Of Fitness and Other Ironies

So I’ve been in Rwanda now for over a month and a bit now. At this point I am getting used to the cold showers, the power outages, the unreliable internet, not knowing the local language and even my allergies flaring up with the humidity and dust. The one thing that I have to admit is killing me is missing Game of Thrones.
Now that I have gotten that off my chest let us proceed.

As part of my work (the nature of which I will get to further on, as promised) these last few days I have had the opportunity to try out what I am sure will be the next big thing in fitness fads. It is a simple activity that will give you a full body work out without ever even having to stand up. It is called riding in the back of a motorcycle from Health Center to Health Center in Rwanda’s rural dirt roads.

You will strengthen core muscle groups as you strive to maintain balance and hang on to whatever you can each time you bounce of off some rock, fallen tree or other obstacle cleverly left there by Mother Nature. You will get to discover muscles you didn’t know you had as you bounce around up and down hills and gullies navigating the ever changing road. You will enjoy breathtaking views of hills, valleys and clouds and wave to people carrying all sorts of things on their bicycles and on top of their heads as they hike the steep slopes and many miles from village to village. You will get to experience the distinct satisfaction of raising a small cloud of dust as you speed by. Yes, this is the sort of activity that in America would surely come with a friendly form reminding you that you can’t sue if you die (which you might), but on the other hand you will have the sort of experience that amusement parks try to emulate in all their high-adrenaline rides, plus the work out, minus the two-hour queue.

So what do you say?  Ready to go for a ride?

Before you answer here is a little thought experiment: as you read the above paragraph what did you focus on? What drew your attention? Did your mind’s eye see me as some misbegotten Indiana Jones type riding from village to village? (which I am sorry to report is wrong- with the helmet strap across my neck and my black hoodie under it I actually resembled The Flying Nun more than anything else, but that is neither here nor there) Or did you instead think of the unique views one gets as hills turn into valleys and small rice plantations give way to banana groves and lastly to eucalyptus forests? How many of you thought of the small layer of rouge-like dust that gets pancaked on everything now that the rains are coming to an end? How about the people that you get to wave to? Who picked up on the people for whom this is daily life and not some explorer wannabe’s (mis)adventure?

This was actually very similar to what my thought process was as I started to get over my initial bike-shock. I hate to admit it but it wasn’t until I saw a man pushing a bicycle which had his little boy sitting on it on some form of makeshift basket with his leg all bandaged-up up a particularly steep climb that it hit me that riding a motorcycle is actually a luxury that most people can’t afford in their daily lives. At that point I started appreciating statics as facts of life rather than just cold numbers. You see, in Rwanda over 70% of the population lives in rural communities; however, of the 4,700kms of roads in the country only 1,207kms are paved. Those numbers take on a different meaning when you see women carrying all types of bags, boxes and sacks on their heads, when you speed by a group of farmers taking their hoes, rakes and other utensils that have been used since the middle ages onto the field and when you appreciate the considerable effort that it must take to push a bike weighed down with different types of crops up a dusty slope.  

The lack of transportation infrastructure is not particular to Rwanda and it continues to make the delivery of services and goods to the many millions of people living in rural areas in developing countries a challenge. It is one that I have been giving a lot of thought of as I work with The Ihangane Project (TIP) to develop a business model for a sustainable fortified porridge production meant to support, primarily, HIV+ mothers and their babies.

The project, though small scale in terms of production amounts or budget, has huge potential to impact the lives of many people. On a daily basis I scramble my now-partially-MBA-educated-brain to answer some of the following questions: How is the factory going to operate at each station? What efficiencies can we find in how much and how often we get grain? Who are we selling to and at what price? What is our pricing model? Based on what? How are our plans affected by others doing similar work in the country? Who are the stakeholders that we need to approach and how to do so? How are we going to distribute the porridge? And how is all of this going to come together to form a strategy to make this a sustainable business?

From a more general perspective, whether you believe in finding a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, creating a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid or simply realizing that there doesn’t have to be a fortune for there to be need and opportunity I hope you’ll agree with me that Milton Friedman's assertion that “the social responsibility of a business is to increase its profit” is no longer valid. Now more than ever companies, individuals and even indebted MBAs are waking up to the possibility of new models that seek a social or environmental impact (ideally both) while returning a profit. This past year I had the opportunity to participate in case competitions from big name companies that tried to address these issues in different ways. I enjoyed those experiences but realized that solutions cooked up in the developed world will never work if we don’t take the time to see how the other half lives, ergo I am in Rwanda.

But this is starting to get to heavy so back to the important stuff: fitness.

As part of my plan to get rid of my “bear” pounds (those acquired while hibernating in the wonderfully white Ann Arbor winter) every day at around 5.45am I wake up (not a personal choice- it has been predetermined by crows that nest outside my window) and, after painfully realizing that Morpheus will not take me in his arms again, I get out of bed, turn my computer on to whatever workout is scheduled for the day and proceed to flop and bounce around my room as if escaping the attack of thousands of invisible malaria carrying mosquitos.  

I am normally so out of breath by the end of this that I hadn’t noticed that after the workout there are several ads for a variety of health foods and supplements. While that is not at all surprising the thing that caught my attention as I lay on the floor was the female voiceover saying that they source all their ingredients “from around the world, grown in the fertile soils of remote regions of the earth.” Interested in this proclamation I raised my head (resentful for the extra crunch this was forcing me to do) and noticed that the image used by the ad playing on my laptop could very well be the image outside my window.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I have been an active member of the super food craze: quinoa!! goji berries!! kale!! anything from Whole Foods!! I have also spent the last month coming and going by fields where all sorts of vegetables grow, meeting with farmers, discussing nutrition and learning from the local coffee co-ops. I have seen how fertile this land is.

The thing that jumps at me is the balance of it all. For example, as far as I can tell, Rwanda has some of the best coffee in the world, there are several coffee coops around Ruli and yet no one is offering Venti Espresso Americanos. No one here drinks the stuff!! I asked around and, though I did not get a wholly clear explanation for this strange phenomenon, the best theory was that, if you think about it, you would also not drink your livelihood away. It seems people are happier selling to the mermaid and her cronies than drinking the dark elixir.

Stranger still is that in a country where everything is green and practically screams “BITE ME”, 43% of children suffer from malnutrition (albeit there are many different reasons for this). So you have to allow that the more I reflect on it the more deliciously ironic I think it is that the slimming diet fads of countries that treat their food supply chain as some sort of mass production factory (you NEED to see Food, Inc.) are now helping to fill bellies in developing countries (one hopes).

I hope that as these types of industries grow, developed nations’ table manners will allow for a true sharing of the proverbial cake.

Thank you for reading, apologies for the length and please share and comment.
(Thanks to those who did so last time)