Tuesday 5 April 2011
Leven in Zuid-Afrika
Sunday 21 November 2010
Back to risk management!
Last month I got an e-mail from SharePeople (http://www.sharepeople.nl/en/home) with the blunt but somehow intriguing question: “Do you want to go to Ethiopia for a project?”. As a bit of background – SharePeople is an organisation in the Netherlands that sends professionals and managers from Europe to developing countries to bring expertise in short projects. I had contacted them at the beginning of the year when we were still staying in the Netherlands, to see if they might have a nice project in South Africa. Well, a few months later no project around Pretoria but an opportunity in Addis Ababa. And since things should go quickly, ten days later I landed in northern Africa.
The deal is that SharePeople provides a basic training on “what does it mean to go and do a development project” - which we had already done via PSO on account of Marjolein's project ;-). The professional gets him- / herself to the country where the project is, and the organisation/NGO in that country provides accommodation and tasty local food!
My organisation is Gasha Micro Financing S.C. (http://ethiopiabook.com/banks-and-finance/financial-institution/gasha-micro-financing-sc-14088.html), which provides micro loans and micro savings both in Addis Ababa and some of the rural areas around the city. The project was to develop a total risk management policy for the organisation, as ordered by the National Bank of Ethiopia. Now that is a bit much for me to cover, as my experience is in credit and
market risk at large banks, while you also need to consider operational, liquidity and strategic risk. And things you take for granted at a bank in the Netherlands (computers, databases, e-mail, electricity) can be more of a challenge at a Micro Finance Institution in Addis Ababa. Although the power outages were not that frequent (having a laptop helps!), internet is only available via the mobile network and can be very slow. That means that PC and PC skills are still relatively new things, and not widespread. For Gasha and its 6 branches spread around and outside the city, this means that the loan administration is not digitized but mainly on paper at the branch offices. So developing a risk management system means hard work on making the basic information available to management.
The places I've seen where Gasha is active are the Sandafa satellite branch about 30km outside of Addis, as well as the DebraZeit branch and its satellite which is about 80km out of Addis Ababa in a beautiful rural setting (visited a livestock market!). It was great to see that some of the entrepreneurs use the loans to buy Holsteiner cows, or fertilizer and teff seed. Because what is Ethiopia without teff to make the famous injera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injera). It is important to remember of the approximately 85 million inhabitants of Ethiopia, less than 4 million live in the biggest city, Addis Ababa. So especially from an air-plane you can see the vast areas of small agricultural plots where most Ethiopians live. So micro loans to bridge the time between the outlay for seed and fertilizer and the income from harvest, is vitally important for many Ethiopians.
So what did I do in two and a half week at Gasha? I got a crash course in how a Micro Finance works, the challenges they face, but also the importance of helping their clients. Digging through the procedures used, and the rules that the National Bank of Ethiopia wants to impose (http://www.nbe.gov.et/bankrisk/guidelines.htm) took up the first days.
And interviewing the people at the head office on what information was available, what they would like to see and how we can build a simple risk management function. In the second week I visited two branches, and went into overdrive to build a basic database in MS-Access and Excel sheets that can be used for data-entry with added checks and balances to make sure the inputs are correct. This will drive the risk management reports. And of-course worked on the draft of the policy! Time was too short, unfortunately, so when I finish writing this post I will get back to writing more of the policy.
So – some ongoing work but also a lot of great memories of Assegder, Nebiyeul and all the other people at Gasha who welcomed me and gave me lots of tasty injera and tibbs, plus very very strong coffee! And for Petrus for teaching me that you need at least 5 tea-spoons of sugar in your (small) cup of tea or coffee.
Later I may show you more of my touristy experiences as well!
Thursday 7 October 2010
Today is the day!
Het heeft 5 lange maanden geduurd...
En ik dacht nooit dat ik dit ooit zou zeggen, maar: HET REGENT!!!! JOECHEE!!
Er werd al weken over gepraat en deze week waren er al een paar dagen dat de hemel donker werd en het begon te waaien. Toch leverde dat elke keer geen of maar een paar spatjes regen op. De aarde had het zo hard nodig; al het gras dat niet elke dag water kreeg van een tuinman was dor en geel, de lucht was droog, luchtvervuiling bleef maar hangen. En nu zou dat allemaal over moeten zijn!
Klein nadeeltje is wel dat auto rijden nu even wat gevaarlijker is... Dit is namelijk hoe al het vuil en olie en alles van de afgelopen 5 maanden nu over de wegen stroomt (zie de strepen in het midden van de weg):
We hebben duidelijk weer wat geleerd: winters zijn heel droog in Zuid-Afrika! En nu is het dus officieel lente. Jacaranda city (ofwel Pretoria) wordt zo genoemd door de vele Jacaranda bomen die hier staan. In de lente krijgen deze bomen paarse bloesem. Nu dus! En dat ziet er ongeveer zo uit:
Sunday 26 September 2010
Tripje naar Nederland
Zie hier een screenshotje van onze – lang niet complete - Google calendar voor de eerste week (en de tweede was niet veel anders).
Als mensen hier ons vragen hoe het was, zeggen we dat we naar 2 verjaardagen (waaronder onze (schoon)vader's 60e), 1 bruiloft, 1 vrijgezellendag, en 3.5 nieuwe baby's geweest zijn. Hele bijzondere gelegenheden allemaal, incl. een quiz over het leven van Marjolein's vader, een ruilspel waar een luciferdoosje uiteindelijk een erotisch parfum, twee ballonnen, en een Crocs-pinnetje opleverden, en een bezoekje waarbij we niet wisten of we een dikke buik, een babytje, of helemaal niemand zouden aantreffen... (we waren precies een dag te vroeg om Emily te kunnen ontmoeten)
Hier de schattige baby'tjes die we wel hebben mogen zien al:
Fenna
Valerie
Marylou
We hebben Nederland van Groningen tot Vaals bezocht, hadden ochtend-, middag- en avondslots, en waren heeeel blij dat we Cees zijn auto zo veel mochten gebruiken. We hebben het heel fijn gehad, maar hadden ook nogal behoefte aan nog een vakantie toen we terug waren. En gelukkig hadden ze hier bedacht dat vrijdag Braai Dag was! Dus genieten we nu van een heerlijk lang weekend, hebben we vrijdag gebraaid bij vrienden – subliem lekker dat vlees: Jummie!, zijn zaterdag naar een Cricket wedstrijd geweest (Twenty20, da's dus de korte versie: maar een uurtje of 3) en vanochtend lekker wezen tennissen. Nog steeds niet heel rustig, maar tussendoor hebben we toch het gevoel gehad dat we op adem konden komen: lekker uitslapen, lang ontbijten, huis zomer-klaar maken (wat vooral betekende dat we wat zijn gaan schoonmaken en de winterkleren door de zomerkleren hebben vervangen in onze kledingkast). En nu voelen we ons heel rijk dat we zoveel lieve mensen kennen in Nederland en dat we ons zo heerlijk thuis voelen hier. Wij wensen verder niks!
Oh ja, behalve te vertellen dat Marjolein op haar werk met 3 andere organisaties samen de tender gewonnen hebben voor een Infodev (Wereld Bank) project om een Mobile Applications Lab op te zetten. En neem maar van ons aan, dat is goed nieuws!!!
Sunday 15 August 2010
ADSL for the win!
Later vandaag en echte blog update - way overdue...
groetjes
Joost en Marjolein
2010 FIFA World Cup (tm)
First thing to relate is the awesome time we had during the tournament up to the Finals. When we arrived in South Africa all the buzz was already here: one of the radio stations had a countdown top 100, everyday in the morning show they would play a song with a number in the lyrics that was the number of days until the start of the World Cup. And about one week before the tournament they came to the conclusion that the official countdown clock on the FIFA website was wrong, as that seemed to be counting the days until the opening Concert (Thursday) and not the opening match on Friday. And that with FIFA's headquarters in watch-making Switzerland...
Then there were the scarfs, beanies, tea-mugs, wooden statues, flags, big glasses and car-mirror-covers (those are really cute!) mainly in South African flag patterns. Question one: how many and which colours in the SA flag? Five: red (earth), blue (sky), yellow (gold), black and white (to unite the people). But more difficult: does the red or blue side go on top? We debated for a while and decided to first check before we put our wing-mirror-covers up. It is red on top. But before and during the 2010 FIFA World Cup(tm) you saw street vendors on every corner selling this stuff. And half the country also had a yellow or green Bafana Bafana (the Boys - the SA soccer team) shirt. Which you of course wore on Soccer Fridays - even to the office. For those interested, the other sports teams in this sports crazy country are the Proteas (cricket) and the Springboks (rugby).
But then it finally arrived - the Kick Off concert that is. Pres. Zuma was there, Arch-Bishop (retired) Tutu (see video), some soccer players (including Christian Karembeu who was introduced as a rugby player with a name I've forgotten) and the musical stars: Alicia Keys, Black Eyed Peas, John Legend and Shakira in all her back-breaking Colombian glory. But also a host of African acts, like Hugh Masekela (THE jazz legend of SA), Freshly Ground (we like!), the Parlotones, and K'Naan (remember the Coca Cola commercials? "When I get older..."). Very cool, and all this in the middle of SoWeTo in Orlando stadium!
Now, why do we talk about the 2010 FIFA World Cup(tm) all the time and not just "the World Cup". I don't know, but that is what the guys on radio and TV kept doing. And I saw _a lot_ of matches (nice not to have a job sometimes!) but always it was the same. I swear they even found a way to pronounce the trademark (tm) symbol. Among the rest of the very restricted vocabulary we had "they come onto the field of play" and "the ball hits the back of the net". Even the goals that went into the roof of the goal, still had to be in the "back of the net". I still wake screaming this phrase some nights...
Luckily we had a true World Cup visitor (Nai Jai) to share all this glory with. We went to Netherlands - Denmark (we won!) and Brazil - Ivory Coast, both in SoccerCity - the amazing new stadium. For the Netherlands - Denmark we sat about 4 rows away from the field by the corner flag and had a really good view of the players - see the picture on the left of Sneijder at "our" corner flag. But because we sat so low, trying to figure out how far the players were from the goal was a bit tricky... Oh, and it was cold. Very cold. No, really really really cold. They do have winters here in South Africa, no joking.
And then of course the Dutch team kept winning. So we went to the fan-park in the cricket grounds and lay in the sun. And the Dutch won. And we went to the bar and cajoled the owner on showing the Dutch match on the big screen and Denmark-Japan on the small one. And we won. And then there were the quarter and semi-finals and we kept on winning. So Marjolein starts to get the Oranje-bug _really badly_ and begins to browse EBay for tickets to finals. But all way too expensive and unreliable. Until Saturday morning one day before the finals, when we get woken up by a telephone call at half past seven. Some American she had been e-mailing with: he has just landed at OR Tambo and the guy who was supposed to buy his tickets has bailed on him. If we were still interested?
I don't think anybody has ever gotten into their car and drove to the airport quicker than we did that morning: because the guy was not going to the soccer himself but flying onto Kruger Park in about 1.5 hours time. But we made it and after emptying the ATM (biggest bill it gave was R100 which is about EUR 10) we HAD TICKETS!!! That was a nice facebook status update. So we were there, but not to witness a first win, but the third finals defeat. Still, we will keep the flag flying and who knows: maybe in 20 years time we will win!
Oh, one more thing: things that were a "fail" during the World Cup: Zakumi, Diski (though Marjolein is now learning how to dance it) and body-paint (too COLD). A big win for the Vuvuzela though!
Monday 31 May 2010
Under African Skies
***
Under african skies
This is the story of how we begin to remember
This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein
Op 16 mei waren we alweer een jaar getrouwd en Joost had besloten dat dat gevierd moest worden. Marjolein wist alleen dat er iets ging gebeuren, maar wat??? Zaterdag de 16e mocht Marjolein dus rijden en las Joost kaart. Na 2,5 uur rijden (heel dicht bij dus - vinden we hier echt!) kwamen we aan: bij een wildpark!!! Onze eerste!!! May we present to you: Pilanesberg. Het was lekker luxe, met een heerlijk bad voor 2, een douche buiten in de zon, en een veranda met loungebank - maar dat was niet het belangrijkste, want dat waren natuurlijk de gamedrives! Laat 's middags tot in de schemer (kouhoud!) en de volgende ochtend bar vroeg. Vooral die eerste gamedrive was ge-wel-dig - met een mannetjesleeuw, giraffes, een neushoorn, springbokken, zebras, gnoes, pumba, en andere bokken. En de volgende ochtend nog een vrouwtjesleeuw op jacht, nijlpaarden, en nog meer neushoorns en andere dieren die we de dag ervoor al hadden gezien (tjee, nu al blasé ;-)).
Hier het bewijs!