seen, and many smaller colorful birds. Plus multi-story ant condominiums.

All peaceful during our visit except for some dominance contests between wildebeest, and one attack on a tourist by a monkey who had entered her Land Cruiser looking for food. Tourist escaped with a scratched ankle.

Isack was knowledgeable about the local zoology and anthropology. His email is IsackMsuya@yahoo.com.

Arusha National Park

A different terrain from Ngorongoro, closer to Arusha, no lions but lots more giraffes. Plus we saw (on the mammal side) bushbuck, colobus monkey, red duiker, waterbuck, blue monkey, banded mongoose. And of the avian persuasion, superb starling (a species name but also an appropriate adjective), trumpet hornbill, tawny eagle, fish eagle, more flamingos.

On the road

The Maasai we met were gracious. If locals see them as haughty, though, it’s understandable. From the Maasai perspective (I have no informants on this matter, I’m just projecting), they still live in Eden while the rest of us poor schmucks struggle in less congenial environments. They have their perfect climate and soil, their spectacular scenery, the cattle that represent wealth in their culture, the fun of stealing even more cattle (sort of like the Dutch and their national sport of bicycle theft), and their strikingly beautiful vermilion-dyed blankets and clothing. I asked what plant that dye comes from, and was told the Maasai buy the blankets in the city! So I still don’t know about the dye. I did learn the Maasai like the red because they think it warns lions of their presence, thus avoiding unpleasant misunderstandings. Some Maasai do live hard lives, especially those in nearby desert environments, but they don’t want to change. Will they change? Seeing foreigners’ interest in the culture, the Tanzanian government is taking measures to preserve the Maasai way of life. The countervailing force is the missionaries, who never stop trying. According to Willy (our other driver), missionaries virtually kidnap Maasai girls into Christian schools.
As bad as that sounds, there’s something we have to appreciate in this present age when we value “social capital” as a source of innovation and economic development. Having traveled in Tanzania for one week, South Korea for 30 years, and other countries for middling periods, I have seen that the Protestant and Catholic churches provided social networking in times when no other organizations existed to do so. Despite abuses that can’t be ignored, this activity laid the groundwork for other agencies to effect further advances in local economies.
The Olduvai Gorge is hard by Ngorongoro, and there’s still heavy-duty paleontology going on.
Kilimanjaro came out of the clouds just one day. We didn’t mind, because it looks just like Mt. St. Helens anyway. The many secondary volcanic cones around the whole region look like those you see from I-5 near Eugene, Oregon.
The average cash income here is $30/month. Most people also grow food, raise chickens, and have enough to eat. It has been centuries since it was worthwhile in advanced countries for a teenager or adult to spend a day carrying water up a hill, but here it is still common. In a tourism economy, there’s no question that locals see you as a walking wallet. However, the friendliness seems genuine (as longtimers here confirm); there’s none of the thinly veiled hostility that one notices, for example, on some Caribbean islands. And though there’s the occasional mugging, the streets are probably safer than in Las Vegas, Baltimore or Honolulu. The gap between rich and poor here is vast, and by Western standards, crime would pay. In my estimation, the only things keeping the Tanzanian system stable are that the poor have not had the opportunity to learn to want more things, there's still the afterglow of having got rid of the colonial British, and urban populations are still small.
Other useful Swahili phrases:

o Jambo: Howdy [You also hear a lot of “Salaam aleikum.”]
o Asanti sana: Thank you
o Karibu: Welcome; you’re welcome; go ahead

Maastricht miscellany

All this travel is wonderful, it's what we wanted, but I can foresee the day when I'll want to go back to Texas and, as the old folkie put it, "nail my shoes to the kitchen floor, lace 'em up and bar the door." Meanwhile we'll enjoy Europe and travels beyond, and visits from our U.S. family and friends. Thanks, Samia, for spending the weekend with us last month!

In the spirit of soaking up Dutch culture, we sat in a local cannabistro for a half hour, drinking coffee and watching other people puff. Second-hand smoke? We didn't inhale. Not once in the whole half hour, no sir.

We pay the kids' college expenses in dollars. Every time the dollar loses ground against the Euro, we feel like I'm getting a raise in salary. On one occasion, though, we felt poorer. In September we ordered a new Toyota Prius from Maastricht's dealer and were put on a 4-month waiting list. In December he called and said, "Good news, surprise, your car will be here in ten days." "That's not good news," we replied. "Why not?" "We haven't yet earned enough Euros to pay for it," we explained, "and the Euro has appreciated from $1.20 to $1.35 since we ordered the car. If we have to convert dollars to pay for the car, it will cost 20% more than we expected, after exchange fees." Thus did we cancel the contract and buy a used Camry from the same dealer. A beautiful car, we're satisfied with it, and had it in time to travel with our kids during their semester break visit.

Feel free to share this blog's URL with anyone who might be interested. Ditto for the site for my last book The Conscious Manager, http://www.generalinformatics.com/CM/cm.html; my pages for corporate site selection managers and economic development officials http://www.generalinformatics.com/technopolistimes.html; and my company's home page (soon due for major repositioning), www.generalinformatics.com. Those interested in MBA and doctoral studies in management should look at http://www.msm.nl.

Photo section


Anna in front of the library at MsM's ancestor institution, the Technical University of Delft. The library is an architectural marvel.	Water-level view from one of Amsterdam's canals.

Gina inside TU-Delft's library.	Dutch boy Fred the day before he got a haircut.
Above: Skating at the Rijksmuseum. Right: Another canal-level view of Amsterdam. Below: With two faculty colleagues at the ESAMI commencement. I took off my black academic robes immediately after the ceremony. Not only did they look dull compared to my counterparts', but I had learned that locally, men dressed in black are candidates for circumcision. The faculty allowed that I was unlikely to be mistaken for a Maasai teenager, but still wise to forestall any dangerous confusion. Yes, the professor in the background is as Jamaican as he appears to be, but he has lived in Africa for decades. Below right: Hyon and me at Arusha National Park with Land Cruiser and Mt. Meru in background.

Ngorongoro Crater
The bar at ESAMI. Note the poster in Swahili. I hadn't known Swahili is written using Roman letters.


Hyon's pic from the W'arusha boma she visited.	This hippo does the backstroke.

Photo section: Seen in and around Maastricht:

A site to enjoy

I didn’t run into Colin Powell

Didn’t know we were that famous

So there I was in the Cairo Marriott, talking with some of the folks who had come to see the commencement. “Where were you before Maastricht?” one asked.

“Oh, OGI,” she said, “I heard half the computer science department moved downtown to Portland State.”

Turns out she’s a CS professor at U. of Illinois. Word does seem to get around.

That reminds me (if you’ll bear with me) of my favorite P.R. joke. The monkey and the lion didn’t like each other. One day, the monkey enters a clearing in the jungle, to find the lion kneeling to drink from the pond. With the lion’s derriere directly in front of him, the monkey sees the chance of a lifetime. He kicks the lion right in the buttocks, and the lion falls into the pond. The monkey runs off through the jungle; the lion pulls himself out of the water and gives chase. Finding a vacant hunters’ encampment, the winded monkey dons a pith helmet, sits on a camp chair, and hides behind a newspaper. The lion bursts into the camp, and asks, “Have you seen a monkey run through here?”

“You mean the monkey who kicked the lion in the butt by the pond?” the monkey replies, continuing to hide his face.

And get her to fund Portland startups?

Another member of the group was a British professor of diplomacy. On this anniversary of JFK’s death, he said, his colleagues had been speculating on how the world would be different if it had been Krushchev who had been shot instead. Only one thing, they concluded, was certain: Onassis would never have married Mrs. Krushchev.

Impressions

The Egyptians are hospitable and good-humored. The first thing many of them want to tell me about is the bureaucratic hells they’ve gone through trying to get visas to the US, getting through immigration once they do fly to America, or being deported due to some computer screwup. Though many have enjoyed visiting American sights and family in the past, they’re just giving up on US travel now.

Racial, gender and religious tolerance look exemplary, from my limited set of observations. The woman valedictorian quoted a Jewish scientist, fellow by the name of Einstein. A RITI staffer could not understand why forms in the US ask for “race.” Her colleagues are aware that other mid-east nations have little regard for the talents of women and certain ethnicities. The Egyptians call the people of those countries “jerks” in this regard.

They are well-informed about world cultures. When they asked me how many wives I have, they were teasing me, I think.

Shopping is a bargain here. Food is cheap and fairly interesting, though meats tend to be tough.

The Egypt Museum

Did you know the ancients mummified crocodiles and fish too? The museum’s 4-foot Nile perch, thousands of years old, looks like it was dried yesterday and dropped into the dust for a few hours.

The crowded (with people and exhibits) building is in crappy condition, and labeling of exhibits is haphazard. This means even the digital tours on CD can’t be very helpful, but it does enhance the incomes of the personal guides who solicit you at the entrance and probably make up their narrations out of thin air. Pardon my skepticism, but if you want to learn about ancient Egypt, you’ll do better at the University of Pennsylvania’s Egyptian Museum in Philadelphia.

Here, therefore, one can only appreciate the overwhelming volume of antiquities (on and on and on - 100,000 items on display) and their artistic quality. As for the latter, no one can use the phrase “for the era”; it would be great art in any age. As a devotee of Tewa pottery, I have to note one exception: when it comes to handmade red & black pottery, you will find much better stuff, better both in workmanship and artistic merit, in New Mexico. The Egyptians’ use of turquoise in decoration and jewelry makes the comparison to the US Southwest even more obvious.

Nice to see dozens of kids sitting on the museum floor, sketching on big pads, boys and girls intermixed, about half the girls in head scarves.

The museum made me wonder, how can one choose projects (in this lifetime, natch) that will be of interest and use to future generations? The ridiculous self-aggrandizement of the Pharoahs, embodied in their tomb-building, ironically led to the preservation of all this great art. (Did the artists suspect as much?) Our modern curiosity about how the pyramids were built, now answered via the discovery of incidental documents that show the construction technologies and financial details, was unanticipated by the ancients. Their preoccupation with where the world and the soul come from and where they go seems universal, but other things they seem to have cared about are totally outside the range of what we now consider important. Or so I infer from artifacts that must have been infused with meaning for them but are simply decorative today.

A colleague points out that we still don’t know the project management methods of the pyramid builders. Unlike the European cathedrals, whose construction continued for generations, an Egyptian tomb had to be started when a king assumed the throne, and completed by the date of his death. Unless they fudged the start or end dates somehow, the builders had a hell of a project management challenge. Completing one major pyramid of 2.3 million stone blocks within 30 years would require precisely placing one of the 2.5-ton blocks about every five minutes.

Rodenbeck (see "Re-globalization, below) says that challenge produced a bureaucracy that kept Egypt's technological civilization going for millennia. Our modern macroengineering challenge, the space program, has produced a NASA bureaucracy that is stultifying and costly - as Egypt's must have been also - but if we're patient, maybe the results will be similar.

Re-globalization

In his book Cairo: The City Victorious, Max Rodenbeck describes the state of globalization one thousand years ago, with Cairo at its center:

The bankers of 11th-century [Cairo] issued promissory notes and offered loans, as invoices and deeds from the [period] show…. Traders sold on credit. You could buy… on installment.

Under the laissez-faire rule of the Fatimids (969-1171)… [Cairo] became the major emporium of the Western world, [dealing in] mosquito nets from the Nile delta… silk from Muslim Spain and Sicily… Armenian carpets… Chinese porcelains… Koran stands of Indian teak, … Baltic amber, pearls from Muscat and rubies from Ceylon…. Paper, as yet unknown in Europe, [was] so cheap that… fruit sellers wrapped their goods in it.

The gold dinars minted in Fatimid Cairo made their way to the ends of the known world, becoming the standard currency of the age….

In the barrierless world of medieval Islam it was easy for foreign Muslims to set up shop in the Egyptian capital.… Commercial treaties with Ceylon, Venice, Florence and Genoa followed…

Ironic that I went to teach Egyptians about globalization; they are, or were, the masters.

Excerpts from the commencement speech

As we have seen in world events in the past two years, people educated in the tradition of Maastricht School of Management are more necessary than ever before. Culturally sensitive, tolerant and ethically and socially responsible managers can help build companies that are responsive to the needs of many stakeholders and society.

Lest you think that I am simply sharing platitudes on a happy occasion, I will take a few minutes to paint the picture in starker terms, and propose an action plan to you.

In 1992, Frances Fukuyama wrote a book called The End of History and the Last Man. In it, he theorized that while further regional conflicts are probably inevitable, the globalization of liberal democratic capitalism was “the final resting point of history.” Now, globalization means that all parts of the world are connected. I wonder whether Mr. Fukuyama was aware of something Marshall McLuhan said in 1962:

We shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed coexistence. . . . Terror is the normal state of any oral [connected] society, for in it, everything affects everything all the time.

Indeed, today’s unrest is greatest in parts of the world that have few extra resources to buffer the region against the tight connections of globalization. Fukuyama understood the complexities of his argument and the exceptions to it, but in light of the November 11 tragedy, we must conclude that the main thrust of his thesis was naïve.

Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became the first post-Soviet president of the Czech Republic, perceives that global technological civilization, though here to stay, is only a “thin veneer” over an unchanged human nature, over an “immense variety of cultures, of peoples, of religious worlds, of historical traditions and historically formed attitudes.” Havel goes on to note that

even as the veneer of world civilization expands… ancient traditions are reviving, different religions and cultures are awakening to new ways of being, seeking new room to exist… and to be granted a right to life… [and] a political expression.

At the same time, the Secretary General of the United Nations has made a plea to the international business community to embrace three principles that the UN has been pushing for many years: sustainable development, social development and human rights. At MSM, we have recognized this responsibility, and have broadened the curriculum to include corporate social responsibility and the ethical values and norms which are essential in the global economy of the 21st century.

Ultimately it is on the basis of these norms and values that trust relationships, which are so essential for business and commerce activities, will be built. It is also from these values and norms that international cooperation with our partners like RITI can be further developed and nurtured.

to start understanding itself as a multicultural and multipolar civilization, whose meaning lies not in undermining the individuality of different spheres of culture… but in allowing them to be more completely themselves.

This will only be possible, even conceivable, if we all accept a basic code of mutual co-existence… one that will enable us to go on living side by side….

Yet such a code won't stand a chance if it is merely the product of the few who then proceed to force it on the rest. It must be an expression of the authentic will of everyone, growing out of… our original spiritual and moral substance, which [in turn] grew out of the same essential experience of humanity.

McLuhan’s vision implies that terrorist bombers are somehow inevitable in a connected world – an integral expression of the nature of this world, rather than an external threat to it. Each of you is here tonight because you have chosen to tread the path of positive, constructive action. You will be leaders and teachers, and you must remind those who look up to you that each day, each of us decides as individuals whether to be part of the problem or part of the solution.

Havel asked whether his idea of a new, common creed was “hopelessly utopian.” As business students, you know that new products – and a new idea can be considered a new product – penetrate the market because there are “innovators” and “early adopters.” Thus, we may reply to Havel, it is utopian to expect everyone to accept a code of mutual co-existence all at once. At first, and at any stage, some people will, and some people won’t.

This month an American business education magazine offered four answers to this question. These answers are:

Social entrepreneurship. The best-known instance of this phenomenon is micro-loan programs, which provide both an ROI for the investor and sustenance for the needy. Even beyond those worthy results, however, these programs show young people that there are paths out of poverty that do not involve the taking up of arms.

Post-conflict planning studies. These efforts allow participants to form a positive vision in which their regional conflict is not unending, and in which desirable things will happen after the coming of the peace.

Affirmative inquiry. Guided discussion that focuses on the positive changes that can be made, rather than on blame and the negative aspects of current realities. Affirmative inquiry also involves building a classroom environment in which world political conflicts are not assumed to be “ongoing,” and in which students feel empowered to ask, “How can I make a difference?”

Personal relationships. Classroom projects, summer institutes, and entire new schools are built around joint efforts of students from both sides of a conflict. Worthy social entrepreneurship projects are often the result.

I will add that at MSM, we insist on mutual courtesy and respect among all the ethnicities represented at our school. This is not because we naively believe that commerce and trade are the common factors that will create peace in the world. Rather, we believe along with Vaclav Havel that displaying respect in this way is simply right - a central part of the code of co-existence that will allow us to survive and thrive.

I’ve heard of crowded planes, but this is ridiculous

On my Alitalia flight, the back of the seat tray advised, “Mantenete la cintura allacciata quando siete seduti.” If my Italian doesn’t fail me (and it always does), that means, “Keep reallocating the seatbelt when seven people are sitting here.”

Changed planes at Milano Malpensa (“badly thought-out”), actually a very beautiful airport, totally elegant.

Back in Maastricht

I got back in time for a small expatriates’ Thanksgiving party. Which makes me think about weight. Participating in aikido classes in Maastricht is more exercise than teaching them in Portland, so I’ve lost weight.

"After two months of biking and walking in your beautiful city," I told the shoemaker, "this doesn't fit me any more." He punched two more holes in my leather belt. When I reached for my wallet, he said, "It's on me. Enjoy Maastricht."

I like my new body, but what pisses me off is, before leaving Portland, I gave away some good suits that didn't fit me any more. Now they would probably fit :<( And the two new ones from the Meier & Frank sale are too big.

On the other hand, I can drink more of this good European beer without worrying about the waistline.


Onde Lieve Vrouw Basiliek	Typical example of Maastricht's old town squares

Does Buffy know about these?	Classy, huh?

Is it time to get down yet?	Good of Hugo to be so up-front about it.

The River Maas, downtown Maastricht	And farther afield: From St. Michael's Bridge, Ghent

Here's a free idea for you entrepreneurs. Keep the cranes busy...	...even on days when there's no construction going on (Munich) .

Nymphenburg Palace grounds, Munich

Fred & Hyon's Netherlands Adventure

Cont'd