Impact Masters Podcast
We focus on the tech ecosystem by creating and disseminating knowledge. We tell authentic stories, acknowledging and preserving history, embracing civilization, and encouraging technology and innovation. In all this, we point out the impact and the actionable points. At Impact Masters we are disrupting the status quo: Body, Mind, and Spirit.
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Impact Masters Podcast
#36 - Eng. Felix Kariuki
What if life isn't a race but a collaborative journey? Join us as we uncover the remarkable story of Engineer Felix Kariuki, whose path from Nairobi's Buruburu community to becoming a globally recognized electronics engineer demonstrates the power of community service and personal growth. Learn how Felix's early initiatives, driven by values instilled by his parents, paved the way for his impactful work today, inspiring countless others along the way.
In a thought-provoking discussion, we challenge the conventional belief that life's a competition. Drawing inspiration from the exceptional life of the late Miles Munroe and the innovative learning methods of Teddy, we explore how adopting a collaborative mindset can lead to personal and communal success. Felix's journey through Mangu High School, driven by healthy competition and supportive networks, offers valuable lessons on the symbiosis of academic excellence and personal development.
Finally, we delve into broader societal issues, from the challenges plaguing Kenya's higher education system to the critical importance of practical skills in today's job market. Felix shares insights on the detrimental effects of unqualified leadership and the empowering role of organizations like Rotary International. We also discuss women's empowerment, gender equality, and the philosophy of self-discipline. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom, collaboration, and a call to harness knowledge for the greater good.
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Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, it's a blessed day. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. This is yours truly, michael Kimathi and, if you want, mk, taking tech, ecosystem conversations, the impact masters, the legends themselves and the sons of Africa. This is Africa's talking podcast, in collaboration with impact masters podcasts, once again bringing you the movers and shakers in check, and today we are blessed to have one and only, not only the son of Africa, but a guy who has done it all and is making those moves to make sure that Africa is where it's supposed to be. I keep telling you, africa is blessed Skills, talents, intellectual and anything else that defines humanity. So today we have Felix Karioki. He's a guy who has a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering technology, a diploma in management of information systems, certificates in google project management, google analytics, google ux design, leadership and management, strategic innovation, six sigma black belt, qfd whatever that means.
Speaker 1:Professional member of engineering board of kenya. 15 years of experience in management and technical leadership, leading distributed cross-function teams in different time zones. Experience working with governments, academia, civil society, private sector in Africa, asia, the USA, canada and Europe. Co-creativity on designing and launching data toolkits and platform with Kenya as the pilot, confirmed with the constitution of Kenya and all laws relevant to devolution Processes. A data understanding of county development objective and vision 2030. A data-driven mindset with the ability to run experiments, measure and adapt. Proven track record of leading successful transformation projects. Experience using human-centered design principles to develop interventions in support of program objectives. Strategic thinker and result-oriented Whoa, whoa, and the list goes on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bachelor in Electronics Engineering Technology from the World College CIE, virginia Beach, virginia, in 2010. And actually is a well-accomplished person we have here. How are you, mr Felix? I'm good, it's not good to call you just Felix, but engineer Felix Kariyoki.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, it's a joy to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. It was interesting to listen to what you're saying concerning my resume. Sometimes you don't think about it, because the reason as to why we do what we do, especially having the mindset of wanting to develop people, is you study to make a difference, get knowledge, do something about it.
Speaker 1:What you do with the knowledge is the most important thing. Exactly Amazing stuff. Yes.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, here I will try to tell this because and I'll give you the context so when you look at Africa, the story is always told by the third party or fourth party and most of the time is when it's altered, truncated, to fit the bill of the teller. But we have chosen, as Impact Masters and Africa's Talking Podcast, to tell the way it is. And one of the most important thing is to know who is Felix, not from the portfolio, the resume, but where did Felix start? Where was he born? How was his growing up? How did he go to the US and all these other places? And we will take it chronologically and we'll get to the main, main issue here.
Speaker 3:Okay, Just a brief on me. Born in Nairobi, raised in Nairobi, I was born in a community that was close-knit. This was a Buruburu community, and this is where. I met Mr Teddy. Waria. We I was born in a community that was close-knit. This was a Buruburu community, and this is where I met Mr Teddy Waria. We went to the same school with him, who's pretty much instrumental with Africa's Talking? That is Lenana. No, this was primary school, okay.
Speaker 1:Yes, which one?
Speaker 3:was that this is Buruburu primary school. This is in Eastlands. This is when Buruburu used to be called Buruburu. Now it's kind of called something else.
Speaker 1:But I love it.
Speaker 3:I love the place. We were so close-knit that's the objective of it. We knew each other pretty well and in that community it was more like you care for your brother.
Speaker 3:You lift each other up, and it was in that community that I was able to identify with the needs of the community. I used to go to a church. It used to be called Nairobi Calvary Temple, gck, and so what I used to do is after school, when you're closing school, I used to gather people from different churches in that community and then we do what we call environmental cleanup.
Speaker 3:This was way before we started seeing Nairobi cleanup days and all that. It was more like what my parents had instilled in me Always care about the next person next to you, always care about your environment. The mindset they put inside of me is whatever knowledge you have, no matter how small it is, it has value somewhere else. I may not have looked myself to have a political position I was still a kid growing up but I knew I can live in a better environment.
Speaker 3:I knew some things were not right. My dad used to work for Nairobi City Council back then. And so these are some of the things the tenets he kind of instilled inside of me that you know what. The person next to you matters a lot and the person next to you is your best safe mode, anything happens. That's the person you run to Be the change you seek. That's the point. So when I saw environment was kind of getting not too good of what it was, so I used to gather kids during the holiday.
Speaker 3:I'd go to barber shops. Tell my friends, you know this is what I'm planning on a certain day. I go to now the chief office. I go to the Nairobi City Council. I tell them on a certain day we need to do a cleanup. Can you guys give us the tools? At what age? This was still in primary, I think class seven there, class seven, class eight. So I can say the church did play a role in that. There's no question about it in terms of faith.
Speaker 3:Because, you know, the church has this thing of telling you to be responsible. So that also goes down to my parents, still the same, because I used to get a beating if I tried to skip church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I guess it was a good thing. From who? The mom or the dad?
Speaker 3:That was my mom. My dad was more like you know he'd laugh about it but my mom was more the. She was the disciplinary person.
Speaker 4:So you had to toe the line. I see yes, so she says Sunday's church.
Speaker 1:just know you're going, Whether you like it or not going, and it's something that is very interesting because if you look at the way people are brought up right now, is that disciplining children is discouraged at all costs. What do you think that is doing to our future generation? It's messing it up.
Speaker 3:To be honest with you, the reason I say it's messing it up. Even the good book says that you spare the road, you spoil the child. There's no doubt about it. And it says that a road drives away foolishness from a child. What I mean by this is no child is born knowing anything, literally. So whatever you define for them is what becomes the normal to them. And if you fail to define to them as you know it, good or better, somebody else will define it for them. So, which means if you don't give them the discipline that is required because there's a reason as to why a family is in existence- yeah.
Speaker 3:A family is a core knowledge base of everything.
Speaker 1:The parents are key to that. That's the first school.
Speaker 3:That's the first school. That's everything In fact. If you look at kids who excel in life, they always from family setup what they learned, what inspired them and what they wanted of that family. That's always the drive in their life. Maybe daddy was never available, maybe mommy was never available. So when they grow up they want to be there for their kids because they know how bad it was not to have somebody to hold your hand. They know the mistakes they made. They could have not made them. So the family is critical in terms of putting discipline in a child.
Speaker 1:There's no doubt about it, for sure.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:So you grew up and you get to class eight, right? Yes. So did you perform well? How was that?
Speaker 3:I had people like Ted Urea to make sure I perform well. They always kept tabs on me literally.
Speaker 3:I also had my parents, because my mom used to ask me a question how many people repeated in your class? I'd say maybe three. Four came down to our class repeating and all Do you know. These are the guys who are going to knock you out. So I was always pushed to be number one, so that was my motivation. So I did hold that position for quite a while. If I did lose that position I'd fall number two and that's in the whole stream. Were you guys in the same class? Teddy Uria, for a while he was in a different class. But you know, when they categorize you they give you a stream According to the total number of students in that entire stream what position you are so always held.
Speaker 3:As far as number one was concerned, that was my seat that was mine, so I knew if I sleep a little people like Ted Uria would give me a good lashing Like boss. You know we also exist right.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you a controversial question Do you think life is competitive or collaborative?
Speaker 3:Now, that's the challenge, now. The reason I say it's a challenge is it ought to be collaborative, not competitive. The only person you should compete with is yourself. The reason I say so. I can give another good example. There's a guy called the former late Miles Mundro. He did well in school.
Speaker 3:This was back in Bahamas. You know, that's where he kind of grew up. So he'd come back home with high scores. High scores mean that he's leading in his class, and so mom would be like his mom. That is what was the percentage you got. It'd be like 67. And it'd be like um, is that what makes you happy, that you had 67? How come you didn't have 100? Yeah, so the point of the story being told was you should always compete against yourself which means if 67 is not your best, you still have not achieved.
Speaker 3:If 100 is your best, then you have achieved. So the measurement should not be the, the person next to you uh, the measurement should be you yourself and the competitiveness of our system, whereby you're trying to compete with somebody else or defeat somebody else should not be the motivation.
Speaker 3:The motivation should be what can you learn from the person next to you? Absolutely, because if it wasn't for people like Teddy O'Reilly, I wouldn't have loved geography, because he always talked about geography, so I was intrigued on this guy. His English was also extremely. In fact, all my compositions were based on what he knew. So before writing my compositions I'd make sure I have some minutes with him, kind of get a few vocabularies from him, because he was a reader. Okay, he was a reader and I wasn't so much of a reader like Norbert still is right, yeah. So he made my English better to be honest.
Speaker 3:He kind of told me you know there's more to English than what you're learning in school. And the thing about him is he always functioned outside the box. He didn't stick to the curriculum. So he would ask teachers questions and teachers would be like that's not in the curriculum. Because what I saw in him was knowledge. What I saw in him was a deep understanding, a deep appreciation to life than just A, b, c, d or getting these points or that.
Speaker 3:There's a deeper richness, as in whatever you learn in school has, and that's what made me start kind of becoming active in the society to see beyond the measurements of a school curriculum, to see beyond that. And I remember I used to have talks like this was still in primary school We'd have talks on American politics.
Speaker 1:We were kids in primary school. We were talking if Bill Clinton, who was the president? Then Bill Clinton, right, exactly.
Speaker 3:That was the time. Yeah, we'd ask kind of debate during and this is break time, when guys are playing soccer so he'd be like I mean this was good. So we kind of toast up on that. Bill Clinton, he should win, he should not win. This is the reason behind it. American is like this, this. So we knew much more than just our immediate environment and that was important, because that's what makes you who you are as a person when you have a perspective that's not just local but it's global, and that way, even the solutions that you're creating, you are as a person when you have a perspective that's not just local but it's global, and that way even the solutions that you're creating, you'll find a way to be able to scale them to better other communities, not just your own community, I see, and that's important and that's where collaboration is kind of comes out.
Speaker 3:You know, in terms of emphasis, that these talks kind of made you, and that's important. I lived in the US for quite a while and there was a challenge in that community. The challenge was I'd meet people who didn't know where Africa is, if Africa is a country or it's a continent. Most of the people I met at that time would think Mandela was the president of Africa, which was a sad story. They didn't know all these small communities, all these small countries. They saw us as just one country, engineer.
Speaker 1:It's a sad story. We're jumping the gun, gotcha. Let's take one step at a time.
Speaker 3:Yes, all right Okay.
Speaker 1:So you finish your primary school, you do well. Of course, you are a top student, right.
Speaker 3:Yes, at that time.
Speaker 1:So which school do you join? I went to Mangu High School. Mangu, yes, and the chief goes to Lenana.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Did that affect your grammar, your vocabulary? All these lessons.
Speaker 3:I was kind of hoping we would go to the same school Because he had been my measurements in terms of pushing me. You know what I mean. But he went to Lenana. So going to Mangmu High School was now meet new friends. Now what happened in this case is I met somebody else who I knew while I was still in primary school, and him he was in Harambe. My competitiveness in primary school I used to kind of in fact I learned also this from Teddy Uria, just to be honest. He kind of opened my mind to know other schools other than just Buruburu primary school. So we had Nairobi River. He knew people in Nairobi River. I didn't know them. So I was like, okay, I need to get to know these people too. So I'd know all the top performers in all the schools surrounding our school and one of the schools was Harambe Primary School and in Harambe. Guess who was the top student in Harambe all this time?
Speaker 3:I have no idea Captain Ronald Karori.
Speaker 1:The chief for the sport person.
Speaker 3:Yes, he was one who was leading at that time in Harambee Primary School. I kind of had known of him through associations, relatives, because he lived in Buruburu, but in terms of me knowing him as a student now that's when I started discovering ah, so you're in Harambee Primary School. So his performance was kind of a little bit better than mine.
Speaker 4:By a few points. You sound too competitive by a few points.
Speaker 3:Okay, I see.
Speaker 3:So when I landed in Mangu High School I was like, ah, I'm in also familiar territory, yeah yeah, I can see, people I know, I see, and so now this became, now I have some competition, somebody to kind of push me ahead. Eh, yes, yes, because you see, the thing is competition. Healthy competition is when you see others are stretching themselves to the best of themselves, and that's what makes you want to stretch yourself to the best of yourself. Yes, yes, and in fact in Mangu High School that's where this was also kind of emphasized on collaborative work, teamwork In terms of, well, you're kind of good in this, kind of good in this. Why don't we spend some time together? You kind of tell me what you, you know, kind of tell me what you, you know, kind of give me the strengths, because this is my weak points too. So I learned a lot of collaboration also in that school, a lot of it.
Speaker 1:So were you monolized in Mungu.
Speaker 3:No, actually I think they were scared of me. To be honest, were you? That scary, I was tall.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've ever. My height was still the same, which was 6'1", so I was kind of still tall In.
Speaker 3:Oh, I see, so I was kind of still tall. In fact. I became a prefect when I was still in form two which was from one going to form two.
Speaker 1:So you were tall and skinny or tall and buffed up. No, tall and skinny.
Speaker 3:Okay, and I think it's the attitude of where you come from. They kind of shook people up a little bit. I came from Buruburu and so if you're coming from Buruburu and the thing, it was a thing then, so which means? Uh, you kind of don't uh play around with them. You know what I mean. You kind of don't um mess up around with them.
Speaker 1:It's like d right now.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, yeah, coach, that's it, that's it there's that, um, you know, yeah, perspective of buruburu. So bringing from buruburu, I found from twos, from buruburu from threes. So there was that thing of people now kind of ah, you're from my hometown.
Speaker 1:You're from my place and also you used to mobilize some of those guys you mobilize. That's my point.
Speaker 3:So all these things were working back for my good. You see what I mean, because when I stepped there, I wasn't in fact day one. I felt like I knew the place. I was that comfortable.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like your network actually played a role for you on that particular point.
Speaker 3:It's like it's prepared the ground for me. Yeah, because all the places I used to go to mobilize were the same places and the same people that I found in high school. So I'd find people in form two, people in form three, In fact even some few people in form four who knew me even before I stepped there. So there was that kind of protection mechanism. We are from the same neighborhood.
Speaker 1:So leave this kid alone. This is my brother, this is my buddy right here. So, yeah, it was. Uh, it was that good. So are you? Were you this kind of guy who loved sciences from the word god? How was that high school experience that you could become an engineer? You are right now. What? What shaped that?
Speaker 3:um, what shaped it? Um, as I said, when he came to primary school, teddy Uriah was good in sciences. He had a book called Abbot. Abbot was a physics book, so I'd never seen such a book and it was kind of thick. And this guy we're in primary school and he's talking about Abbot, a book being used in high school. So I was like the thing about Teddy Uriah what kind of helped him a lot is he had big brothers ahead of him. So I take that advantage to my advantage too, in such a way that whatever he knew his brothers knew. I also wanted to know.
Speaker 3:Now, the thing about me is I'm always knowledge hungry. I'm always hungry to know, to understand and to kind of put pieces together. So going to high school was more like just an emphasis of what was set as a foundation back in primary school. So in high school it was a toss-up. Biology, you know, everything's been broken down. Physics has been broken down, chemistry has been broken down, biology has been broken down. So it was now kind of emphasizing on each and every single discipline.
Speaker 3:So this was kind of tricky to me because, you know, in primary school everything is kind of put in the same box. But now. This time everything has been put in small, small pieces, so now I could understand what was set as a base for me back in primary school. Things like I bought physics books. Now they started making sense to me. In high school, now I did find some subjects of interest, and some of them were like French speaking, and so I started delving so much into french because this was new to me. As I said initially, I prefer learning something new, and so it's gone yeah, it was a joy.
Speaker 3:It was a joy back then. Um, so on the sciences, uh physics, became of an interest because of the base that had been set. Uh, chemistry was new to me, uh, which means I had to learn the loops. And then there's also biology. Aspect of biology was kind of also new to me and I knew if I was to focus on biology I'd have to think medicine, and if I was to focus on chemistry I was thinking of more like, you know, seated somewhere in a lab, you know, doing all this for the rest of my life. So physics became more appealing to me.
Speaker 3:It seems to be more practical, something I can put my hands on and do something about something else, to make something better so yeah so, although eventually I did do all the sciences for my finals, uh, that is, I did physics, I did chemistry and I did biology and I did passing all of them, so, um it was, um, it was, uh, it was more like a discovery session back in high school. What are your strong points? Uh, what do you want to do? We did have studies. It's mangu high school. What are your strong points? What do you want to do? We did have studies. It's Mangu High School. Everybody knows Mangu High School is all about aviation.
Speaker 3:It's all about flying planes, so I did delve the first two years into aviation technology.
Speaker 1:Wait a minute. You said Mangu is about flying planes, the thought people have about it. Are there so many pilots from Mangu, or what does that mean? What happens is.
Speaker 3:Mangu was the first high school for students to be taught aviation technology. I see, and the history of it goes back to those that need to be able to teach students. Remember Mangu, the history of it it was a Catholic school. It's still a Catholic school, oh, okay. It was started by fathers, and so what happened is they had this desire to be able to teach handy skills what you call TVET now to people who are still in high school.
Speaker 3:And so they started teaching on radio. So radios started being and this was the only school, the only high school doing that back then. So there was one father who decided to take it a notch higher, so they started teaching aviation. Yeah from that level, from that level in high school. So aviation became a subject and it became the first high school to teach aviation, pretty much in Africa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the history of it.
Speaker 1:Okay, I see Actually that's interesting, because do they still do so? Yes, they still do so.
Speaker 3:They still do so and, in fact, most of the people who fly the jets from Kenya Airways. That is the national pride all the way to the military. We find a majority of them, especially in the senior positions, are from Mango.
Speaker 1:High School. That's new knowledge actually I'm getting from you.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:And does it mean that they collaborate with Wilson Airport, jkia and all that?
Speaker 3:Yes, they do. That's where students do most of their practicals, so we'd go to Wilson for hands-on. Even though we had a plane we still have a plane in Mangu High School On the ground. On the ground.
Speaker 1:Come on.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:I've never seen it. That's my route to my rural areas. Where is it hidden?
Speaker 3:It's behind, it's next to the workshops. Next time you're going home, let's go together, because I'm part of that committee that is in charge of that.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yes, I still work with the board. Do they have a hangar or airstrip? How does it work?
Speaker 3:It is a hangar. It's open now and they're building to have an airstrip soon. It's in the works, it's in the progress. This was supposed to have been achieved Before the current government. An airstrip soon. It's in the works, it's in the progress. This was supposed to have been achieved before the current government. Plans are already in place. Everything. In fact, we have a stripped down plane that's coming, a new one which will soon be unveiled.
Speaker 1:I feel like I should join Mango as much as beyond the age of joining high school. That's so cool. I've never known about this, and actually that's why these conversations are very important, because I remember, when we were choosing the schools, that you should go once you pass the exam. Mung was one of them, and it was not interesting to me. Because, all the facts were not presented to me the most popular ones and familiar ones was Alliance Lenana.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think there was Moika Brack there. There was Kamusinga Friends, you know this. Maseno wasn't anywhere near. I think Maseno came up afterwards.
Speaker 3:After it came after yeah.
Speaker 1:So Alliance has always been there, like everyone knows.
Speaker 3:Alliance you know what?
Speaker 1:you get there is top notch, exactly, and it's good that you have brought this up. I know mango is also one of the best uh, you know schools to to join yes but it's good also our listeners know about this fact about aviation, yes and uh. In case maybe interested is the best place to go. There are mentors like you and others who like karaoke. You said karaoke right right, so they can actually ride on that from the high school level. Exactly so you joined the aviation, or what do you do? You just do physics.
Speaker 3:What happened is you're given, you choose the practicals. We call it technical skills. There was electrical, there was metal work. I remember there was woodwork.
Speaker 1:Metal work is where you just do the welding stuff work. I remember there was woodwork Metal work is where you just do the welding stuff.
Speaker 3:Yes, I remember. And then there was aviation technology. So from Form 1, I chose aviation technology, and then for the first two years you kind of decide whether you want to do your final examinations Because, remember, these are examinable in the final examination at Form 4. And so, once you get a good sense of where your strength is, if this is still something in line with what you'd like to do after, you kind of take it until Form 4. As an elective. As an elective, yeah.
Speaker 3:So what happened is I did aviation first year, second year and then I kind of started thinking do I really want to do aviation after high? School. Reason as to why I limited myself was because I was thinking of the expenses that come after, because aviation, if you take it at the college level, it's not cheap. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:And I do want to put this, and that's the time you guys used to go to South Africa. I don't know if they still go there, but I remember guys who joined campus actually especially J-Quart, if.
Speaker 3:I'm not wrong.
Speaker 1:I don't know if this process is there with the KQ. They could select a few guys who could join them to be pilots, take it down to South Africa. I don't know if it's fully paid or partially paid, whichever it is, which means it was a very expensive affair. If this was something that I think the KQ took up, I hope those programs are there. I hope so.
Speaker 3:They're still there and they're working. That's how people like Ronald were able to go back to it eventually. Ronald, as he had said previously, is that he wanted to do when he was thinking about doing now the engineering aspect of it, because you're taught everything in high school. High school, you learn from the bolts to the nuts of the plane. Literally every single unit of a plane. You know it like the back of your hands.
Speaker 3:You know all the kind of screws, all the kind of bolts. You know everything about tension, every single aspect of engineering of a plane. You know it in high school. So, this pushes you to do engineering at the college level, because we still don't teach that aspect of aeronautical engineering at the university level so, which means you transfer to an engineering degree.
Speaker 3:And in his case you know he's talked about it a number of times that when he saw what engineering was doing, that wasn't the flying of the planes he thought about. So he kind of fell back to piloting, because in high school you're taught the whole program. Now flying a plane comes maybe the third or fourth year. That's now you start learning aerodynamics and all that good stuff, how to keep the plane on the air and all that.
Speaker 3:And that's when you start going for your practicals at Wilson. That's when now you start getting into a cockpit, the actual one, that you can easily crash a plane if you don't do things right, you don't have those simulations.
Speaker 1:We didn't have simulations back then. Now they're in existence Because of software technology.
Speaker 3:Exactly so. Technology has helped a lot. Now you don't actually need I mean, you're just crashing the simulation.
Speaker 1:I can only imagine if you are not so good and then things happen on there. So you have to experience it practically Exactly, and do you think CBC actually is playing a role in ensuring that people are getting more tangible practical skills and also discovering what someone is good at and what they're not good at?
Speaker 3:CBC. It's commendable.
Speaker 1:It's commendable.
Speaker 3:The reason I say it's commendable remember I spent some time in the US, in the state called Arkansas, in a city called Leroy, and as part of the Leroy Regional Chamber they have a department called Workforce Development Department. And as part of the Liroc Regional Chamber they have a department called Workforce Development Department. I was part of a committee in this department that was involved in revamping the curriculum for the high school students. What this meant is there was a need to focus on what kind of skills high schoolers are getting In such a way, once they're done with high school, they can either jump into the job market or it can be a preparation to further that knowledge into the college level. And so what we did and remember this we're talking about just maybe three or four years ago this happened, I see and so in.
Speaker 3:In cognizant of these is that they are a fast world country I see, and they saw there was a need to be able to kind of push students back to practical skills which can be of value after high school in terms of job-wise to meet the workforce need in that society. Because, fourth, industrialization is happening fast and you're finding that the curriculum is kind of being left behind in terms of and what is fourth, industrialization. We're talking of the technology aspect of it.
Speaker 1:We're talking of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3:We're talking about programming, coding. We're talking of the technology aspect of it. We're talking of artificial intelligence. We're talking about programming, coding. We're talking about machine learning. We're talking about all these aspects that are right now taking charge in terms of automation, because automation is key towards the future we're looking at, and for that to be in existence, then all these skills need to be taught at an earlier age. That's why you find that, for example, in China, you see, kids have still started learning Before now. It became more like a common thing. In other countries, kids were learning this from the time they were still in nursery, kindergarten. They're being taught this.
Speaker 3:Now there's a need for that pretty much committee to be able to revamp the high school, et cetera, because they noticed that, yes, little Rock is growing, but we are lacking the skills within our own city from our own students to meet the market need, and so we are having to kind of attract people from outside to be able to offer the skills here, the immigrants.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 3:And that's where now you see that, uh, people basically who are in those skill sets are usually not from that country. Uh and um, so there's that issue of now. We need to skill the people locally in such a way they're not left behind yeah aliroc is a growing city. It's not as um, it's not as uh as how can you see?
Speaker 3:it's not as developed as california atlanta in fact I remember very well when I went to the us, um, anybody who came from kenya, from developed as California, atlanta, in fact I remember very well, when I went to the US, anybody who came from Kenya or from Africa. Wait a minute engineer.
Speaker 1:Yes, so once you finished your high school, that's when you went to US, or how did this work?
Speaker 3:What happened is I went first to Strathmore after high school.
Speaker 1:Between Strathmore for diploma or degree Diploma. At that time we had for a diploma or degree.
Speaker 3:It was diploma, Okay, it was at that time we had something called IDPM.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 3:And this was what now became MIS Management of Information Systems and so there was a program that was teaching kind of you know, introducing us into that aspect of technology, and that's what IDPM was all about. This is the time when the time during the gap year or, yes, just during that one gap year before you're called to to college? Yeah, because eventually I did get called to more university, but by then I had received a letter and a scholarship to go to the university of arkansas at that time yeah, so so, uh, I spent some time, and that's where now I I made my first computer this is what you call windows.
Speaker 1:let me ask you, because a lot, lot of people actually fall into this dilemma when they get the scholarship to join maybe Harvard, mit and all these other places and they have been invited in the local universities. So how was that decision for you? Did your experience influence that? Were there mentors who told you you know what More universities are good universities, but you know if you're in the US, there are more opportunities. How was that decision making for you?
Speaker 3:For me it was easy. The reason I say it was easy it's because, at that time that period of time. Looking back, there was this tendency of everybody is getting out of the country. I see Everybody country I see everybody. The reason I say almost everybody, it's I can give a good story about this one. Uh, there's a friend, somebody joined me we went to high school together. Uh, having gone to high school together, um, I went to the us he comes, he follows. He asked me can you see which schools I can also join?
Speaker 3:so he comes he joins me, yeah and then, uh, when he joins me, there happens to be somebody else from his neighbor who, still in Buruburu, who had a get-together More like his birthday. So he tells me do you remember this guy back in Buruburu? Well, he's having a birthday. So why don't we? Because he knows I'm here and he wanted me to go, and he doesn't know you're here, but we can go. So we go to his place. This was in houston, so going to houston. As soon as I opened the door, everybody in that room, I knew literally, and there were more than 30 people from kenya in that room.
Speaker 3:This is already in us already in us, so what I'm trying to tell to you what I'm trying to say. There's this period whereby everybody after high school wanted to leave the country. Yeah, and the reason this was happening, it's because there was a lot of strikes taking place in our local university.
Speaker 3:And so there was this aspect of if I joined the university, how long will I take before I finish. There was that aspect of will I truly learn anything? There's a period there was too many strikes in our local universities. So when this opportunity presented itself to me, it was it's no thinker, no brainer. Best thing is to go, because why am I sticking around here? And by the way.
Speaker 1:It's very sad even now that most of our universities are broke. Yes, you're aware of that right.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Which is not good because, you know, education forms the economic aspect, the political aspect, yes, even the growth in terms of human knowledge capacity. And when I see these every day, I'm so discouraged because of one thing is that we are hurting where we can't recover, because if our higher learning, education, are not working, that means our capacity to build anything else becomes dependent on other nations, and this means we hold someone something, and I don't think anyone, either on a personal capacity or country capacity, want to be always holding someone something. I'm not saying that you should not hold someone, but it should be more of a symbiotic kind of relationship as opposed to where it's one-sided kind of you know, you owe me always, you owe me, yes, and you put yourself in a position where you can't make certain strategic decisions and with your knowledge, maybe even being out there, and you know, even making that decision to go abroad for the further studies, for sure.
Speaker 1:what do you think is going on here, that universities oh, you hear more universities broke?
Speaker 3:They're almost closing.
Speaker 1:Now I hear universities operating at deficit for a long time.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's KU, which is now even. It doesn't have enough money. Yes, yes, their land is being given out. There are all these issues going on with our higher learning education. Yes, then there's a private sector that has cropped into higher learning education, which brings up standard kind of education. So there is all these debates. I'm not saying that private people should not invest in higher learning education. All I'm saying is that we should operate at a certain standard so that, regardless of which you decide to join you, are okay Coming back to that question.
Speaker 3:You are okay. Yes, yeah, Coming back to that question. It's interesting the reason I say it's interesting. I want you to look at every single major city in the US. Every single major city. They're all built around a university. Every single major city, they're built around a university.
Speaker 3:Implication of this is the universities control the government governance aspect social, environmental, every economic sector, everything pertaining to the existence of that town, is based on a university. Implication is they guide the policies. Implication is they guide the policies. Implication is they draw the frameworks of engagement in that society. When I joined the University of Arkansas at Leroy, I started working in a department called Institute of Government.
Speaker 3:They did all the data collection aspect pertaining to every form of governance in that state, for the purpose of knowing what the sense is on the ground, what the citizens want, what hasn't been addressed. Yeah, and we did this at the micro level. Micro level means I need to know how tall is your grass outside your house, I see. So every single policy, from the minuteness of it, was guided, advised by a university. Yeah. Any policy, be it medical, we'd query each and every single institute. Yeah. Be it the health sector. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Whatever it is the games and fish commission, which pretty much is a tourism sector. Also the recreation we would question that there was a whole department office. And Fish Commission, which pretty much is a tourism sector. Also the recreation we would question that there was a whole department office that was financed for that Implication is the research that takes place in these universities doesn't take place in our own local universities.
Speaker 1:It's actually externally influenced. Yes. And so many may have done my higher education locally. Yes, fully yes and one thing that I've seen, because after my university or during my university, we were involved in these projects actually research and all that yes yes and um.
Speaker 1:the one that I remember vividly is one that we carried about smart cities, okay. So when you design roads, yes, uh, what comes into mind and I think this is very big, because I was so surprised that this was implemented in India, in the US, elsewhere, and this research was carried out here so, when you are designing a road just to give people, the context is that you need to think about cyclists.
Speaker 1:You need to think about the motorbikes, you need to think about the pedestrians, you also need to think about the sizes of the cars that are passing through that road. So, by the time you are presenting the feasibility study for the project to go on or not, already all these things are accounted for. What do we see?
Speaker 1:again and again, 90% of our road, or maybe even 99% of our road, they only think about the vehicles and even while they do so, they don't actually implement capacity and load of each vehicle that passes there, exactly, which brings us to, uh, you know, recurrent expenditure of, you know, rebuilding roads yes, but also again, the accident aspect of roads is not taken care of, so what you're saying actually is very, very important, yes, that if we don't invest in our research and development and put this money or resources that are required in the university to carry out our local you know because even engineering.
Speaker 1:You are part of the engineering board in Kenya. You see engineers saying that they can't do engineering anymore because where are you going to work? You do engineering and then you're working as a mtuwa mkono or I don't know what they're called in English.
Speaker 3:It's the same thing For these.
Speaker 1:Chinese or Japanese or whoever is building the road I got you. So how do we get ourselves in that kind of quagmire?
Speaker 3:It's easy, it's easy. It all boils down to good governance. There's no question about it. Yeah. I give you a good story. Yeah, this is. I won't mention the county, please, but there's a county right now which, from the last government, the last 10 years, you find the person who's heading the engineers is a person who did carpentry. Now I'm curious to know which company is that? Sorry, I won't get into details, but I'm telling the truth.
Speaker 1:A carpenter is heading the engineering department.
Speaker 3:He's heading all the engineers. His skills, his appointment was based by who you know.
Speaker 1:Nepotism, corruption.
Speaker 3:Not that you are capable to do this job and tribalism mostly. And the challenge with that is that same county has least developed when it comes to infrastructures. So that becomes more like it reflects why that has happened Because that county has universities, yes, and also students who've learnt engineering, and even it has hired engineers who cannot do anything because their hands are tied.
Speaker 4:Oh, because, you see, they can't outsmart the master. That's the problem. Now it comes to the carpenter.
Speaker 1:They can't outsmart the carpenter. Yeah, that's the problem.
Speaker 3:The problem is you lack what you call an open door policy of governance, whereby I am open for whatever works best for the people or for this office.
Speaker 1:So we're not disputing that a carpenter can lead. Can lead, yes, but also there is that insecurity of like if you do more than this, you're fired because you're outshining the master.
Speaker 3:And what I can say with that is it's a kind of inferiority complex to be honest. The reason I say this. There's a story whereby they keep saying that people are taken out of Egypt, but Egypt was never taken out of them, as in we're still in this post independence thinking whereby we are still slaves to a mentality, a certain form of mentality. You are oppressed, you are oppressed and you being oppressed. What happened is later on in life. You're still not free.
Speaker 1:You're still not free yeah.
Speaker 3:I can comfortably say that during the Kibaki presidency we started sensing some freedom in the society we have. People started expanding themselves, kind of opening up to, kind of contributing to the economy and the growth of it by just being as good as they are and they being themselves. Now, when you come to the micro level, you'll find that there's that level of oppression that still exists in the minds of my fellow brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3:The reason I say this is I took a plane from the US to Nairobi. I took an Emirates flight. It was the condition was superb, exquisite.
Speaker 1:Trust me, this is the normal.
Speaker 3:And remember, I've lived in the US for 17 years, true, true, so I know what's supposed to be. And I know when it's not supposed to be what's supposed to be done.
Speaker 1:So are you saying US is the measure of things?
Speaker 3:What I'm trying to say. There's a society that knows its rights. There's a society that has open door governance, yes, that has policies that welcome. Whatever works best for the people is what should be implemented yeah, yeah, and they have set standards and they have, and it's all about what can be delivered, reason I say so.
Speaker 3:Um, if there's history about the 12 year old and the 17 year old who who've been working with the government I think it was south korea, but I'm not so sure, but I'll go back to it in building their defense systems. And these are kids who taught themselves coding. They taught themselves coding.
Speaker 3:Now, how many African? Okay, I've seen cases whereby, you see, there's a prosecution of a student who approached a certain business to tell them of the gaps in their own, for sure. You know all their systems. But they end up getting the short end of the stick. So we discourage innovation so you kill instead of embracing. You kill instead of embracing, you kill, and, and, and, and it's. It's that open door policy of what works best for the people that should be embraced. If, if, if.
Speaker 3:This kid is good in this yeah then I, then he's made me identify something good in him that can work for the best of my office. Best thing I can do is not prosecute but work with. Now the aspect of collaboration comes again. Here we are not competing. Whatever works best, let's put it on the table for the good of the people.
Speaker 1:There's something you said that is very interesting before you tell us the Emirates story about us being of Egypt, but Egypt is not of us. I know even we have a local saying about the village analogy. So does this actually contribute to body, mind and spirit kind of aspect whereby we need to nourish each at given frequency?
Speaker 3:It's important why I say it. So remember religion has been used to manipulate people.
Speaker 1:Sad story how.
Speaker 3:Many ways. Look at every war. Is there a war that religion was never an aspect of it?
Speaker 1:Okay, the Ukraine. How is religion involved? Let's go back.
Speaker 3:Ukraine is another whole different story. Because, that's not even what you can categorize. We are fighting them. But going back, let's look at this way Africa Spirituality is big, it's big.
Speaker 1:It was big even before colonization, even before it was.
Speaker 3:And so that became a good entry point for colonization. Because once we capture your spiritual aspect, everything else falls in place. It's like somebody was. It was more like a joke to him that we were told to close our eyes and pray. When we opened, the lands were gone. You see what I mean, very true.
Speaker 1:So the point is it sounds funny, but it's true. It is true, yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3:So the point is we are wholesome. There's a spirit aspect of it. They say we are just spirits with a body.
Speaker 1:And do you think Africans trust so fast? Like you know, we trust each other, but also we trust other people who don't have good intentions to us.
Speaker 3:We don't trust ourselves on many levels.
Speaker 1:So we don't trust at all.
Speaker 3:As I said before, initially we were in Egypt, but Egypt was never taken out of us. There's a big analogy on that aspect. Reason I say so remember there's that comfort zone. Once you get into a comfort zone, they say, the better the devil you know than the angel you don't.
Speaker 3:And so there's that fear aspect of crossing the boundaries, going beyond what we know as normal, and that's why it's easy, for example, in this setting of ours, our beloved continent, easy to demonize something we don't understand. You demonize it, you make it look evil. I mean, look at Huduma Namba. This was something that was done years ago but it's been implemented years later. Why? Because we thought of the 666. There's a whole story that came around that why? Because of demonizing things. We don't understand why it comes from the issue of superstition.
Speaker 3:And that's what I was driving to in terms of religion and spirituality. Superstition, as in this, as in this, happened to this kid because mama daddy did this or somebody in their line, and maybe it's just a disease that can be taken care of by the right science. You see what I mean? Yeah, I mean we've had so many cases, I mean so many stories of whereby, you know, people don't go to hospital because of a certain faith they hold on to.
Speaker 3:I mean there's a place for science there's no question about it yeah, that's why god gave us a brain, there's no doubt about it. Why the brain is supposed to do something right, it's supposed to be Up to now. We're still discovering. I mean, life has always been in existence for thousands and thousands, but we keep discovering, why? Because we discover to the level we accept, and then another generation comes and pushes to another level, and then another generation comes and pushes to another level, another level. But if you think about it, I mean when looking back at the story of creation, just a good story, a good analogy. There was a tree, but there was no chair, there was no table right this came later on, but there was a tree. Does that mean that the chair never existed or could not have existed that time, that period of time?
Speaker 1:But now that you're brought, about the tree, you know these three there is so many translation about what tree was. Yes, so, but let's assume is they're just literally tree?
Speaker 3:yes, so you're saying people then didn't find use of making chairs and tables and all that, yeah, yeah so my point is that, um, knowledge is, is, ever, is, there's a, there's a potential of increasing your knowledge towards advancing humanity and the existence of humanity being, uh, better, being made better. So the point of this is we, we, that's what I'm saying, the open-mindedness, open door policies. Don't demonize what you don't understand. Seek to understand. Seek to understand.
Speaker 1:Seek to know how this came into being why it came into being Seek to know first.
Speaker 3:Exactly Don't jump to the guns, and this definitely will create better peace. I mean more peace. You know what I mean. I mean because the aspect of not understanding is what also brings issues about war and tensions. So understanding should be an aspect and that's where it has always been my bottom line to understand. I need to understand these pieces are coming this way.
Speaker 1:Why? What's the reason?
Speaker 3:behind it. What's the understanding behind it? You know a good example, taylor Perry. You know, taylor Perry, right yeah.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 3:Taylor.
Speaker 1:And he's done a lot of good in the movie industry.
Speaker 3:But with certain agendas, he's starting agendas and he's self-taught and all that oh, he's self-taught producer everything, everything I mean he's uh with school he didn't go to to learn all he learned. Okay, it was the school of life. You know what I mean? That's new information yeah you have a gift, you have a talent.
Speaker 1:He can put as good done, amazing stuff, amazing. And this actually brings me to something different actually here that, now that you mentioned, yes and he's self-taught.
Speaker 1:Yes, so are we all born with what we have and the life that we live is just to shape it, to just discover what is that that we have and live our purpose? Yes and again. Uh, on the same point. Yes, um, most of us actually live a whole life without knowing what our purpose was in this world and also this spirituality into it.
Speaker 1:Is that and it happens a lot, I don't know, maybe not to everyone, but you do something or something happens, like I've talked to a couple of you know, amazing people who are doing amazing stuff and they say luck has to play a very, very huge chunk in what they have achieved. But I also feel, like you know what they say, that if you die, you just transform to the next life and you come again, as you can come again as a different being. You know, there are all those stories there and it feels like the soul itself has no end. It just changes the form. I don't know if that's too deep for this conversation, but when you say you know we are in a spiritual world no, no, we are spiritual, but we are living in the body world Is that something you resonate with? Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sorry, just to kind of go down into it. The spiritual role in our lives is there. There's no doubt about it Insights understanding.
Speaker 3:There's a higher being you need to connect to. There's more knowledge, more understanding that you know than you have, that you should seek to have. We have all these different religions and they all push the same story, basically there's a high existence that needs to be appreciated and there's a higher form of knowledge you should always be seeking to know and this is what makes you a better person. My understanding, my view, the perspective that I have is everybody was born with a purpose. There's no doubt about it. There's no question about it. There's a reason you were born in a certain continent.
Speaker 3:There's a reason you were born in a certain country. There's a reason you were born in a certain village. There's a reason you were born in a certain village. There's a reason you're born in a certain family and it's up to you to be able to identify. Why am I here? In this family setup.
Speaker 3:And what is my contribution? What can be my contribution? To this circle that I have and that should be what should be driven, and I think that's what CBC is trying to kind of also drive in terms of kids first getting to know themselves. Who am I? What am I able to do? What can I do?
Speaker 3:What can I do with what I can't do In such a way that it complements where my strengths are. That's what CBC is all about. I mean bottom line you look it's more like because you know we are coming from a system whereby everybody is being pushed to be number one to have an A, to have a B A.
Speaker 3:Competitive Exactly, but you are not being pushed to. Who am I? What can I do? Because once I know my strength, I will work with you to enable me, exactly to enable me, and then it's more of a collective, and that's how Babylon was built.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. That's it Very interesting. But do you think CBC has really implemented properly? Because I'm of a different opinion. It could be done better. But I'm saying because of course it's on trial. How many years has it been here? Maybe three, four? So that means there's more room for improvement and refining. True, Are they From your experience, because you interact with these policy makers the people who are involved with this? Are they intentionally improving it over time?
Speaker 3:That ought to be the story.
Speaker 1:That ought to be the case.
Speaker 3:The reason I say so, education is dynamic. Remember we came down to we had mentioned earlier that knowledge is dynamic. You need to keep on learning understanding. And I gave you a good example of the work we did in establishing what we call Academies of Central Arkansas, in the state of Arkansas, in the city or rather school district of Little Rock, in such a way that the skill sets that the kids have by the time they're done with school is more applicable to filling their workforce need in that society.
Speaker 3:And this is a country that is considered to be way ahead of us, and so if they saw that they were stagnating, they were not meeting the market needs.
Speaker 3:And remember this is something work we did and you can go see those academies of Central Arkansas, because what pretty much did is we identified, for example, engineering, computer science, agriculture, health sector, medical, all the strong points of the economy of that state and we created academies within the high schools. I see so when in that high school and you go to a particular high school, for example I talked about aviation technology in mango high school yeah, I knew that they taught aviation before I chose that school yeah so when I was going there, my mindset was on the engineering, aerononautical engineering.
Speaker 1:So also there's transparency on what is happening on the ground Exactly.
Speaker 3:So definitely there was a need to have pilots being shaped up from an early age and that became the focus Even in the sports world. Right now we know the Kenya government has these sports academies that it's kind of been pushing as an agenda because to grow that talent, to nurture that talent, of which I had seen Sport Pesa- kind of working on before. A lot of issues came up, but there's that need to be able to focus.
Speaker 3:Now as a student I go here. I know computer science is. They have an academy of computer science. Everybody in that high school is welcome to learn something from that academy. But there are those who literally identify themselves with that academy and they take the whole course until examination. Now CBC, that's what it's supposed to achieve. I know 844, we did a lot in 844 in primary school, I remember I can't even remember how many subjects we had. We had so many. My backpack was heavy every single morning. I built muscles while I was still in primary school. Books were so many. We did carpentry.
Speaker 1:There was woodwork, I remember I even did home science, art and craft.
Speaker 3:I made some PJs, by the way, when I was in primary school, I made some booties, which my sister and brother used later on in life.
Speaker 1:I made some mats. I remember Did you make petticoats.
Speaker 3:When I came in they told me pyjama and that was tougher than the petticoat. Because, petticoats just take two pieces. You cannot just put the hem stitches and all Pyjama was too complicated, man. You have to size it up to the shoulder size, to the right fitting.
Speaker 1:So I became a tailor while I was still in primary school, but you were an engineer, so, yes, that could not be hard for you.
Speaker 3:We were still kids, then remember no.
Speaker 2:You know if you're an engineer, by the way, and this is one thing that I think we should pass across.
Speaker 1:Yes, and even parents, as much as kids are involved. Some of the things that you do later in life. I don't feel like there's a miracle that happens for someone to become an engineer. You're born an engineer. It's only that with time you start learning all this and it takes us back to what we said earlier. Everyone is born with what they need in this life. What actually we do in life, through education and everything, is just to amplify and ensure that that signal is more focused on that and making sure that we are implementing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so at the end of the day, you know it is what it is it is, it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is Um. What you say is true, that you're born um. You know. Somebody say you know, I'm looking for my purpose in life. Yeah. And when somebody is saying that there is looking outward other than inward, I like that.
Speaker 1:You see what I mean.
Speaker 3:That's where, now, the confusion comes in. You're looking for this sign from the skies. It's inside you. Yes, yes, yes. And that's now the motto in high school. This is Mango. High School is Jishinde Ushinde, which means defeat yourself.
Speaker 1:It's from inside to inside.
Speaker 3:Yeah, everything is inside your. It's from inside to inside. Yeah, everything is inside your whole package. The more you dig deeper into yourself, the more the good comes out.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you, now that you say Jishinde, ushinde.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Is that why they wrote their motto in every exam paper? Because you used those papers to revise.
Speaker 3:Yes, jishinde, ushinde, ushinde, exactly it's true. That was interesting when I saw those papers. I was like that sounds cunning, but with time.
Speaker 1:I realized it means a lot because for me, I started looking for my purpose when I was really, really young, and when I tell my story, people will piece things together and know why. But it's very, very interesting to always look for your purpose. It doesn't matter by the state of life you're in, right now or your age or anything. Anything, finding your purpose is very important. It helps you live a fully nourished life as opposed to where you are chasing these chasing that looking outward and all that yes but that's a side.
Speaker 1:Yes, so, chief, you went to the us after strathmore, right? Okay, okay and you build all these academies. You did research that was really used to the grassroots, yes, and you stayed there for long 17 years, 17 years, for sure. Why are you doing engineering works?
Speaker 3:I started doing administrative later on because of a position that opened up, I say working with an oil company, and so mine became more administrative.
Speaker 1:What is that?
Speaker 3:What happened is a family company called Colson Oil, colson Oil. It was the largest independently family-owned oil petroleum business in that state oil marketing and so I joined them, together with people we finished college with, to be able to work with them at that time. Before then, I was also working at another industry that what does administration mean? Administration means overseeing all the outlets.
Speaker 1:Uh, it involves a lot, and this is something else that I need to ask you because also I've seen a lot of friends who are out there also. I've heard stories from people who come back. Why do you do electrical engineering but you do administration work. Is there no electrical engineering jobs also in the US? Or how does this work? Or just you know the paper first, you secure the bag first and then figure out do I need to do electrical engineering, or what is this?
Speaker 3:What happens is that in life, whatever card you dealt with, you work with.
Speaker 1:If you're given lemons make lemonade, you cannot make orangeade. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:So in this case I did start first. Initially, before I started working with them, I was working with another company called Deluxe Deluxe. They're the ones who did all the CDs or DVDs.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see this was back then. That is printing the engineering work that goes into it and everything.
Speaker 3:And they have all the machineries. So I used to pull night shifts there on those machines.
Speaker 1:That is after graduating.
Speaker 3:No, I was still in school then, okay, okay. So later on, before I finished school, there was this position that was open and I saw oil is a growing industry in Kenya. It was more like that thing you want to know before you go back home. You know what I mean? I want to get the whole nine yards about everything about petroleum. I want to know the whole nine yards.
Speaker 3:I want to know from the beginning to the end how this business works. So by the time I'm going back home I have something to contribute to, because when I was looking at DVDs I couldn't see the future of that in Kenya. I'm sorry, but I couldn't. The technology was way ahead of us. Tell you what?
Speaker 1:I think in Kenya there was so much DVD CDs consumption more than anywhere else through piracy, and I have to say the way it is.
Speaker 1:Not everyone can afford $9, $10 to go and watch a big screen movie. This actually also created a lot of opportunities. I know it's wrong for the guys who create the content and everything. It's not right, but that's how innovation is spread, even when you look about programming and the technology. Right now you can get all these books, online tutorials for free. You just need to invest on the internet, which is actually cheaper. So back to the DVDs, cds. I don't think you saw. You were right you saw, that there's no future.
Speaker 1:But in terms of consumption, we consume a lot of DVDs and CDs and we're looking at this year was what the year 2000-2001?
Speaker 3:right, this is a long time ago, because people have stopped. Even right now, there are people who ban CDs and DVDs for movies, music and all this kind of stuff, but it's facing out and this actually maybe let me give us a short story about myself.
Speaker 1:So this time I was thinking like you know, I had a studio like a whole DJ Academy studio. I said since you know, at the end of the day, you know there are people who are asking for movies, why don't I buy the, the, the duplicator? Which burns like eight, nine CDs at a time with a master. Okay, guess what I like eight, nine CDs at a time. Nice, nice.
Speaker 1:With a master. Okay, guess what? I bought the whole duplicate. It was very expensive, okay. And then, all of a sudden, I realized people are coming with a flash disk. I have that duplicate until now.
Speaker 4:That's 24 hours, so it shows you how fast and this actually didn't take.
Speaker 1:it's in a span of months. Wow, right now people don't go and get the CDs and DVDs. They go with a flash disk which is 8, 16 gigabytes, get the movie. Once they are done with the movie, they delete and get more space for that. Yes, so it shows you how much technology transitions, and I think these will actually contribute to our main story that we are going to talk about in a few. You get into this company that bans CDs and DVDs.
Speaker 3:Was it the only company in the US? It was the largest, the largest company. So anytime a movie came out in Hollywood, we were the first people to get. So, even before they do their premieres and shows. I had seen all the movies. Oh my goodness, Because when you're fixing the machines, what do you do? You watch the movies too. So I watched a lot of movies back then. I didn't get addicted to movies somehow, I don't know why.
Speaker 1:Because, um, but um so is it wrong to be addicted to movies?
Speaker 3:uh well, is it adding value?
Speaker 4:at the end of the day, I always ask myself I see up to now.
Speaker 3:It's hard for me to sit down and watch a tv show I'm sorry to say this, but you can watch.
Speaker 1:Watch a movie with one hour and 30 minutes.
Speaker 3:Even that is hard. I think the older you get, the more responsibilities you get, the more purpose thinking you become the more? It's more like how is it adding to the vision, how is it adding to me as where I'm heading to and so something I learned early on in life and that's where some habits never caught me because it was all like, at the end of the day, what have I gained? What value has been added to me? You know, the good book says all things might be good but, not all things are beneficial, I see.
Speaker 3:So it's good, but is it beneficial? Yeah, so that's always my gauging point Is it adding value? It gauging point, is it adding value? It's not. It's not a big deal, you skip Okay.
Speaker 1:It's not adding, you know. Yeah, true, true, I totally agree with you.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, so that became the mindset. So, jumping into the oil company I learned the whole nine years. That is from downstream to upstream, because they had the whole, you know the whole business laid out. So it was more like a learning process of business in the oil field. And this I did for 11 years. And then there's always that thing of what am I doing back at home? What am I doing back at home?
Speaker 1:And your mindset was like when I go back at home.
Speaker 3:I have this knowledge that I can't implement.
Speaker 4:So, there was that purpose driven while you're in the US, while you're doing what you're, doing.
Speaker 3:That's it, and by the way.
Speaker 1:This speaks to something I wanted to ask you when you get to that point. Okay, okay, we have so many intellectuals all over the world not only in the US, but all over the world, and I hear some of them are heading like serious, you know, engineering companies, serious military companies.
Speaker 3:That means, we're smart. Extremely, so Extremely, so Extremely.
Speaker 1:I wanted to ask you why did you? Did you just come back to visit or just come back and do stuff around here?
Speaker 3:It was a progressive. It was progressive. It was more like a two-year thinking, three-year plan. So, in terms of I knew I have to go back. Point is, at what point, at what time? So I needed to have skills that are at value on the ground as soon as I land. So I started earlier on started engaging in drilling of boreholes. So even before I landed here there was a business of drilling boreholes.
Speaker 1:That was ongoing, exactly.
Speaker 3:So at least this was like more of a cushioning thing. That's amazing, yeah, amazing yeah yeah, so when you land, there's something that you've been working over the years so it kind of cushions you up yeah because you're coming from a fast world country where things are convenient so you need shock absorbers exactly, I mean it.
Speaker 3:Somebody just came from the us the other day and this was, she told me, coming back home is a 180 degree. Which means you turn back. It's like where you just came from. You're looking at the past, you're not looking at the future. So she was like man. I'm still trying to adjust a little bit. This place is the opposite of where I just came from, Because here the systems work. Systems work. I mean you go to a public office, you will get the service. You're not doing the public officer a favor. Okay.
Speaker 3:Because that's the mentality Go to many offices whereby it's like you're doing them a favor, Uh-huh, you see what I mean it is. I mean this aspect customer service. I saw our governor set up a CC for customer service, which was kind of insightful.
Speaker 1:No, I'm sorry but, it was insightful.
Speaker 3:No, I get it. You know I connect. I do connect Because customers, when I landed here, it was one of the shortcomings that jumped off the plane to me the courtesy of serving somebody, the decency of going an extra mile for you to do what you're supposed to do. You know, somebody said this, another lady, she was a nurse, a nurse in one of the hospitals here. When she went to the US she ended up doing nursing, and so she started working of the hospitals here. Yeah, so when?
Speaker 3:she went to the US. She ended up doing nothing, yeah, and so she started working in the hospitals. Yeah, and you know she called back and she was like you know what I had to repent and she was serious about this one she truly was serious Of all the services I gave in the hospital while I was still in Kenya. Yeah, because of the attitude, the mindset, I think the nurses need to hear this. I'm sorry, but it's the reality.
Speaker 3:This is a society I lived for 17 years If you don't deliver what you're supposed to deliver, because the other day, when His Excellency was appointing the ministers, he was very adamant on the aspect of delivery of service by the ministers and said that there will be no laxity on that issue. If something is a role you've been given, give it your heart, give it your mind, give it your soul. Serve.
Speaker 3:Serve with joy. Serve, you know something, is we close doors for ourselves. The reason I say we close doors for ourselves, do you know? It's in service that you grow, true, true, and this is what will bring us to the Rotary issue. Rotary is all about service above self. And according to the Rotary that's the Rotary motto that you become served better by you offering the service of yourself. So the point of service. You know it was interesting when I saw Sakanja putting that docket under CEC.
Speaker 3:Who would think of a minister for customer service? Think about it. There has to be a certain pain point in the society he can identify with. He was, like you know, something needs to be done, true and better, because this is a government office. We need to have an international standard of service to humanity. Yes. This person is a human. Yeah, this person is sick. Yes, the other day somebody died when Sakanja, honorable His Excellency Sakanja, went to one of the hospitals and somebody had died just because of negligence.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, you know what I mean In a hospital. Yeah, kid who had the chamber dug into the brain, you see?
Speaker 3:I mean it's sad, it's a sad issue.
Speaker 1:I think the reason why even we're talking about this and remember this is happening in Nairobi. Now, if you multiply that to the 52 countries and then different places, towns and cities that they have you see how many people just lose because of that and uh do you think maybe we we don't really appreciate the people who offer this service better, or we don't show them the the importance of humanity, or what, what?
Speaker 1:what can we do to make sure that these people actually feel like? You know, if I was the one that these people actually feel like?
Speaker 3:you know, if I was the one looking for this service, how, what would I expect?
Speaker 1:it comes down to the spiritual aspect.
Speaker 3:Spiritual acts is do unto others as you'd like others to do and choose. Absolutely right, absolutely um. All men are equal. All men are equal, no question about it yeah point, that issue of competitiveness. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean. So we are brainwashed to think we are better than others.
Speaker 3:Sad story of which we are not At the end of the day, and this was one of the things that kind of drove the government under the Obama administration. I was there when that was happening. All humans matter, all humans matter, all humans matter, all humans. Binadamu ni binadamu, so all men are created equal. There's need for that to be realized, especially in the public service.
Speaker 3:So the spiritually aspect of this is the practice of what you learn in terms of spiritual matters and I think this is what plays a role in terms of you seeing other people as humans is what plays a role in terms of you seeing other people as humans.
Speaker 1:It does play a role.
Speaker 3:There's no question about it, because at the end of the day, we all want the same thing. So if at the end of the day, we all want the same thing, you know, like somebody said, look at the stars in the sky. They all shine.
Speaker 3:They all shine, some shine brighter than others because they are closer to you, yes, yes, not because they are better than the other star. The other star is just farther from you. Yes, you see what I mean. So there is space for everybody to shine. But how does everybody shine? By being put on an eco-pedestal. The ground is level. Yes, you make something out of yourself. Yeah, so that's the purpose of the government to create that environment in such a way that anybody you will be measured by your output. The ground has been made level. The seeds you plant are the seeds you sow, and that's one thing about the American government. I also noticed what you put into that system is what you get back. An equal price down measure is what you get back. We don't have to dig a lot. Why? Because policies have been put in place. The system has been put in place to ensure all the I's have been dotted, t's have been, to ensure there's equality, inclusivity, to ensure that whatever I put in this soil is what will come back to me.
Speaker 3:It's an issue of making sure that soil is good for growth, that environment is conducive for nurturing. Yeah, Once that environment, then people will shine. As you mentioned, we have a lot of Kenyans doing extremely well outside this country, which is true, and that also Kenda comes to light when it comes to Honorable His Excellency Sakanja. When he Sakanja when he appointed as an advisory the person who has been critical to building the infrastructure transport network in UK. He's part of the advisory committee for that. And he's a Kenyan.
Speaker 3:And he's doing that in the UK and we're suffering here in Nairobi. It doesn't make sense. So it's an issue of all these giftings and talents. They found a conducive location for them, An environment, A conducive that allowed you go to Dallas, Fort Worth. There was a time the person who was running I don't know if she's still there who was running that airport was a Kenyan yeah.
Speaker 3:If such a person came back to Kenya, will they be able to give the same kind of? They would be killed. My point is or Will they be able to give the same kind of? They will be killed.
Speaker 1:My point is or they will be jobless. Jobless is more like it.
Speaker 3:Let me shock you here the first iPad on the face of the earth by Apple. Guess who designed it? Elvis Mwenda Kibiti. Elvis Mwenda Kibiti. The first iPad. Elvis Mwenda Kibiti.
Speaker 1:A Kenyan.
Speaker 3:He was one class behind me in high school. He goes to the US. He has over 139 patents or something With Apple. Recently he was taken by Facebook. He's in charge of the Facebook labs, the meta labs. But look at his history. All the patents are listed online, so this is something you can look and verify. Yes, okay. So in this environment of ours, we're talking of manufacturing sector we are looking at Rwanda is already producing its own cell phones.
Speaker 3:And we are looking at us as a country. Will this have been the best place for him to grow to the level he's grown? Absolutely not so, which means there's something missing. What's missing? That environment? Yeah, we have a department parastatal that deals with innovations in kenya.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'd welcome to know how much they've achieved because we have so many dockets in kenya, so many?
Speaker 3:parastatals.
Speaker 1:so many parasiticals Because most of them actually ask like rewards and the guys who are put in place. Maybe the intention is not to help anyone. Is this another job with a better salary, with a better package, Whereas people forget that there's not much enough money in this world that you can make and if you're not serving people even, it's really hard. Yes, to get to that point where you're saying we have more resources, that we can even have more, better packages yes, and I think we need to change the mindset.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest problem of africans, and even the reason why we're doing this, is to change the mindset, from the mindset of you know what? Yes, abundance, yes, there's more than enough for everyone. If you get it as Engineer Felix, it doesn't mean MK loses it. It's not a zero-sum game that you're living in, so we need to be there. And for us to be there. One of the things that I think we should do and you can contribute to this is that we need to move from the point of being selfish.
Speaker 3:And be selfless.
Speaker 1:What I mean is that, if you are doing something, do it really good. Do it without caring. You know what am I getting out of it? Or what my friends, my brothers, my relatives are getting from it, and then, with that aspect, we are able to move from point A to B over time. And imagine if 1.4 billion people are all doing this. It's a powerhouse.
Speaker 1:And most of these guys are young Like 80% are below 50 years old, which means they are young enough to contribute to the economy engine, the social engine, the community engine and whatnot.
Speaker 3:I totally agree. Competition is, as I said, compete with yourself. That's the best standard.
Speaker 3:Best standard is compete with yourself and the attitude that definitely should always be the case is that it's not about me and it should never be about you. It should be about what difference can you make in the life of another. You know, for example, this is more like a ministry I can say so comfortably. It's more like missionary work, I can say so comfortably. The reason I say so is because what you're called to do, you're supposed to do it with appreciation of the sanctity of life. Appreciate life as in the person next to you there's something you can add of value to them, and don't expect anything back because, that's what now kills progress, when you expect something back.
Speaker 3:let your satisfaction be in the perfection of the service you give, the excellence of the service you give. Was it your best? Is it the 67% you're trying to pride with? Or is it the?
Speaker 3:100%. You're capable to do. Capable to do? Do you know, the more you push yourself, the better you become as a person. Absolutely. Don't settle for 67%. I'm ahead of the game. Is that your 100%? No, if it's not, you're still not ahead of the game, because the more you learn to push yourself, the more you learn that guess what? It's never about me, but the results and the good I can bring in the lives of others, and that's what will serve you too. Your needs will always be. You see, everybody appreciates good things in life, and I remember one time there's somebody called Vusi Vusi Dembaquayo, and one of his emphases was that whatever service you give of excellence, it will never be too expensive for somebody to pay if it meets the need.
Speaker 3:And he gave this when he was giving a good example. He said if I walk into a Toyota shop and then I go to a Lamborghini shop and I start telling the sales associate that it's too expensive and I'm looking at the Toyota what value are you getting from the Lamborghini that the Toyota doesn't have?
Speaker 3:to justify the cost of it. Because there are people who will walk into the Lamborghini and buy that Lamborghini. Why? Because they know the value of it. They know what are the extra features and packages that come with it you won't find in a certain Toyota, true, true, you see what I mean. And they'll still buy it. Why? Because of the value, the value. And they'll still buy it. Why? Because of the value, the value, the value, the value, yes. So point is people will pay you for the value you give to them, you add to their lives. Yes, so you can. So that's what I'm saying. Nothing can be too expensive for a price tag if the excellence of it is serving a certain need. Absolutely, you see what I mean. And so what happens is if you stop yourself from giving somebody service because you're not, actually there's a certain community. I lived in the US for a while and you'll find that there's a certain population that always loves doing handiwork, handiwork, handiwork. You find the Latino population. They have so much into doing work by hand.
Speaker 3:And people they pride in their work and people love hiring them. Anytime you want a house to be built, the first people you kind of lock in is them. Because they pride in that work. And because they pride, they always become the default. The default.
Speaker 1:And the go-to people.
Speaker 3:Exactly Because you know these people. It's not about the money to them, it's about the quality of service they can give to you. Yeah, that always jumps out in that community. Always jumps out. So anytime you want this kind of service, you find yourself defaulting to calling somebody to do that for you. Yeah, so my point is they've created a niche for themselves. They created an interesting perspective about themselves that we love doing handiwork and we deliver with excellence. Not based upon how much you can pay me there's definitely that we've agreed upon but the major sense of my pride is in the excellence of my work.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and that's what needs to be kind of showcased. Yeah, whatever you're doing, whatever service you're giving, let it be. That is the focus. And if that is the focus, the right price tag will always come to you.
Speaker 3:The right price tag will always come to you, even if you don't need to ask, trust me it will come to you and when you ask for it, they won't have a problem to give it Because they themselves they will connect and absolutely agree that you deserve it. You deserve it. You see, life has a way of creating balance. Life has a way of creating balance. Implication is justice will always take place. It may not be in 10 seconds, 2 seconds, 1 hour, but the will will come back and deliver what it's supposed to in terms of what you deserve. If this is what you deserve, trust me, it will take place.
Speaker 3:That's why, when this thing about COVID happened it started in one part of the world but, affected the entire system and other countries.
Speaker 3:The point of this is an injustice in one part of the world, but affected the entire system and other countries. Point of this is this An injustice in one place is an injustice everywhere. A justice in one place is a justice everywhere. Life has a way of creating balance and that's why, boiling down to a point we'll talk about on environmental matters, is, if we don't take care of our environment, we are killing ourselves, because environment will take care of itself. And guess who will be eliminated? You? You the cause of it, because life was created balanced and it will retain that balance, if you like it or not. Trust me on that one, because the thing is you can't fight the force of gravity can you?
Speaker 3:You can jump from the air and tell gravity, I'm fighting against you, but you still come down to it that's a very good analogy now that you're talking about environment okay, the.
Speaker 1:Is it rotaract or rotary?
Speaker 3:club yeah, yeah rotary organization.
Speaker 1:So how are these two related? Because there's what you're talking about climate change, the commitment of companies like Google, atlassian, amazon all these big fund companies committing to like by 2025 to 2030, they will be operating at zero carbon emission energy, things to do with renewable energy which actually preserves the environment.
Speaker 1:But it goes beyond that for sure, because these are just if you put this company together. Maybe they don't have a total of more than 10 million employees and what they consume, but they play a key role in leadership Because, also, they're not only saying it but they're putting dollar into it to make sure that it happens exactly, uh, I know, like the CEO of uh Atlassian, one of the companies that I've been associated with for some time.
Speaker 1:Okay, uh, my Canon Brox has been very active on Twitter and also influencing, um, you know, the policy, the government policy, because these, all these key stakeholders, ought to come together for this to make sense For you as Rotary. Are you working independently? Are you working as Rotaract? How is this working?
Speaker 3:Rotary organization was formed in the year 1905. And how it was formed there? It was professionals, led by Mr Paul Harris. They came together. They're all from different professions. There's an engineer, there's a doctor, businessman, they're all different professions. And so they came together asking themselves the same thing we started with in the conversation the knowledge you have, how is it adding value to the society? How is it adding value to the community? What you know, is it adding value? Is it adding value? So they came together and the question was what can we do with our skills, with our competence, with our network, with our ability to make the society in Chicago?
Speaker 3:Because that's where it started better.
Speaker 1:Is it a secret society? It is not a secret society. We are too open.
Speaker 3:If you go to Rotary International you'll find everything about us there. So nothing is secret about it. We are open, in fact quite the opposite. Remember, we talked about open door policies, open door government.
Speaker 1:So anyone can join.
Speaker 3:Anybody can join.
Speaker 1:Do they need to pay anything? Definitely there has to be that pot that sustains the activities For you to take. You have to give. Exactly so how much is the joining fee?
Speaker 3:Let's start from here. There's a Rotary International. We start from there and the headquarter that's a good aspect you have brought into it, so when you join Rotary.
Speaker 1:Club do you join the international? Is it the branch? How does it work?
Speaker 3:Exactly. We'll come down to that. So there's the Rotary International. From the Rotary International, we go to the district level. The district level is formed of several countries. Now the district Kenya is in is called District 9212. It's formed by Ethiopia, eritrea, kenya and South Sudan. Uganda and Tanzania are in a different district. This was just the mechanics of formation because, entry points, you know.
Speaker 1:We cannot decide why they were part of that. This is beginning to sound like something else, but it's okay, it's alright.
Speaker 3:So point is, kenya is in that district of district 9212. And so we have Ethiopia, eritrea, we have South Sudan, and then we have Kenya Now. And so we have Ethiopia, eritrea, we have South Sudan, and then we have.
Speaker 3:Kenya. Now, from there now we have now what we call each country office. There's a country office, so we have the country office in Kenya and then, under the country office now we have the clubs themselves, which are in different regions, different regions of the country, and so, but on an administrative level, it's just from the Rotary office of Kenya to the particular specific club. So there's no in-between like a regional office or something of the sort. There's none whatsoever. You have that direct connectivity. And so they have different positions in every club. But we have some main positions and these are based by the courses, the pillars of rotary. We have, uh, polio. In fact, when it was formed, the main agenda was to eradicate polio from the world.
Speaker 1:Oh uh, basically science behind it as I said, they are professionals who came together. The notaract funded the process of coming up with the vaccine, or they made the vaccines, and so how did you?
Speaker 3:work. Let me define something else before you go far. We have rotary, we have rotaract, then we have interact what are these?
Speaker 1:these are like the first degree, second that. Until that, is that something degree okay it's just um.
Speaker 3:We have primary school, we have high school, we have college.
Speaker 1:Again, the same same thing that I'm saying Okay, yeah, so so Rotary main members, rotary.
Speaker 3:These are mature adults who are professionals. Remember, it was started by professionals and so under professionals. Now we have now those who are still in college, so those are in the college period. They're the ones who form the rotaract, the university, and then from then we have the high schoolers. So the high schoolers are the interact who are members?
Speaker 3:so, uh, currently, um, we are forming. We're trying to form as many in high school as possible. Uh, in university, we already have them in existence. Narobi university has its own jku, nairobi University has its own, jku has its own.
Speaker 3:KU has its own. They're there. They're there. Now, with that pretty much defined, we go now to the courses, the courses of Rotary, as I mentioned initially. When they started off, it was to help eradicate polio. Help eradicate, yes. So, and remember, these are people, different professionals. We have doctors, we have policy makers, scientists everybody, every single profession, teachers everybody whatever profession you are, you're there.
Speaker 3:You're a nurse, whatever it is. And so the point was this is the agenda, this is the course, so we come with it. Now. That has been our drive since 1970s, and they started, you said 1905. 65 years later, yeah, because that's when now polio became more like it's widespread. So it was an issue of identifying where is the need in the society. Remember, rotary tries to help alleviate the pains of humanity, to make an equal existence for all men and women.
Speaker 3:So the point is which is still interesting, because it was later on that women were allowed into it to join it.
Speaker 1:It was only men. This sounds more than what I was suspecting. In fact, right now we have the first Rotary International President.
Speaker 3:as a woman in the history of Rotary, we started in 1905. And even the district governor, she's a lady, from Ethiopia. She's also a lady. I mean, the thing is, it's been, you see, everything was guided by the governance in every society at that particular time, Because at that time women were not taking key roles. I mean, that's how the society was going to build up.
Speaker 1:What was the reason? Because I hear in Illuminati the same thing, I don't know, in the missionary the same thing. Also, even these women agendas become like the main agenda. Yes, yes, in every other sector. Yeah, all of a sudden, true gender, yes, yes, in every other sector. Yeah, all of a sudden True, it's like there's an emergency somewhere. Yes, why is that?
Speaker 3:It's because it needs. You see, as I said initially, all men are created equal. There's this period of time where women were considered to be second class citizens as much as Africans were considered to be the same.
Speaker 3:That's why we had slavery issues. So this is something that know it's. As I said, life is dynamic and it was all about control, and power still is, and it's a sad story at the same time, because man was created to control themselves. There's nobody who was created to control another person. If you look at it basing on you as a human being, you can control yourself. But to be honest yes To be fair.
Speaker 1:To be fair, all animals. There's hierarchy, there's hierarchy and if we learn from nature, as you were alluding earlier.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:In every animal kingdom there's hierarchy. There is, there has to be. So that means For kingdom there's hierarchy, there has to be For order, for the purpose of order.
Speaker 3:Well, let's not put some?
Speaker 4:control key there If we are learning from nature. Nature is something that we cannot change.
Speaker 1:Actually, it has to be balanced, as you alluded earlier on then why is it that now we want to put some imbalance? Because that's imbalance. If there's no balance of course we get the imbalance side of things, gotcha.
Speaker 3:Why is that important? Definitely, women were not considered to be having the same equity as men. Also, the same issue came with slavery. Africans were not considered to be equal to all others.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 3:these are fights that have taken place, civil rights and all that Civil rights is always there in one aspect, one respect to the other. But wait a minute.
Speaker 1:Yes, wait a minute, let's go slow here. Because there's something I want our viewers, our listeners to understand. Okay. Slavery did not start with Africans. No it was there even in biblical times, exactly. So saying that it's because Africans are considered less equal, it's not right to some extent, because even when you think about Roman Empire there, were slaves, if you think about all these other empires that were there. They were slaves and I think I understand when people try to move away from the master and slave.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes. Because, at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:it empowers everyone to achieve their maximum potential, which is the key Gotcha. But saying that hierarchy is not supposed to be there and you should be eradicated to some extent, it's confusing. Because, even again taking you back to the nature world things there's always hierarchy, Even the trees right, yes.
Speaker 3:There are taller trees, there are shorter trees, they are shrubs. You know, there is all these, and I think even nature works like that, for you can put order as one of the reasons, but there are so many other reasons
Speaker 1:that you can come up with.
Speaker 3:True, true, it's purpose, it's purpose.
Speaker 1:There's a reason a certain tree is short. There's a reason a certain tree is tall. It's purpose.
Speaker 3:The reasons as to why certain flowers are green, some are yellow it's because there is certain kind of insects, they have certain kind of vision colorblind so they are attracted to this particular, which means creation was created perfectly with perfection, to be able to take care of itself. Interesting aspect even our own bodies are created to take care of themselves, as in your body was created to be able to take care of itself. Interesting aspect even our own bodies are created to take care of themselves.
Speaker 3:As in your body, was created to be able to heal itself. So what's supposed to be the case especially with medication, as I wouldn't say so much is the case at the moment. But how it's supposed to be derived is whatever is put in your system is to enable a certain process of healing the body should take place. So your body was created to heal itself. If I cut myself here, it's not a certain depth. The skin will still come back together. But if it goes to a certain depth, then there's certain kind of germs which have gone inside. So I'll need to get some kind of injection to ensure whatever went inside is kicked out. So it is to enable the body to heal itself.
Speaker 3:Same thing with nature, same thing with life. It is balanced. So some trees are taller for a certain purpose. Some are shorter for a certain purpose. Women have a purpose, men have a purpose. I cannot give birth to a child. That's number one. Their body system is different. Does that make them less? No, in fact, if anything. In the story of creation they say man, woman was created to help man. You see what I mean. To help man. Implication of this is the only person who can help you. They're either equal in strength or stronger than you, right? I mean, if I'm to push a car and I tell a two-year strength or stronger than me for this car to move, you see the story of a helper.
Speaker 1:That's what a helper is. You see what I mean.
Speaker 3:So a helper is somebody of equal strength or stronger than you for an effect to take place. So women are not lesser, and so the emphasis on girl, child is because of the culture. It's a culture which was based on control factor. Why do we have female genital mutilation, fgm, if it wasn't a control factor?
Speaker 1:You see what I mean.
Speaker 3:So certain cultures. But then why did you have FGM Exactly? It's not even supposed to exist. It was a control factor. In fact. If anything, the repercussions of it are devastating. Many women have internal bleeding taking place. Because of that, we have, I mean, so many complications.
Speaker 1:But that goes for any other procedure that is not carried out. Well, exactly.
Speaker 3:Now, in this case, you see, a woman wasn't created, with that having been done, so there's no need for that to be done, because there's no value addition to it.
Speaker 1:Same with circumcision. Circumcision is different. Now, why is it different? It's different because it's been proven that HIV I'm not actually advocating because I don't understand FGM to be honest, if I say I understand, I'll be lying. But even with the circumcision now that you're bringing HIV before HIV. There was circumcision In the beginning of time. With the circumcision now that you're bringing hiv. Before hiv there was circumcision there was in the beginning of time there was circumcision, exactly, and so I hear this. This is not confirmed or denied. Maybe our theologists can confirm this.
Speaker 1:The first circumcision was done by god yeah, yeah, true right so this is something that actually uh, that, even when you think about some of the things and this is even beyond FGM and the nature being balanced is that we need to actually get into the details of the matter, because, for me, I'm a believer that no one takes good care of an African, of a human, than an African Before even colonization and all these civilizations and whatnot women were always a priority. Women and children even right now.
Speaker 1:Actually women and children in Africa before we even knew how to read and write and, by the way, that's another topic, because we used to write our own we used to keep our own records which were stolen. You know, deducted, changed, so do you think we are following someone's narrative with?
Speaker 3:this With.
Speaker 1:FGM no, no, no, the whole, you know, imbalance of human empowerment.
Speaker 3:What I can say is because there are people who are?
Speaker 1:taking advantage of the whole process. I'm not saying women should not be regarded as equal. Actually, I've seen good, good, uh, you know, intellectuals, brilliant ladies, right, yes, and by the way, these ones, they, they don't write on the narrative of I'm a feminist, I'm this and that. No, no, no, they just put in work.
Speaker 1:Exactly, they, they, they go the, the extra mile they say, when they have, they need assistance, yes, and they always show up. But then these other caliber yes of of guys who make a lot of noise, they want to be on the forefront at anybody's expense, okay, and that's where I think we need to correct that. And I'm not saying that, you know, in every process there is always a correction.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, perfection. Just put you know the right perspective, even for a little girl child that is out there.
Speaker 1:True true. Not to believe that it will be given to them. For sure they need to work for it.
Speaker 3:That's it, and I think also, now that you're part of this Rotary Club, it's to try and make sure that things are in a better place, so that they are sustainable and all that. Yes, true, so yeah, on that perspective of women culture, as I said, because they were intentionally not allowed, To lead. Intentionally. Not that they were not capable to, but they were intentionally not allowed to.
Speaker 1:So the fight has been. So. The disqualification number one you are a woman. Yes, just the fact that you are and you can't change that and you can't change You're born that way.
Speaker 3:So there was that fight to now intentionally allow them into spaces, because even the church look at the church, the priests, not women, men. So it is an aspect that has been playing in society not to intentionally not to include them, intentionally, not to have them there, and so it's all coming down to it doesn't serve humanity better. You see what I mean, why so? Because you know something I don't. I cannot claim I know everything. And if this person knows something I don't.
Speaker 3:I cannot claim I know everything, and if this person knows something I don't, why would I not include them into my space for me to be able to deliver that which needs to be delivered? If this person can add value to me to be able to perform better in life, why not include them into my space for that to take place? Because, at the end of the day, I want to live my life to the best of me. You see, remember place because at the end, of the day.
Speaker 3:I want to live my life to the best of me. All right, you see, remember the jishinde ushinde. Yes, defeat yourself for you to be better, yes, you see what I mean for you to win, you have to win yourself to win beat yourself, defeat yourself, discipline yourself for you to win. Yes, so so it's not an external issue it's an internal issue.
Speaker 3:Yes, so it being an internal issue, and if this person knows and remember the story I told you about a 12 year old, 17 year old working with the defense system to build a stronger defense. It's all about inclusivity. These kids are good. They are champions. Nobody can beat them. Why will I not work with them?
Speaker 1:From that point I understand, but from the virtue of being a man or a woman, I don't. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:The intentional part of not including them is what was not making sense. Intentional Because in this case it could also be in the African intentional thinking why would I include this child into this space? And I'm in the defense system. You see that narrative is still the same Because still in the African thinking setup there's certain circles. You cannot sit down and start talking.
Speaker 1:There's one thing that I want you to understand. Yes, that I understand. Maybe you can correct me. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm all wrong. Right, it's okay.
Speaker 1:I totally understand when it comes to qualification, competency, capability, yes, that every single human being, regardless of their gender, race, age and all these other aspects that we mentioned, Okay To be considered that they are capable. For sure, but anything else is just an agenda, and what that agenda is going to achieve, I don't know. And that's why now I'm lost, because if it's a matter of you know, we want to include women without even regarding if they're capable or not, or even making them ready to be capable.
Speaker 1:That's a whole issue. But also there's this argument that says they're not capable because over time decade and decade. We have not prepared them to be ready. So is the intention to prepare them to be ready or the intention is just to have them? Because if the intention is just to have them, then of course you are creating another problem of imbalance whereby we'll have maybe less competency. For sure we have seen, even with our MPs and governors right now already it's not even two months.
Speaker 3:Already we have issues with the counties and even what they're discussing you find it's really irrelevant.
Speaker 1:But I'm not saying, all women are like that, it's because maybe that woman is not really capable to do this, or maybe their intention to do this is different from what actually could help other people, so we have to get that out of the way.
Speaker 3:Qualification should be the aspect of it.
Speaker 3:There's no question about it. If this person is capable to do something, give them the job for the betterment of the society and the system itself, because, at the end of the day, that's what makes America great, by the way, because America will welcome you, and that's why you have people like Elvis Mwenda Kibiti helping with building technologies in that country, because that system has been built. Whoever is good, I don't care where you're from You're from Pluto, mars, whatever Jupiter, but you're good in this. Please, this is your home. Make it your home.
Speaker 3:In fact, you make your citizen immediately. You know what I mean. The point is they appreciate the excellence of work. That's why people like Akina Elon Musk were able to reach the extent they've been able to reach, whereby they're working with the Air Force on Space Force. This is a citizen.
Speaker 3:This is not a person who went through military, but he's a civilian who's proved he has the capability they don't have. So they bring him to the table. We will work with you because we want to be the best in this world and if you have what we don't have, we want you to be part of us Because, at the end of the day, it's about the best version of us, the competency, the skill, the talent.
Speaker 3:We want to be better than that country. We don't want you to go to that country Because if they see this, they will take you and that will make them better than us. So we want to be the best we can be. We want not our 67%, we want to be our 100. And if you make us reach that 100, we want you. So that should always be the bottom line Preparation and I think that's why this um girl reach out has been because, if you look back, that is from the club uh, oh no, you're talking going back to the club is different now that was a deviation.
Speaker 3:Oh, I see that was a deviation on the history of where it's come from and where we are right now, and it was just based on how culture has been over the years. Now, talking about the courses for Rotary, the courses for the Rotary, we have education. So equity in education, ensuring that all men get quality education, all men and women all humanity gets equal education in every part of the world.
Speaker 3:You do agree that that is definitely not in existence. Definitely we can even testify that there are places here we don't have schools and classrooms in our own country. The other day I was listening to an interview for the new um, the new mp for wajir south I think it was, and he was talking about them him needing 300 teachers immediately just to kind of create a bend. You know a mark? To be able for students to have somebody to teach them. They don't have teachers in Wajir.
Speaker 3:In Wajir. He said they don't even have an iota of TAMAC.
Speaker 1:In Wajir there are no teachers.
Speaker 3:Right, leave alone even teachers.
Speaker 1:There's not even TAMAC right now in this. How much did they get for this county thing for the last? I don't know, maybe 10 years? There you go, there you go, we come back to that now, devolution has not been perfected.
Speaker 3:It is a good cause, but it has not been perfected, which means accountability has not been to the level it needs to be whereby don't take a shilling. That belongs to the government. Leave it alone. Let it do its purpose, its work. If you look at the Western culture, a good example where I lived, the US, is that you cannot even touch a shilling will cause you to be prosecuted. You know what I mean. Not even that If I cannot reach my own counselor, trust me, that counselor will be impeached Just because my child cannot.
Speaker 1:You have to be reachable. You impeached Just because my child cannot.
Speaker 3:You have to be reachable, you have to be reachable, I put you in office to serve me.
Speaker 1:I put you in office. You are my employee.
Speaker 4:I employed you my tax money is what's paying your salary.
Speaker 1:No, it's true, it's the reality of it, it's practical, it is the truth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the truth. Whatever you're using in terms of your car expenses every morning is money. The public is paying for your existence, literally for those five years. Your existence is from our pockets, so why should I be unable to reach you Starting from there? That's a very good question.
Speaker 1:People change numbers. Right now call your counselor. Tell me if you can get them Just after they won or lost whichever counts first, they are no longer reachable.
Speaker 3:I agree to that. But also that brings the point of the people we elect we ourselves we are the ones who put them in office.
Speaker 3:Why are we putting them in office? Do we know what we want before we put them in office? Because, if we know what we want before we put them in office. Because if we know what we want, it's easy for us to ensure the right person is in office. So initially it boils down to do I know what I want? Do I know how to get what I want? And is that what I did? Because of this, what happens is we put people in office concerning pressure, influence, because I don't know what I want. Good example For example, I go start one business in that corner, that part of the world, that particular corner. I start a hardware store.
Speaker 3:Give me two years, we'll have 20 hardware stores on that same line. Yes, why. People are not thinking out of the box. That's my point. Yeah, I'm going with what this and that and that and that person did and they made this and this money. Why don't I do the same and make the amount in pastes? You see what I mean. And this brings the aspect also of lack of collaboration lack of call it's competitive and a lot of competitors.
Speaker 3:That's the point, because what would happen if that person opened a hardware store and it did? Well, I come back, I do my market survey. Yeah, if he's selling that and he's making this margin, it serves me best to see what value addition he needs for his clientele to start a business that will add value to his business and not kill his margin and kill my margin. Yeah, that's where we are growing together as a society. So if he's selling all this kind of concrete, I I sell something. He doesn't sell that his clientele.
Speaker 3:Once they come from this shop, they will feel almost like a mandate to come to my shop to complete what they want as a unit. So it's an issue of that aspect of collaboration and not competitiveness. And, as I said initially, rotary Club, coming back to it, it was formed by professionals to identify the needs and once they identify the needs, they work as a unit towards eradicating whatever, or rather mitigating, or rather supporting systems in place to ensure that is achieved. So they have different courses. Yeah, they have the mother child care, which has been an issue for years and years, taking care of mothers, prenatal, postnatal care, which was also an agenda of the previous government, because we saw what the first lady the former first lady. Her initiatives were towards supporting maternal issues child issues.
Speaker 3:And then another is improving livelihoods. We have to improve livelihoods by ensuring there's equity. Whatever, what are the gaps in the society? Whatever those gaps are, then we as professionals, we come together as professionals to offer our skills to support that agenda, Support that agenda. I'm not coming as a person who okay, yeah, definitely that adds strength to it, but I'm not coming representing a company, but I'm coming with the objective of that company to support this agenda. We're all common on a part towards meeting a need. So it becomes our driving factor is we're kind of filling in the gaps which are not being filled in.
Speaker 3:For example, you know like, maybe the government is finding a challenge to fill this and the professional world is not able to reach this because they are not coordinating well with the policy makers. So where can we enable the entire process in order for this to be achieved, for the society to be better? Remember, at the end of the day, our goal is what? A better society for humanity. That's what our goal is. So, whatever the needs are, we come as professionals, policy makers, whatever our capacity is teachers.
Speaker 3:Because, you know, as I said, education is one of our pillars. So the teachers in that sector, they know where the gaps are, they know what needs to be done. So how can we work with the teachers to enable this and this process in the CBC to be perfected? So that becomes so, so that becomes so. Rotary is all about. We have those seven pillars. There's the wash systems. You know clean water, sanitation, and you know one of. Right now I'm the international service project director for what you call Lavington Eco Rotary Club. Lavington Eco Rotary Club is the first eco-based Rotary Club in Africa. We are the first one to start one Because environment was never an agenda under the Rotary Club in Africa. We are the first one to start one because environment was never an agenda under the Rotary International. They only had six pillars. So number seven we added environment.
Speaker 3:And the purpose of adding environment is because it's critical to our existence. It's even part of the UN SDGs. It's what ensures sustainability of communities and society. Taking care of that. We need the ecosystem, we need the biodiversity, we need oxygen. For oxygen, we need trees. For trees, we need good soil. For good soil we need all. It's a whole chain. So environment was critical, so we add.
Speaker 3:And so Lavington Eco Rotary Club in Kenya was the first in Africa, yeah, where I served as a project director in the last year. Our year starts in July, beginning of the year until June and then another year begins. So in the last year I was the project director. Now I'm the international service director, of which I also sit under what we call ESRAG. Esrag is now the National Body on Environmental Matters under the Rotary, so it's called Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group.
Speaker 3:So it's whereby anybody who cares about the environment, anybody who has a skill, a passion towards the same ensuring that the environment, the climate, whatever it takes, the biodiversity is being preserved and also mechanics of ensuring that the population kind of participating in that, because participation of all humans is critical for this to be a success. So on the international body. That's where I sit as the Africa lead communication coordinator on that, and so mine is to ensure that we reach the grassroots with the story Not just planting, but growing trees. Let's grow trees because people plant, they disappear, it dies, nothing happens. Let's have a curriculum in school that nurtures that in kids to be able to be planting seeds, to find joy in that, to find joy in agriculture.
Speaker 1:I'll ask a very important question. Sure sure. You mentioned trees. Yes, yes, I've seen this In primary school. We planted a lot of trees. I started, which is Motetvya Primary School. Okay, in my formative years of primary school. Okay, okay, but I was not involved in harvesting. Ah, okay, harvesting of the trees.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, are you supposed to harvest the trees?
Speaker 1:People harvest trees Okay, the ones I planted, they were harvested At least. So do you think this also discourages people to be involved in such programs Because this harvesting means a lot of things. You're involved in growing in nurturing but when it comes to now, reaping the benefits you are not part of that process.
Speaker 3:Yes, let's put it this way A human being produces about a carbon footprint of 40 something kilograms Through what. Through breathing A lot, your daily activities. Daily activities. You're going to use a car. This car will travel from here to here. There's carbon influence in that. Your eating habits will also contribute to that. Leaving the lights on also contributes to that. There's a ripple effect to it.
Speaker 3:So the tiny, tiny aspects, for example the clothes that you have. At some point they will not fit you, they become tattered and you decide that the dumpster is a good place for it. There's no circular economy around it in such a way to take it back into the economy space, so it's somewhere in a dumpster line.
Speaker 1:You know what I?
Speaker 3:mean so various aspects. We do add to that carbon footprint, so 40 something. Let's put it at 42. Now a tree will take about 50 years, 50 years.
Speaker 1:Which tree is this?
Speaker 3:A tree, any tree. That's just the general statistics. The indigenous or the Indigenous? Yeah, indigenous, indigenous. Okay, it takes a long time, it takes a while, yeah.
Speaker 1:So let me ask this then Should we be planting indigenous trees or just normal softwood tree? Let's go to indigenous as much as possible, and Rotary has been leading this in the district 9212.
Speaker 3:We have what you call the Million Tree Campaign, whereby we're advocating planting of indigenous trees. The reason behind it is because there's a certain value they do give to us. There's a certain biodiversity. They do contribute to the mangroves.
Speaker 1:It's good you've mentioned District 9212.
Speaker 3:And Ethiopia's lady Ethiopia's there too.
Speaker 1:He's a president, member of the Rotary.
Speaker 3:I think he was given one of those honorees because he's been a champion in that. Definitely he's doing a good job. It's a good example. It shows the reason as why I was giving you the numbers towards the carbon footprint. It's because the oxygen we are breathing right now it's because of a tree that was planted 50 years ago. 50 years ago, the tree is the oxygen we are breathing now. So whatever tree we are planting now is not even for us. Yeah, it's for somebody 50 60 years later to have that oxygen.
Speaker 3:So it brings down the thing of what we do. Are we doing it to add value to the society? You remember that conversation.
Speaker 1:But let me be controversial a little bit let's go for it so the oxygen only comes from the tree, or the oxygen exists. We just ensure that we maintain the you know the cyclone of of it, so it doesn't escape. After you know, the outer layer is depleted by a couple yes, yes, we found oxygen on earth.
Speaker 3:that's why we existed. And when we found oxygen, we had enough trees, the system of breathing, mechanics of it.
Speaker 1:So this is interesting because also I'm curious enough to know were there deserts Back then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, deserts were there in existence. I believe they were there in existence. They were built with the earth. I believe deserts were there because they contributed to a certain ecosystem. There was balance Point is there was balance and imbalance has been created by man, whereby we are more thinking of industrialization kicked in. So we need more sand, we need more soil. We need to construct more buildings.
Speaker 3:We have need for this. We do more mining. We do the quarries, we leave the quarries open. So there's a lot that humanity has contributed towards that imbalance. We are cutting trees why? Because you want charcoal, and that brings the aspect of now the thing of bioethanol becoming a trend.
Speaker 1:But there's lumbering, so it's not only charcoal, but there's lumbering.
Speaker 3:Yes, now, with the lumbering aspect, it has to be controlled. Now, the lack of control factors is what's causing the certification. You see, it's an issue of, as you said, we always need a leader to lead for there to be order in the society. The rule of law has to be there to ensure balance is in existence, because earth itself works with laws. Yes, it works with laws.
Speaker 1:Do you know? I feel like there's only one solution. You can tell me what Rotary is doing. Okay, Because you said it's going beyond planting trees.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, selflessness, that's it.
Speaker 1:Because if you're selflessness, you're not selfish. Yes yes. And you care about others and what is happening to the environment? Yes, and your mind is aligned.
Speaker 3:Even cutting a tree will take a lot of consultation and also you mitigate how, if I cut one tree, do I?
Speaker 1:plant. Five do I plant? One and all that and how long it will take to grow, so that next person who wants to cut a tree, they can have it. So does Rotary have a program to even educate people around this? Empower people about this.
Speaker 3:We do the advocacy aspect Now, like Loving Tonico Rotary Club. Remember we have the Rotary, we have the Rotaract and then we have the Interact. And then what? Us guys? We have taken it a step further. We are going into primary schools. Remember 4K Club was revived and it's good it was revived because there's that learning aspect from that level that becomes a habit later on in life For Kay. You see, the nurturing aspect is good also. What I mean by it's good also to humanity itself, because as a child, if I know how to nurture a tree, take care of a tree, pour some water, do some weeding aspect.
Speaker 3:I'm learning nurturing skills, which means, when it comes to dealing with the human beings, the same skills are transferable. So there's a learning that you've been doing. We started what you call the Eco Clubs. We have eight schools we've adopted in Nairobi and we started with Kawangwari Primary School. Kawangwari Primary School we have the non-plastic use. We have damsters for plastics, we have damsters for all others, even organic, and also we have a compost pit. We teach them how to be able to create compost pits using gardens to promote what we call organic farming, as in kind of deviating them from thinking that you have to use chemicals to grow food.
Speaker 1:Yes, gmo.
Speaker 3:Exactly. The point is. We're trying to tell them that you can easily grow nutritious foods, consume nutritious foods, and this has a health effect to basically becoming more healthy. Now, for example, I'm also part of a campaign that is fighting type 2 diabetes in Kenya. I'm part of a data think tank and an organization called Gordan that's leading in the Directorate of Research and Innovation in the Ministry of Agriculture, whereby we created a curriculum, and this curriculum is to be able to show the linkage between agriculture, health and education and ensuring that linkage is in existence. Why? Reason behind it is because there was a time, a period, whereby only four students had registered to study agriculture at the University of Nairobi. Remember, it's University of Nairobi. Why? Because the youth, young population is not seeing the need to study agriculture yet. This is what forms 33% of our.
Speaker 3:GDP, which means something is lacking, which means something is bound to happen not good for population. That's growing. Lack of food, it's going to happen. Malnutrition is already in existence. Now we are pushing the envelope further, because if you don't have people to advise the farmers because with devolution something was never devolved, and that is extension services so you find, uh one. Most of the farmers don't know if they have an extension service. They've never seen one after devolution.
Speaker 3:They've never seen one, and if you go to those offices, they tell you that they don't have the facilitation to do that yeah there's an appointed person, but that's 1 to 5,000 farmers.
Speaker 3:So you find that most farmers have never seen somebody coming to their farm to tell them your soil is not good, your soil cannot grow this. You need to grow this. This is where the market is. This is what you should focus on. Plant avocados, plant this, plant this. This is good for your soil. It doesn't exist. So my point is we are not enabling the the percentage, which is 33 to grow if anything, we're pushing it down yeah which means now another aspect comes into play the youth.
Speaker 3:The youth are running away from it, because when you think about farming, you think about poverty yes they grew up in such families. Daddy didn't have enough money to even buy me a sweater to buy.
Speaker 4:Buy me shoes to buy me socks, which is very true.
Speaker 3:Which is true why? Because you find that of the margin that is being made in agriculture, a farmer is only making 2%, 98% is going.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they make negative. That's my point.
Speaker 3:That's my point, because by the time you pay off your loans, you can't even afford anything else left. It's a sad story. So, which means that sector has not been enabled to empower the farmer and, as Lavington Eco Rotary Club, that has been also one of, and even as Rotary International, even as ESRAG. One of the pillars is called improving livelihoods, and that's one of it. How can we improve the livelihoods of these communities? What are the gaps, what are the challenges? How can we ensure there's equity in the society? So those are things that need to be addressed Now, when coming to the linkage, it's an issue of interest how can we have agriculture technology in place? Because if you're talking of this generation, you have to find a way to link the relevance of their schooling with what's in the field, the marketplace. What does the market need? We need soil testing mechanics that will not take two weeks.
Speaker 3:It will take two days it will take 15 seconds, of which one of the youth that I worked with at Kenyatta University was able to build. He built a soil testing kit called Shamba Assistant that gives you results in 15 seconds as opposed to two weeks, and this is something you can have, you can own, you can have it in your house or a cooperative can own, so when a farmer has it, they can easily lease out from each other, enabling another whole business aspect, commercial aspect to come into play. So, at the end of the day, as you can tell, we as Rotarians look to see where can we enable equity in the society For the farmers. What can we do? Agroforestry how can we help you to be able to, to, to nurture nature?
Speaker 3:and still, you know, produce the kind of food that's needed because, 37 percent of our soil in kenya is degraded, and sadly to say so. So if it's degraded, then what kind of quality of food are we producing?
Speaker 3:yeah is it good for export market? It's not good, for why? Because it doesn't meet this and these standards. There's a farmer know this, they don't know this. So you see, so as Rotarians, we come together to kind of mark out, map out what are the deficiencies to enable this equity in the society, to enable humanity to continue growing and existing. So, as I said, Levington EcoFocus was environmental matters, everything to do with the environment, not just growing trees but ensuring they're nurtured. So for each student in each school, we give them a tree to grow with. So this is your tree and we have mechanisms, measures, in such a way that we do monitor that. Now, the plastic waste, they put it together somewhere. There's a company that comes, collects and pays for that plastic. That money goes back to the students to have what you call free food, free lunch. You see what I mean. I see, so it becomes a whole ecosystem that's enabling itself. They're taking care of the environment.
Speaker 3:And guess what? The money that's coming out of this. Guess what's happening. It's feeding them, it's meeting their needs as students. We don't have enough pencils, enough books, we don't have kids, don't have sweaters. Guess what? This kit right here, as a result of your effort to add value to your own environment. We will take care of that problem for you. So we are working as a team collaboration here. You take care of that problem for you. So we are working as a team collaboration here. You take care of that. Let's find a way for this to take care of you. Excellent, you see what I mean yes.
Speaker 1:I think I get the point. Yes, yes. If someone is listening. How do you join Rotary?
Speaker 3:Rotary is easy. In every region there's a Rotary club. As I said, we have different pillars. We have the education aspect, we have the child and mother care, we have the wash aspect and then also now we have the environmental aspect that was added. Improving livelihoods is another aspect of it.
Speaker 3:We have Rotary Clubs that have even started circles in communities to enable those communities to be able to build themselves instead of waiting for a handout from the government. We have Rotary Clubs, like here in Nairobi. Lavinton Eco is working with the CBO Mau Mau, and also it's working with the they're called. There's a CBO called Mau Mau in Kawangore, not the original one.
Speaker 1:I think that Mau Mau name should be patented so that people stop misusing it, because I think that is misusing it. Every time I hear Maumau there's something that comes to my mind. So when? I hear there's Maumau.
Speaker 3:Anyway, go on, it's okay. It's okay. Just pointing out now a club is. There are different clubs. There are 133 clubs. You're free to join In Kenya clubs.
Speaker 3:there are 133 clubs you are free to join, and so the point in Kenya there are 133 clubs in the district, in the district that is, kenya, ethiopia yes, yes, yes, so you are free to join the one that is in your locality, like in Nairobi, I think we are about 4 or 5 clubs, so you will find in. Maybe Kiambo. There is Moranga. You go to Kisumu you go to Malindi.
Speaker 3:The charges. Each club has its own requirements. Now the one that where I serve as a director just 15,000 yearly fee is needed, and that's basically to add to something called the foundation. There's a foundation pot. The foundation is to collect money from different clubs in order to be able to Remember, we're all fighting the same problem, we all meet in the same need and that's why we all collectively came together.
Speaker 3:So whatever we contribute as individuals, as clubs, goes to that cause, in addition to supporting what you're doing at the local level, also on the global level. So what happens with that? The Rotary also has grants, because we do get support from different institutions. We work with governments, we work with the private sector. Remember, it's all enabling meeting a certain need in the society. So there are those grants. For example, now when we are applying for a grant and we need more money than we ourselves have collected as a club, we go to that port and apply for a grant and remember the port is global, it's not just local. So we apply there and then we get. I know they spent about 87.5 million last year on grants US dollars or Canadian, that was US dollars, that was last year Across the global.
Speaker 3:So, which means you can tell that a lot is happening on the ground. So this is what contributes to that. So there's that value addition of the network you kind of get from the club. You get I mean, we have all members from our offices, from the office of the president to those in the AU, to those in the UN, like the work that you're doing as Lavington Eco Rotary Club. You're working with UNEP in the cleanup of Kiricho River.
Speaker 3:We started somewhere just to create a demo example of what can be done with that community. Part of that because we have to teach them to take care of their own environment, and so we involved NMS at that time, because there's a time that even the president himself the former president put a mandate, an order for Nairobi, the NMS, to be able to take care of cleaning up of the river. It's something that has to be continual because we have informal sectors, we have houses being built along the rivers, so it's an issue of now. Urban planning comes into play, because you know sad stories when we were cleaning those rivers, do you know we were finding medical waste in those rivers, which means there's a hospital. That's dumping, absolutely. So implication is, laws are not being. They're there but they are not being followed, which means enforcement becomes another whole, different story altogether.
Speaker 1:And to be fair, by the way, we need to fix our drainage.
Speaker 3:Big time.
Speaker 1:Yes, because you know, we can put all these well-sounding policies talk but if we don't implement some of this?
Speaker 3:and it's not rocket science, it's easy.
Speaker 1:In Nairobi, drainage is becoming a menace.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:You know you go to the airport. The drainage is leaking.
Speaker 3:You go to the airport the drainage is leaking. You go to the street drainage is leaking.
Speaker 1:Lovington itself drainage is leaking can we find a proper way, because once we solve that, then we reduce even what goes to the Nairobi river, and then start maybe emphasizing and empowering people and educating them the importance of garbage. Not only that, but also even some of the funds that we have, or the avenues that we have to get this. Can we have garbage?
Speaker 3:collection points which are reachable, because I'll be honest with you if this was implemented really well no one in their right mind would throw garbage anywhere whereas there is a place to dump it.
Speaker 1:If you travel from here to.
Speaker 3:Nakuru, for example how many places you can get to throw your garbage Unless you stop in a petrol station, but you can have these things along the highway or even in the vehicle itself. That becomes a habit. But think of it this way and I want to be fair to even the people with the that becomes a habit. It has to become a habit.
Speaker 1:But think of it this way and I want to be fair to even the people with the vehicles and all that Gotcha. That if say a bus which has 100 people traveling from here to. I don't know.
Speaker 3:Nakuru, nakuru.
Speaker 1:Okay, if each of those thrills a teen or something what kind of damage collection you need right, Exactly so we need to also, since government puts things in place and I think, even private sector can contribute to this. Yes, I see people like you know, telcos, I'm sure even Africa Stocking all these you know, private companies.
Speaker 3:Yes, can we also help out in terms of how do we ensure that you know such?
Speaker 1:things are implemented.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, it's possible. I remember when I was growing up, we had city council. We had city council beans. I don't know which year you were born, but in my time we had city council beans. They were metallic. Every house had one.
Speaker 1:I wasn't born in the city, so I don't know if you understand that.
Speaker 3:But in the city itself, nairobi city council we had bins and they were metallic and they had scheduled days of being picked up and emptied. At some point I don't know what happened to Nairobi City Council that stopped we had people who were sweeping roads every single day.
Speaker 6:This was then when I was growing up as a child.
Speaker 3:So later on, when I started seeing it's going, things are not people realize they could harm without working that's what they realize because if the corruption is at the top, then,
Speaker 4:it trickles down if you're getting your billions there I'll be getting my 10k, whatever, without doing anything so.
Speaker 1:I think it's more of accountability discipline from the top, because, and again, I repeat what I was trying to put across here Human or the nature itself it has to be balanced right. Like if you see, if you are the head of the house, for instance, if your kid sees you're doing something, not saying it doing it, of course they will do it at some point. They will If they see you saying something they will say it at some point, but let's stick to the doing. So, even our leaders that you have elected the leaders who are appointed, because leaders are everywhere.
Speaker 3:We need to serve by example. Yes, right.
Speaker 1:And everything will follow. It might not happen on the ground the way you see it at the top, but it will happen in a way that actually will affect even at the top.
Speaker 3:I agree also.
Speaker 3:Yes, I agree, yeah, so definitely there's a responsibility that starts from the top and there's that push and engagement that forces the top to do what needs to be done. Yes, so if things don't work out the way they're supposed to be in a certain society, certain community, certain neighborhood, if we ourselves come together from people in that neighborhood and do something about it, it has a ripple effect of growing and growing to a point whereby, by the time this leader is coming to look for my votes, we have a voice. There's something I cannot build in Runda Estate. There's a certain house I cannot build in Karen. Why? Because the people in that neighborhood association will not allow it. They are working as a community, as a family. This is our standard. We have to maintain this. This is us.
Speaker 3:I mean they cannot allow skyscrapers in places. You see what I mean. They cannot allow skyscrapers in places. You see what I mean. They cannot why? Because they themselves have identified what needs to be done and what needs to be in existence and what cannot be allowed. They know that. So the point is grassroots does work and it's far much more effective. If the top-down doesn't work, the bottom-up has a way of forcing the top down doesn't work. The bottom up has a way of forcing the top down to work.
Speaker 1:Does this now boil down to leaders without a title whereby everyone takes the position? Of trying to provide the change they seek. Yes, but you see, I feel like that is distributing the blame and not the power. Because, you know, when you expect everything from everyone, you get nothing from no one. You know that right. This is scientifically, psychologically everything. We also need to be careful with the bottom-up approach, whereby we like. Even someone actually said this and I think I relate to it. Yes, yes, when there was campaigns, it was bottom up.
Speaker 3:It was the border guy, the mamboga and everyone.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, but now that they you know someone is getting this docket.
Speaker 3:We didn't see that. We didn't see that happening. To be honest, yeah, we saw billions. We saw billions rewarded, right.
Speaker 1:And even those who, in one way or the other, got there in one way, they didn't get it right so we need to be very honest, because even I'm not advocating that someone who was not qualified should have been appointed, or I'm saying that we have smart guys like engineer Felix.
Speaker 3:We have other people so many of them that we know, but they never get there because certain politics, so we need to be very honest with our composition. Not only in Kenya, by the way.
Speaker 1:It's everywhere, because once we do that, we're able to manage our resources better we're able to plan, better we're able to implement better Because everyone is living purpose driven life. That's something I think people need to get to align with to an extent that we are way forward thinking
Speaker 1:as opposed to backward thinking, and what I mean by this forward thinking is like what will happen 60, 50, 100 years from now, because we need to stop repairing right now. As you said, it's like a tree If we plant one here, yes, it will be harvested, it will help, it will be all these advantages will be seen in the future yes, but what you are living right now is a microwave results yes, put in five seconds you get something that is ready.
Speaker 1:I see what you mean, but how healthy, yes, how important that is yes, so maybe even now that you're in a position of influence with the road tracks you have your experience. You're an maybe even now that you're in a position of influence with Rotaract you have your experience.
Speaker 3:You're an engineer, so you're doing all these things.
Speaker 1:It takes collective approach?
Speaker 3:Yes, it does. I agree to that Honest. Collective approach is not honest and that's why I asked this intentionally.
Speaker 1:We plant we grow, but who harvests it?
Speaker 3:That was a trick to make us think outside the box.
Speaker 1:It's true If we plant together, let's harvest together.
Speaker 3:Let's know that this is for all of us. That brings something of interest. This is the carbon credit. The carbon credit is a mechanism of rewarding, awarding, planting of trees or doing things that are promoting the good existence of nature and having monetary value attached to it why it's of interest right now.
Speaker 3:It's an economy on itself. We have the Paris Agreement, we have the Kyoto Protocols and Agreement and the point is it was realized that there has to be an incentive for people to get engaged in that. As you said earlier on, I plant the tree, but who harvested? How did it benefit me or the community? If I know that this tree I plant, I'll be getting a certain monetary value out of it by nurturing it. Do you know? I will be watching this tree till the day I'll pass it to my child to keep watching it because there's money coming out of it.
Speaker 1:That's how I knew my trees were harvested without me, because every time I passed that primary school I used to keep track of how tall is it?
Speaker 3:Is it doing well? Do I need to involve myself? But I realized also after some point, when it was big enough, because maybe 15, it was a softwood tree 15 years you can harvest it.
Speaker 4:So I realized, okay, they are younger trees, but now the bigger ones are no longer there, and I understand by the
Speaker 1:way because they used them to build. When I was there, the classes were wooden. Ah, okay. So they upgraded to storage. What do you call these?
Speaker 3:Shelves.
Speaker 1:The one that are made using stones.
Speaker 3:I see what you mean here Right, so they use those as a pillars rather than buying the hood. I see, I see so.
Speaker 1:I totally understand, but at least they could have you know find a way to say you know what we appreciate? You guys planted these trees. This is what it has done, and maybe we could have even planted more Contributed Exactly process is very, very important and that's why you see when the previous government, that was the first government to implement- 2010 constitution had a lot of problems with consultation and public participation, because we assume, because in leadership. We are the bosses, and it's supposed to be. We should be the servants.
Speaker 4:And every time and I'm not saying that in every nitty gritty thing.
Speaker 1:You need to call the whole constituents and ask them what they think.
Speaker 6:All I'm saying, saying that in every nitty-gritty thing, you need to call the whole constituents and ask them what they think.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying is that be as involving, be as transparent and also embrace feedback.
Speaker 3:That's a point. In fact, in Mangu High School, of all the Catholic schools in Kenya, we were rewarded for having the best environment program.
Speaker 1:We've nurtured, so many trees.
Speaker 3:In fact even the cooking aspect is all renewable energy, because we are embracing the issue of carbon footprint, having as less as possible in that environment and also the school having an ecosystem that kind of takes care of itself. We are not planting to cut, we are planting to ensure there's enough oxygen. For sure, the aesthetic appeal of it. Also, the soil is good enough, because I mean the trees do contribute nitrogen to the soil, so which is good for farming aspect, we have the agriculture students who can be able to kind of father up on that one. So the point of even starting from the primary school to teach them those habits in such a way they can is, you see, they say, train a child and then when they're of age they will still always come back to it. Yes.
Speaker 3:You know other than just running away from it. Yeah. Because what you know is what you do, yeah, and that becomes their normal. So that's why Levington Eco schools, which has been impactful in some way, as you can tell, the monetary value that comes from the plastic sold is feeding them.
Speaker 1:The school feeding program. So they see the importance of collecting the plastic bottles, they see the value. Actually they can collect them from somewhere and bring them here to get more money, for sure. You see, what I mean.
Speaker 3:And that's what I was talking about the incentives of the carbon footprint, the carbon credit. Right now I know a carbon credit can go up to $300 per carbon credit, which is one ton of carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1:How do you measure that?
Speaker 3:There are many ways of doing that measurement. For example, if it's maybe motorbikes, you know these motorbikes produces this for this amount of fuel. So instead of putting this fuel, what about if it's an electric bike? Then how much of that CO2 have you prevented from going back into? The air.
Speaker 3:You see what I mean. There are certain trees, like the mangroves. They produce more oxygen and they absorb more carbon dioxide. There are measurements for that, there are algorithms set in measuring that, and there are institutes and there are bodies that are certified to ensure the credibility of that, and the institutes and their bodies that are certified to ensure the credibility of that.
Speaker 3:So, there's a whole system surrounding the credibility of the measurement in such a way that even communities can come together. In fact, the pilot down in the coast of Kenya, in Mombasa, there's a group that was growing mangroves and a certain organization which was a pilot was successful and whatever CO2 was being kind of measured that is being absorbed by these trees, the mangroves, the money is given to that society, that community, to build themselves.
Speaker 3:So, it becomes an incentive that whatever we are getting from these trees is monetary value that we can use as a society, as a village, to build that thing which we need in order to improve our existence, to improve our livelihood. So the monetary value is important.
Speaker 1:But that can only grow in coastal regions, right.
Speaker 3:That's the mangrove water bodies. Yeah, but now we have mangroves. They promote 10 times more biodiversity. That's why they have greater value than other trees. Yeah, I see. Yeah, they promote more, they absorb more CO2. Carbon sequestration is absorbing of CO2 into the soil, so they do much of that compared to other trees. So that does not negate that the other trees can also need to be planted, because there's a value they're giving too, do you?
Speaker 1:think a government initiative, like what Rwanda is doing with the electric cars. You know, I understand. Also, if you buy a more newer car, it's zero taxation and there are more new cars in Rwanda than any other place in East Africa. Also, there are more electric cars in Rwanda than any other country in East Africa. It's a pretty small country, but it's really noticeable. Even motorbikes, because they use a lot of border borders and motorbikes so such initiatives, how can we scale them, even with these districts and whatnot?
Speaker 3:Easy, easy, easy. In fact, right now we have a number of organizations promoting the same in Kenya Use of electric motorbikes. We have, like the EcoBorder, there are so many of them. It's an issue of what kind of incentives can they get to continue that industry. Manufacturing industry, you know manufacturing industry. They are heavily taxed.
Speaker 3:So if there's a way, you know the reason as to why we started having so many motorbikes on the road it's because there's tariffs that had been removed for them to be imported, and also when it came to the solar panels, and that's why Kenya, right now, 90% of our energy is renewable energy.
Speaker 3:So there was a time solar panels were coming without being taxed. I don't know what it is right now, but such kind of incentives promote that kind of behavior and it's good. Now Rwanda can easily claim that you see, the number of vehicles we have are this, and they all use this, and the kind of size of engine they have is this, and therefore the amount of carbon dioxide that is not being produced by these cars is this amount. You see that calculation is easy and so they can easily claim because you see, if they are part of the Paris sign agreement, you can easily come to now Google. Tell Google these are the carbon offsets we have. Can you buy them from us? Because all the companies that have signed up, like Shell, we have all these companies that have signed up to be able, because this is how much carbon dioxide their manufacturing sector does produce. So they have to come up with a way to reverse that. And since they cannot grow all these trees and see they still have to continue, maybe using coal to some level, then they come and buy carbon offsets from these organizations, these countries, these companies these communities so they put the money there in order to justify them to continue doing the stuff that is, avoiding co2 in the air yeah you see what I mean I see what you mean
Speaker 1:yes, yes and uh, without further ado. This brings us almost to a close. That was a very good, good conversation, uh. That needs to what needs to be happening constantly, and I would like, as any other guest I've invited here, uh, to give us a parting shot mine is easy mine is easy the environment we live in, um let's find a way to to make it better yeah it doesn't take too much.
Speaker 3:Um, people still have the habit of throwing things everywhere and anywhere. Um, take a habit, a habit of being conscious of what you throw where you throw I know some things people have learned over the years since they were kids. But it takes one person, two people, three, three people, four people to be conscious of their environment.
Speaker 3:We all want a better environment and it's not the work of the government to do that, but it's our own responsibility to ensure we have a better environment. So let's join Rotary Club or join the efforts of other people like SRAG, which is an international body, and who are enabling that ecosystem and that behavior to continue.
Speaker 1:Amazing stuff that was Engineer Felix Karioki. And this is Africa's Talking Podcast. Africa's Talking Customer Conversations. Africa's Talking Powers Conversations across Africa. We empower the communication between businesses, governments and organizations of all sizes and their customers or citizens on our SMS, ussd, airtime and voice gateways and APIs, ensuring that Africa Stalking supports GDPR data compliance. Communication on our future ready customer solution, our data platform called Illyrian. And, in collaboration with Impact Masters, bringing you impact conversations around tech ecosystem with Africans who are making moves, shakers, and doing it actually. Not just talking about it, but just doing it on the ground. And each and every other time we converse, we try to influence and change your mindset in thinking Not only thinking, but believing that Africa should be the leader in every angle, because we got it. We have the talent, we have the skills. We just need to believe in ourselves. Thank you so much. Until next time, I'm your host, michael Kemadi or MK, if you want. Thank you.
