Asante Sana Squash Banana

Time flies. And sometimes the most exciting things happens as you least expect it. After a long summer in Copenhagen looking for jobs I now find myself in Nairobi, Kenya.
I found a post on Facebook from an acquaintance, e-mailed the guy - had two Skype interviews - and 3 weeks later I was on the plane to Nairobi.

I've gotten a 3 month paid internship for an entrepreneur incubator. My role is to work with business development, by helping 8 tech starts ups improve their business model. Sort of.
What I'm actually doing is working closely with ManyattaRent, which is a Kenya tech-start up that enables tenants to pay rent to their landlords using M-Pesa, the famous mobile money payment system spearheaded here in Kenya.
It's so far going very well and I love what I'm doing. Last week I meet with the COO of Barclays Kenya, and this week I'm meeting with 3 other major banks to convince them that they should partner with us to provide this service to Kenyan tenants. All in all its extremely exciting stuff.

I'll try to write an update or two on this blog every now and then. And perhaps even upload some pictures. But for now you'll have to settle with this short post. Talk soon!

More on the India Jewel Scam

So, I did a bit of quick research on the web and found this description of the jewel smuggling episode we experienced.

From this site:

http://www.hansrossel.com/travel-information/india/scams-travel-safety.htm

Diamonds (Jaipur) : a very dangerous and professionally organized scam that have mostly happened in Jaipur, but now also have spread to Pushkar, Agra, Goa and
other touristy places. The basic idea is that diamond traders have to pay 250
percent tax when they export to the west. Anybody with a tourist visa can according
to the scam without problems buy and send diamonds to the west as gifts and
then avoid the tax. Around this story a whole theater play gets set up and
performed and the poor tourist gets one of the main roles...

Normally it goes
like this, you meet a very friendly guy and he invites you to a meal in a restaurant.
You meet up again and everything is going very well. After a week or so he
invites you to a family feast (wedding etc) where you enjoy yourselves together
for a few days, everything free of cost for you. The moment that they know
that they have your full trust the next phase starts. Your new friend tells
you that his family has a jewel business and all you have to do is to send
a packet of diamonds to your home in Europe, fly over there and give the packet
to the contact person in your home country and then fly back to India. Everything
paid for of course. The whole thing is done in a couple of days and as a thank
you you will get 10.000 dollar!

After having agreed to help your new friend
you pack the parcel together, bring it to the post and send off the diamonds
to your home address. Then comes the big surprise; since you now have a packet
filled with diamonds worth lots and lots of money soon arriving at your home
they need some kind of assurance that you don't just run off with the treasure
and never return. All you have to do is to sign a paper that gives them the
allowance to enter your bank account and get out at least 10000 euro the moment
that you try to escape. If you refuse to this the problems begin; verbal attempts
to convince you soon turn into threats and torture which might mean you getting
locked up without food or sleep until you finally, weakend by fright and exhaustion,
agree to sign. One Belgian guy was even forced to call to his bank to rise
the limit of his VISA card. Once you have signed they let you go and quickly
disappear, as well as the money on your account. The diamonds arriving to your
home turns out to be polished glass.

This scam seem to be very active, I was
approached by two different diamond dealers in Pushkar who tried this story and a young very friendly guy that first invited me and my friend to a cafe and then the following day wanted to take us to a very expensive restaurant. When we found it a bit too much and felt a bit suspicious he invited us to a coffee again and noticing our un comfort quickly told us the diamond story and the offer of the 10000 dollar. When we after a bit of doubting said no it was not a problem but it also meant the end of the friendship with the young friendly guy. Suddenly we were not interesting anymore and he stopped talking to us, when we left the cafe he did not say goodbye. I heard about many other travelers that had similar experiences, all with more or less the same basic scam story. One variety can be that they want to send carpets.

The scam is still active, and you should also take care in Manali:

"I just came home from India where I got mixed up in the jewel scam
you mention on your web site (I feel like a real sucker).

Anyway, I just wanted to inform
you that I was approached in Manali and then taken to Jaipur. So you might
wanna add Manali as another place the scam takes place.

They were also very interested in my guide book, which suddenly and silently
dissapeared while on the way to Jaipur. They obviously did not want me to read
about the scam.

I can, if you are interested, give you the name of the company.
But I suppose this was just a front for the operation, and that they change
this name all the time."

James, 6 june 2007

In the land of Cricket, Curry, Tigers and the Taj!

(Note: This post was writing two days ago, but was first able to upload it now)

It’s 3am. We’re doing 140 on a dark highway in the middle of Uttar Pradesh in a brand new white Tata Indigo XL. Our driver, Bilal, is seems very competent and have not fallen asleep yet, despite the task we set him up to. But before we go on, lets backtrack a bit.

I arrived in India late Sunday night on the 3rd of April. I had just spent an astonishing week in Dubai, a city that aside from the lack of gambling and prostitutes brings Las Vegas to shame. The best way I can explain Dubai is by comparing it to the old computer game SimCity, but with cheat codes giving unlimited money. The point of the game is to build a city and run it. You can alter everything in the geography, such as waterways, hills, islands, etc. to suit your urban needs. And Dubai is just that. A city built from scratch on a clean slate with almost unlimited supplies of money. If you want to see what Oil can do other than fuel your car, heat your house, cause wars in the middle east and environmental havoc in the Amazonian rainforest, then Dubai would not be a bad place to experience it.

This post is however not on Dubai, if I have time and energy – a post on Dubai will follow in somewhat irregular chronological order.This post is about my experiences so far in the land of cricket, curry, tigers and Taj Mahal.

After arriving in the airport and for the first time setting my foot on the Asian continent, I took a cab to the hotel I had booked in advance. Despite the late hour the streets of Delhi were filled with cars and judging by the speed and reckless driving it seemed like the driver thought of this trip as a matter of life and death. However not inconsistent with my experiences with drivers in both Africa and Central America.

Later that night I met up with Jeppe, one of my oldest and best friends from my childhood who was going to join my for a 2 week India adventure. We spent the first day in Delhi getting used to the city, the people, the food and the general atmosphere every place and country has. The feel you get from walking down the narrow alleys, the smiles or lack thereof you get from talking to people and other indications that give you an idea of what kind of culture you are finding yourself in.
I was warned numerous times ahead of my journey that I would find India dirty, smelling, crowded, and chaotic and should to expect lots of problems with my digestive system due to the low level of hygiene. So is this the case?
Well, it depends. Everything is relative and if you compare India to our comfortable western world - then yes, it is dirty here. It smells. It is at times extremely crowded and seemingly chaotic. The hygiene is not always, if at all, up to western standards. But compared to Western Africa or Central America I see little difference and in many ways find India a lot easier to travel in. I would in fact say it’s on of the easiest countries I’ve travelled in so far. An observation that both Jeppe and I have discussed several times and agrees on. There is a big industry catering to tourists, a growing middleclass, and a very good infrastructure that makes transport relatively simple. The major thing I’m surprised about is the low level of English or complete lack of English skills many people have. I was under the impression that everyone at least spoke some English. Apparently not. But we are still doing well and have managed to get by with smiles and sign language, when our spoken words did not suffice.

So, after a day in Delhi where also met my good friend Tess’s lovely and friendly aunt Lena, we caught a bus to the city of Jaipur. Known for temples, history, jewels and textiles. We spent 3 nights in the city.
I will not recite every fort we visited or every meal we had. But two experiences stand out to be shared. I went to an Indian wedding and I was asked to smuggle jewels.

On the Wednesday we stumbled into an American student who was taking a semester abroad in Delhi. We talked a bit and it turned out that he was going to a wedding the same evening. He organized so that Jeppe and I, together with 3 American girls we had met earlier the day, could come along.
The wedding took place outside in a big open court. At our arrival neither the groom nor the bride had arrived, but the area was crowded with people – and at the time we seemed to be the main attraction. 30 people standing in a circle around us observed our every move closely. Unlike other experiences I’ve had in Africa these weren’t only kids but young and middle-aged men. They simply just stood and starred and tried to get as close to us as possible. This fascination with “Whites” has occurred several times. Often people have come up and asked if they could take a picture with us. We don’t really know why. The places we’ve been so far have been fairly big on tourism so the sight of a white person is not exactly an unusual exotic occurrence.
After eating delicious food and watching the groom arrive with a tuba-playing band dressed in pink we decided to call it a day and go home and sleep.

Fast forward 24hours. After spending the day sightseeing various forts and palaces, a tuk-tuk (a little 3-wheled moped-taxi) driver, who’s cousin was getting married the day before, asked if we wanted to attend a party with his boss (he claimed to also work at a jewelry store). Out of curiosity of what an Indian party might consist of Jeppe and I accepted his offer and drove with him to a 5 star hotel where the “party” would take place. There turned out to be no party. Instead Jeppe and I were drinking beer with a person who owned a jewelry exporting/importing business and gave us an offer that we could (almost) not refuse. After spending about 30 minutes asking us question about our lives and what we were doing in India and how we liked it, he said that perhaps we could help him with his business.
According to him, the Indian government has limit for how much jewelry a business like his could export without facing export duties. In order to avoid these duties, he wanted to send some jewelry to Denmark in our name, since tourist (he claimed) could bring with them 15.000 USD worth of jewelry every time the left the country. So, in order to tap into these 15.000 USD duty-free tourist limit he told us that we could come to his business and “buy” jewelry for 15.000 USD. We wouldn’t in actuality buy anything at all, but he would issue a receipt so it looked like we had purchased a lot of jewelry. He then said he would let us watch as he wrapped the goods into a package and bring us to the postal office where he, in our name, with our passports, would send the jewelry back home to our own address in Denmark. In this way the jewelry would go through customs as a tourist purchase and not as actual business export. We would then pick up the same package back at our post office in Denmark and give it to one of his agents in Denmark in return for (what he claimed to be) 8.000 Euro (60.000kr) in cash. It almost sounds like too easy money to be true.
Neither Jeppe nor I have had time to research the Indian tax-code and export duties for Jewelry, but if you as a tourist are really allowed to purchase (and bring with you home) 15.000 USD worth of jewelry in India, and are likewise permitted to import a similar amount into the EU without facing import duties the plan sounded quite ingenious. And a major loophole in the tax-code system that this guy was eagerly trying to exploit. To be honest; even though both Jeppe and are I in sound financial standing, the though of so much money for doing so little, with a method that seemed almost foolproof (since we would have a receipt verifying the purchase) – actually made us considered the option for about 10 seconds. We of course both declined and said we would make no rushed decisions and 5 minutes later in the cab back to our hotel we could of course both see that this was never something we would get ourselves into. I am however still intrigued to see if this would actually work – not for the money, but too see if it is really possible to smuggle (which this clearly is) jewels this way. If so, it would be a major loophole in the tax-code and would be really interesting for a documentary. Most gemstones that go into jewelry are not, as diamonds are, registered under the Kimberly Process. This process ensures that diamonds are not smuggled from conflict areas where they could potentially fuel violence and war (as portrayed in the movie Blood Diamonds). There is no way to know where the gemstones used in the jewelry he tried to make us smuggle came from. They could very well come from India, but also from a vast range of other countries, peaceful as well as war-torn. Think about that next time you go by Tiffany’s and purchase a necklace or an earring with Ruby or Emerald. Perhaps the jewelry was smuggled with a tourist from India, and in that way depriving the Indian government from money it desperately needs to help improve the living standard for it’s people.

After our Jaipur experiences we took off to Ranthambhore (http://www.ranthamborenationalpark.com), a stunning national park known for it’s massive fort on the top of a mountain and it’s great wildlife. Tigers used to be the big thing here, but like many other wildlife parks in the world – their numbers have decreased as a result of poaching and loss of habitat.
After arriving by train we lodged into a nice hotel and booked a sunrise tour with a Jeep. The park itself (even without the tigers) is stunning and the roads often look like the ones used in Indiana Jones movies. With monuments, ruins, narrow bridges, steep hills and stunning nature everywhere. Our guide told us that there were presently only 46 tigers left in the part, so the chances of seeing one was limited. Luck was not on our side that morning, so no tiger decided to greet us in the park. We however saw loads of peacocks, dears, monkeys, birds and two leopards – making it an overall successful safari.

Later that day we jumped on a train towards Agra, the home of Taj Mahal. We were unable to purchase tickets with actual designated seats on them – which caused a bit of a problem. First we sat on the floor between two compartments in the AC wagon, but got kicked out since our ticket was only valid in the 3rd class section (despite our location on the floor). So once the train stopped, we took all our luggage and ran down the train and jumped into a 3rd class wagon. This wagon was completely packed with people. We ended up sitting/standing in the middle of a compartment for around 2 hours while everyone was watching curiously and wondering how two white people had ended up there. In the end we did however make it to Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal was stunning. No other way to describe it. Despite the many tourists, Taj Mahal is a monument that never fails to impress. We woke up early and entered at sunrise to avoid the majority of the tourist. For one reason or another, no one checked our ticket – so we decided also to enter in the afternoon, at which time it was packed with tourist everywhere.
In the evening we tried to catch an overnight train to Varanasi. Varanasi is located right on the Ganges River and is one of the holiest places in Hinduism. A “must-see” if you are in India we had been told. We had bought the tickets 2 days earlier on the Internet and despite being nr. 3 & 4 on the waiting list at the time of purchase, we had been assured that it would be no problem getting a seat. This turned out not to be true. After a lot of talking, haggling and running up and down the station with a helpful porter, we ended up not managing to get a bed(or a set) on the train. While trying to figure what to do now, a man came up and said he could drive us all the way to Varanasi overnight in his car for 8. 000 rupees (180$). Not having any better ideas we decided to at least go with him and check out his car, and see if was really up for the task. With us came to British guys, who had ended up in the same situation as we had. After talking a bit with him and looking at the car we decided that 2000 Rupees(45$) per person, was well worth the trip given our situation.

And this is where I’m sitting now. Dawn is slowly breaking and I’m very excited to experience Varanasi, right on the Ganges River – one of the holiest places in Hinduism, where ceremonies goes on all day. People are burnt in public on their way to heaven and where the extremely dirty water of the Ganges is suppose to cleanse ones soul. But first it’s time for a nap . . .Zzzzz..

(Internet here is too slow, so can't upload any photos. Will try to upload some later)

Merry Christmas

Le Voyage of West Africa

This will be short post, since im on limited time with a terrible keyboard at an internet cafe in Bamako, Mali. Left Ghana last tuesday after finishing my last exam on the saturday. The last days were spent packing and saying good bye to all the fantastic people i studied and lived with, many of whom ill probably never see again.
My travelling companion for this trip is Halea from UC Berkeley - whom I met at my time in Ghana and who, like me, have a big passion for travelling. In addition she, like me, had time to travel through west africa over christmas, so we decided to plan our "voyage" together. French is intruding my vocab here. A note my mother: Im getting by everywhere in french. Halea speaks less than me, so Im the french speaker, which doesnt say a lot. but hey - were still alive. !!!

So our voyage so far: We went from Accra to Ouagadougou, and then on to Mopti in Mali. From there we took a boat up the river to Timbuktu. Fantastic 2 day journey, on a public african transport boat. In other words Epic!. After a day in Timbuktu, which included visits to old mosques and a camel trip into the desert, we spent all day yesterday making our way to Bamako in Western Mali. (check google maps).

Tomorrow we are heading to Dakar, before leaving towards Banjul on the 25th, to catch a flight to Sierra Leone. in Sierra Leone we'll spend two weeks doing a mosquito-net-usage survey, as a follow-up to a distribution this past summer(see www.gmin.org).

When I have more time, and energy, ill elaborate more in detail. Upload some pictures, share some funny anecdotes etc. But that will have to wait for now.

Cheers,
Jacob and Halea in West Africa (currently Bamako, Mali)

Living the Dream: Motorbiking to Burkina Faso

It’s been a while since I last wrote, so I’ll try to summarize quickly what has happened down here in Ghana, before going on to talk about my amazing adventure to Burkina Faso.

As my last post revealed I purchased a motorbike a few weeks back. An American classmate of mine had bought one earlier on and seeing him drive one got me inspired to get one myself. For the irresistible price of 830USD(4600dkk) I got myself a brand new bike, including two helmets, international insurance, registration and some extra safety gear.

Since my Benin trip I haven’t left the country and in general the last couple of weeks had been very relaxed. In late October of my two friends, Jeppe and Tea, came down a week from Denmark to visit me. Having them around was great and we had a splendid week with Biking, Kayaking, Partying and Ambassador visits. It was also very nice for me to have someone come down and see how I live my life in Ghana. It’s nice to have someone who has a first hand understanding of what you say when you try to explain your daily consumption of plastic water or the completely chaotic streets of Accra.

The following weeks not much took place. The teacher-strike ended just as Jeppe and Tea left and school thus resumed the week after. There was a lot of work to do, since we all had to catch up from all the stuff we missed during the strike. The strike also caused the semester to be moved 3 weeks, so we are having all our exams in 1 week in early December, instead of over 4 weeks time as originally planned.

Then about two weeks ago, Kaisa and I decided to take advantage of the fact that we had no exams and take a 9 day trip to Burkina Faso.

We left early Friday morning dressed in janitor/safety clothes that we had bought the day before. This served not only as protection from bugs, stones and the unfortunate event of a crash, but it also turned out to be a great ticket to get through tricky situations. Every time we came to a police barrier, or any other sort of checkpoint, we were quickly let through with no questions asked. I’m not sure exactly why, but I think people genuinely thought of us as some sort of road construction supervisors, or simply didn’t know what to think and therefore decided to let us through. The bottom-line is that we didn’t have a single problem with the authorities during our trip.

We rode almost 10 hours the first day without any problems, and made it more than halfway through Ghana. The first 60km out of Accra are terrible. In addition I took a wrong turn so we ended up driving through the construction site for the new road instead of taking the detour everyone else takes. Again – all the construction workers (apparently) thought we had some official business there, cause they let us through and pointed us in the right direction without asking any questions.

By nightfall we had driven some 450km to Kintampu in the center of Ghana. We found a small guesthouse and lodged there for the night. At the washroom I stumbled into this gigantic fellow.

I later learned that this little bug is a female (I currently forgot its name) and that it apparently eats the male after reproductive intercourse. How interesting. And how fortunate that the human world doesn’t work like that. . .

The next day we continued on towards Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. We made a short stop in the City of Tamale in Northern Ghana to change oil and tighten the chain on Mulan ( Since my bike is Chinese we decided to give it a Chinese name, and we figured that “Mulan” - inspired by the Chinese warrior – was a suitable name).

In northern Ghana there are road-side-mechanics everywhere so finding one that could do the job was easy. I ended up paying 7 USD(35kr) for new oil and 2USD(10kr) for the work. Not to shabby.

We made it to the border without problems, and crossing it with Mulan was piece of cake. I had read some blogs and stories on the Internet about problems when it came to brining a vehicle across borders in West Africa. In many places you apparently need loads of papers and permissions to bring your bike or car with you, but apparently not into Burkina Faso. The roads in Burkina Faso were surprisingly good and we made it to Ouagadougou (from now on just referred to as “Ouaga”) by 4.30pm. Two hours earlier than we had estimated.

The difference between Ghana and Burkina is quite striking. First of all, Burkina is Francophone, which means everything takes places in French. Kaisa speaks no French at all, and my French consist of 4 years of elementary school French that I have completely forgotten. I did spend the last few weeks studying a few words, but by no means enough to have long or meaningful conversations. The most useful world I learned was “Le Plein, S’il Vous Plait”, which means something along the lines of “Full, Please” or “Fill it up, Please”. Quite useful to know when buying Gasoline.

Secondly, Burkina is landlocked and extremely hot. At times the temperature would surpass 40 degrees Celsius !!! Fortunately the weather is a lot drier than in Ghana, which means that the heat is not as unbearable, despite the higher temperature.

Ouagadougou as a city was a big surprise to me. My expectations were very low and I was expecting to see a very poor city with few modern buildings and little organization. But Ouaga is quite the contrary. Lots of nice buildings, good roads, organized infrastructure. Most of the streets have “biking lanes” designated for the myriad of mopeds sweeping through the city. As opposed to Accra, Ouaga is a moped-city. Almost everyone got around on mopeds, which eased traffic so much that we in the days we were there never ran into any traffic jams. And it also made us feel very home on Mulan.

In Ouaga we stayed with a nice couple, Pavel and Marjorie, which we had found on Couch surfing (if not familiar with the couch surfing concept see www.couchsurfing.com). Marjorie had taken a job on a 1-year contract to teach French at an international school, and her partner Pavel was working as a web designer from home.

The first day (Sunday) in Ouaga, Kaisa and I went to a Sacred Crocodile Sanctuary. The crocodiles there are considered holy and since chickens are “sacrificed” to them on a regular basis they are fairly tame(can a crocodile be tame?) and well fed.

We sat on some crocodiles and watched while they ate some living chickens. Quite an experience.

Monday morning we left Ouaga early. We drove north all day, through beautiful scenery and landscapes until we by nightfall made it to Goram-Goram in the northeastern part of Burkina Faso. Goram-Goram lies in the Sahel Dessert, not to be confused with the Sahara. The Sahel is a semi-dessert in the sense that, trees and other vegetations is present, but sparsely distributed and they are not expecting any rain until early June.

In Goram-Goram we arranged a 24hour Camel trip out into the wild. After spending the night in a mud hut, we left early next morning with 3 camels, equipment and a Guide. Out guide Yussuna, spoke amazing 7 different languages, including French and (some) English.

We rode for a few hours before taking a mid-day break at a local village in the middle of bum-f**k-nowhere. We put out some mattresses under a tree and had a small lunch and investigated this small kind village.

After spending the midday heat in the sun, we continued on and set up a camp on some sand dunes further out in the desert. Out there we had a gorgeous night under the open sky, and were woken up 5am next morning to see the stunning sunrise, before riding back to Goram-Goram.

When we came back it turned out that our visit coincided with a Muslim Holiday. As a result we were invited to join Yussuna’s brother’s family for lunch celebration. They had slaughtered to big goats and the entire family was busy cooking. What a meal in the middle of the dessert. J - again, it always surprises me to see how hospitable and friendly people are in the most far away places. Here we come, two white people on a motorbike, dressed in blue janitor-suits and suddenly we are invited to join for a Muslim Holiday Celebration with a local family, all dressed up and working hard to make sure we are having a good time. Fantastic.

We returned to Ouaga the same evening, and spend the night at Pavel and Marjorie’s place again. Next morning I got myself a Visa de Pais de L’entente(a 5 country visa), and we visited an arts and craft center, before returning back to Ghana. After a long ride from Ouaga, we made it to Bolgatange some 60km into Ghana.

Next morning, we visited the Tonga Hills and the Shenzu Shrine. All the hills in the particular area are covered with massive rocks and makes for quite spectacular scenery.

We had a nice tour around the village, where a guide told us about the ceremonial and spiritual practices of the local people. The chief has a large authority and sacrifices of animals are a common practice to ensure good luck.

After our visit we drove all the way to Ghana’s 2^nd Largest city, Kumasi, where we spent out last night.

Next morning we set out for Accra. After about 5 hours drive we were so unfortunate to have a little incident. A car driving in the opposite direction suddenly drove over in our lane to pass by another car. With the car facing directly towards us I had little option but to make a stunt maneuver into the ditch. Both Kaisa and I fell off the bike, and of course the car just drove on. . . After the crash some friendly local people helped us find a health clinic. I had gotten some scratches and Kaisa had hurt her leg a bit, so we figured it would be good to get out injuries checked out, just to be sure everything was alright. Fortunately for Kaisa, her leg was not broken, but just heavily bruised. I needed a few stitches in the chin, but was otherwise in good condition (it looked a lot more dramatic than it was).

After the visit to the health clinic, we went over to a restaurant to have some lunch where we found some kind people who offered Kaisa a ride back to Accra, so she didn’t have to sit on the bike with her sore leg.

I went back to investigate the bike. It had a few scratches and the light was a bit bent, but its condition was not worse than I could drive it back to Accra without trouble.

So yeah, despite our little incident at the end we had a fantastic trip to Burkina Faso. Driving a motorbike through Africa is really a fantastic experience, and even though some of the days were very long on the bike I really enjoyed it.

My original plan was to drive the bike along the coast all the way to Senegal. I however don’t thing this will happen. It’s a very long way, and some of the road conditions in Sierra Leone and Guinea are suppose to be terrible. I also read some blogs talking about all the paperwork, which is a thing I’de rather avoid. I might take the bike for a trip to Cote D’Ivoire and back, and then sell her here in Accra where I know I can get a pretty good price for her. But the exact plans are not yet made. We’ll see. That’s all for now. Hope you didn’t get too bored from this massive post.

Hope you’re all doing great out there. Cheers for now!

Ps. “Mulan” says hi.

Boys with Toys

So, I bought a Motorbike. Senegal here I come: