Looking back on South Africa

So that's it for my stay in South Africa. I got back to NYC yesterday after about 70 hours of travel (don't ask). Strangely, I had enough energy to meet some friends for brunch only a few hours after getting off the plane. I guess I just really needed to see them after being away so long. I was definitely at the point of craving familiarity. I can't tell you how great is was to see my ladyfriend.

And now I'm in the process of getting caught up on mail, email and other missed connections. I spent most of the day "doing email" and am not in bad shape. My team at IBM did an excellent job of covering for me, intercepting messages, and leaving me off of the cc list.

Looking back at my blog entries about the Corporate Service Corps I realize I over-emphasized the extracurricular activities. I don't think I wrote quite enough about the project I was working on. That's at least in part due to the fact that for the first couple weeks we were just trying to figure out what the heck we were going to do and simultaneously doing research and trying to meet all the involved parties. There was a lot of reading and meeting and research -- bloggable, for sure, but pale in comparison to jumping off of cliffs and seeing elephants. And so I admit, I gave the work itself short shrift on the blog even though the experience of the work itself was quite intense.

I'll also admit to a level of cynicism. It just didn't seem realistic that in four weeks we'd be able to have an appreciable impact. There were only three of us on my little Business Against Crime -- Caroline, Anil, myself -- and we had only met one another for the first time on the first day of our arrival. Did we even have the right tools, skills and ideas? And so I was reluctant to build things up too much on the blog.

But in the last week -- really in the last few days -- it all came together. We came together. We had a couple of key meetings that helped us to crystallize a direction for our project, a fairly clear set of things we'd deliver for our client and a sustainable business plan for the work so that it could be carried on when we left. I feel really good about what we finally turned over to our client in our last presentation to them, which was attended by several stakeholders (including the head of a government agency for tourism, cell phone service providers, heads of several security firms, a local technology provider and the local chamber of commerce.)

Our final presentation was met with more than just enthusiasm -- the relevant stakeholders literally offered to fund the work. I think we've left our client in a great position to proceed.

Here's a summary from the cover letter of the report we gave our client:

Tourist safety is an integral part of any successful overall tourism strategy. Based on the research and recommendations from Team 1, and our own investigations over the past three weeks, we offer the following four items that will build tourist confidence in the Mpumalanga area and assist in creating a climate for continued tourism growth.

1. First, building on the concepts from the Corporate Service Corps South Africa I team, we describe a viable model for an SMS messaging system for tourists that carries safety tip messages.

2. Secondly, we describe a model application for smart phones that can bring substantial value to the local tourist industry and tourists while simultaneously raising tourists' consciousness about common sense tips for avoiding crime. We offer details for accessing a live demonstration of this application via smart phone.

3. Thirdly, we have developed an outline for a safety best-practices guide that can be shared through LCBT with local lodge owners.

4. Finally, we offer some observations and recommendations concerning the incident reporting systems in use by local security firms and SAPs. We have included a brief workshop guide to help these parties come quickly to an agreement about implementing a common incident reporting system and avoid potential obstacles in deploying and managing such a system.

Although a multitude of solutions are already in use in the Mpumalanga region to assist tourists, these solutions are not combined to create a unified, integrated crime reduction program.

By leveraging existing infrastructure, procedures and technology we believe an achievable strategy using the above four core activities will hold both short and long term benefits. In the short term the aim is to raise the profile of Mpumalanga as a safe tourist destination for the 2010 FIFA World Cup matches to be held in Nelspruit. In the longer term the aim is to create sustained safety levels for tourists, by building ‘best practice’ safety measures into the tourist industry and improving the collaboration and information sharing among South African Police (SAPs) and private security firms.

We propose to harness traditional print media for immediate use such as handouts and brochures in addition to evolving cellular technology (third generation smart phones). As new technology becomes more widely used and affordable, the proposed strategy will naturally evolve away from printed and SMS based information distribution towards Web Based smart phones. There will naturally be overlap between the print, SMS and web content distribution models. This staged strategy caters to the immediate needs leading up to 2010 World Cup while paving the way for the next generation of tourists and tourist industry operators.

I have a whole new appreciation for what business consulatants do now. You literally have to take a zillion pieces parts and weave them together into something whole. I'm sure I'll add more about my South African experience, but I wanted to provide at least a little wrap up of the work I did in South Africa. There you have it.

Lion encounter, exotic fetuses and looking through God's window (again)

We went on a wonderful tourist adventure over the past few days that included a nighttime safari, Blydes River Canyon, God's Window, off-roading on quad bikes, zip-lining and so much more. The whole thing was sponsored by one of the clients, which happens to be in the tourist industry, so they hooked us up.

Oh, and did I mention we stayed at a 5-star chalet? So awesome.

What are a few highlights?

Climbing around on the rocks at the "Three Rondavels" area of the canyon…it was so beautiful and we just ended up hanging out up there being amazed by the beauty. What is it about standing on the edge of a wide open space that opens your heart? I don't know, but it works. Maybe because the sensation approximates the feeling of flight, but you get to keep your feet on the ground.

Going to God's Window a second time was great – I didn't feel the need to take any photos, so I just was there without trying to document the moment.

Going to Kruger for the second time during the day was amazing for the same reason. I took a couple of photos, but for the most part I just relaxed. I did get to see a hippo in the morning, which I was hoping for since I didn't see one on the first safari.

Checking out Kruger Park's collection of animal fetuses. Ewwwwww!!!! Freak out!

Seeing a lion on the nighttime safari was so thrilling and scary and beautiful. You can't really get a sense for how close it was to our open truck. The video here is taken without zoom. This cat was CLOSE!

Filming a zip line run was fun, but it completely took me out of the experience. For example, i remember actually looking through the screen on my camera for a moment while on my way down the mountain. Kind of silly to watch the experience on a 2 inch screen while I'm immersed in it. Anyway, the video is fun to watch.

In case of attack: Hide in the bathroom, blow the whistle in short bursts

There's something about documenting an experience while you're having that takes you out of the moment and reduces the potency of the moment. I didn't blog a whole lot this past week. I guess I've just been busy with the experience itself.

On Monday night our client asked us to attend and present about our project at the local Rotary Club in White River (South Africa). I was struck by the whiteness of the audience – not a single black person. I am certain that the club itself doesn't exclude people of any color, but it was still weird. I did the presentation for the team and got a nice response. It was a good practice run-through for our final report next week.

During the week, we visited a lodge where the lodge owner was once held hostage at gunpoint. She has, since then, put together a comprehensive set of safety tactics on her premises including putting a whistle in each shower. The point is that she instructs her guests to lock themselves in the bathroom and blow the whistle if there's a security crisis on the premises. She demonstrated with her hand gestures how the high windows in the bathrooms would make it hard for someone to shoot into. This tour was preceded by perhaps the best South African cooking I've tasted yet.

On Thursday we joined the Cash In Transit Forum (CIT), which is a local group comprising security firms, the South African Police, Businesses Against Crimes and a few other interested parties. They were putting on a demonstration of automatic license plate recognition technology. Businesses Against Crime has partnered with CIT to get together the funding for a few of these vehicles to patrol the Mpumalanga area – so many of the crimes committed here involve stolen vehicles that improving that problem will potentially have a big overall effect on crime in the region.

The technology itself was incredible to witness: they drove us around in the car and in just five minutes we were able to find half a dozen vehicles with some kind of issue. The license-plate recognition reads the plate and cross-references it with half a dozen databases in 0.8 seconds. It can read dozens in a minute. Impressive.

Day trip to Swaziland (warning: Ethan dancing)

Whereas typically I'd spend July 4th relaxing my way towards a New York fireworks display, this year I went to the Kingdom of Swaziland.

A group of about ten of us made a day trip to the neighboring country and had a nice time of it. It was a long drive to the cultural village we visited (we cruised passed the capital without stopping) but worth it. The dancing and tour of the preserved Swazi village was very nicely organized, professionally presented and really interesting. It was a stark contrast with our trip the prior weekend to Mozambique.

Every one of us noticed that the Swazi people seemed calmer, more welcoming and just plan smiled more. I guess that's what political stability gets you. I don't know too much about the King of Swaziland, but the royal family has at least been a stable presence for a few decades, unlike the turmoil in Mozambique.

For the tour of the "village" the guide gave us each a role in a family as though we were a visiting tribe. It was clever and made the tour really interactive. He even pretended to marry one of people in our group (Veronica), which was pretty hilarious.

And yes, I danced.

Kruger National Park in about 12 minutes

So a few of us went to Kruger National Park on Sunday for a Safari. We saw elephants, a journey of six giraffe, wart hogs, buffalo, several white rhino, a rare and endangered black rhino, a wide variety of antelope (including impala, Klip Springer, Kudu), crocodile, a monitor lizard and an even wider variety of birds including the Marshal Eagle and a giant heron. We had a wonderful guide, Margeaux, who was enthusiastic and knowledgeable.

It was amazing.

I can see why people make such a big deal about going to Kruger. The whole experience of game watching has similar appeal to slot machines. You look and you look and you look while you drive and you drive and drive...and suddenly...ELEPHANT!!! Or RHINO!!!!! So you have your basic configuration of long stretches of relative calm punctuated by instants of intense excitement. So fun!

Here are some photos and a video I put together from the day.

Innibos music festival

We started the day early again (seems to be the thing to do around here) by going to the morning security meeting at Innibos, which is the region's largest music/cultural festival. The Innibos festival is focused on Afrikaans culture, so it's very specific. But it's been going on for six years and has grown steadily each year -- now they're up to about 120,000 attendees.

Almost all the music is performed in Afrikaans, which was pretty cool. I caught a minute on video (below). A lot of the tunes were really schmaltzy but at least one of the acts was pretty good -- Snotkop. Funny name, eh? The show had a really interesting format where they had all the bands on stage at once and they brought people on stage from the audience who got to pick which song they wanted the performers to perform. It was fun and interactive (and I didn't mind that it was all in a language I didn't understand...in fact, that made it more interesting to me.) Joanne did a nice job of describing the format of the show and posted a couple photos.



I got to try a couple of South African carnival food specialties -- Roosterkoeke (which was a nice grilled bread filled with the stuffing of your choice, such as sausage or cheese etc) and Spitbrei, which was basically just grilled meat on bread (only the guy insisted we put mint jelly on it, which I could have lived without.)

We heard a couple more bands, including one that had perhaps the worst lyricist I've ever witnessed (I think he might have been Belgian singing in English). All of his songs were pedantic, literal and cliche. However, his back-up band was incredible -- they had a stand-up drummer from Cuba who was rocking out. Terrific. After a while I found myself able to tune out the singer and focus on the beats, which were complex, polyrhythmic and multilayered.

It was definitely strange to be in a place with nearly no black people. The festival caters to the whites because it's all about Afrikaans culture. So with the exception of a few black families and festival staff, it was all white. I can't tell you how strange it was to be in a crowd of 40,000 white people in Africa. Everyone on the CSC team definitely noticed it.

As for the Business Against Crime project, we're making some progress. Today I drafted the outline of what will be our final report and sketched out a little more detail for what will go into our deliverable to the client other than the report. We're nearing the halfway mark, so we need to stay focused on actually pulling together our final work in time.

I think this weekend we're heading to Swaziland on Saturday and to a safari on Sunday. Oh, and the Americans on the team are going to put together a little barbecue for tomorrow night in honor of July 4th. Should be a hoot.