Sway

5th May 2008

Summarizing my past week... Damn interesting! I think that's the best expression for it :)

Juliet and Sly have still been in Rwanda (they are supposed to come home sometime soon), and as the MC elect left for Planning Conference on Tuesday morning, it was only Phil and me in Nairobi out of the whole team. So on Wednesday I made my day busy: had a long transition meeting with Quincy, then a lunch meeting with Phil, then a mentoring meeting with Mike (he needed some inspiration), and the top of the day was the LC Nairobi Alumni Cocktail in the evening.
I have actually learnt a lot from all my meetings, especially from the one with Phil of course - but it's interesting how I'm still learning from those talks when I am passing knowledge, or thoughts. And this is something I love about AIESEC - you learn that no matter what role you have, what level you are at, you always can learn something new.

Then, as I've mentioned, the top of the day, Alumni Cocktail! Wowowo, I'm still amused! First of all, I'm proud of that LC of mine, they are doing their job so well. The event was amazingly well-organized, nice and posh, but not too much. It was held at Wasanii. And quite many alumni and corporates participated, I was even surprised how many.
Finally I ended up having some really nice discussions... I was seated next to Beryl for a long while, but as she was giving her speech and some other guests arrived, I found myself amongst 3 aging man. One of them was Kent on my extreme left, then Julius Kip' (I can never remember his full name - Director of Kenya Wildlife Service) on my right, and someone on my left - I didn't have a clue who he was. Then this guy on my left asked me something, so finally we ended up having a nice conversation. I found out that he was originally from South Africa, and lived in Budapest 2 times, once in the 1980ies and once from 1994 to 2000 then he moved from Budapest right to Nairobi. And he also mentioned that he was working for Vodafon there, then we moved to the nice things that he loved about Hungary. Now he is the CEO of Safaricom...
My other favourite discussion was with a guy called Robert. He's half French - half Spanish with some Polish Jewish ancestors, born in the UK, having 5 kids from 4 wives in different countries... And he speaks at least 10 different tribal languages of Kenya, and he keeps on learning new and new languages even now (he asked me to write down hello, goodbye and I love you in Hungarian for him when we meet next time :)).

After all this, my Thursday went quite quietly. It was a public holiday, but we agreed with Quincy, that we go on with transition. So I went to the MC office in the afternoon, found there Jobe from the Dinner OC, trying to find out the names and addresses of the different ambassadors to Kenya for inviting them for Dinner. We had a really nice chat before Quincy arrived. Btw, Phil left to Nakuru for the conference on Thursday as well, so from this day I was the ONLY one MC member in Nairobi... :)

Then on Friday LC Nairobi had their Opening Ceremony for YES project - the LC proved second time in one week only that they are super good in event organizing! Though the number of students were less then they expected, the corporate guests and speakers all came and basically it turned out to be a very successful event. We had 2 ladies from KCB, Manu Chandaria from Chandaria Foundation, Dr Kevit Desai (BoA member for AIESEC Kenya), Richard Bell (a venture capitalist) and the 2 winners from last years project.
My most amazing moment was when one of the winners from last year claimed that AIESEC and the projects has really changed his life... He is now a young entrepreneur, starting up his business, already has some clients and is thinking about growth and growth and growth only. And as his clients are schools and teachers, just imagine how many more life he is changing by his job!
The other winner from last year, Daniel had a very interesting definition for entrepreneurship, I like it a lot, let me share:
"You find out that something is not working well, and you think: Somebody should make it better. And this somebody should be me."

On Saturday we went to Nakuru together with Gathu, Martin and Quincy. Gathu was driving, we arrived to Nakuru in 2 hours instead of 3 - nice drive, tho I had to remind Gathu like 3 times that I didn't have an insurance... But we arrived safe and sound finally. The conference was going on very well. I'm proud of our MC elect and NST elect, they have been doing a great job. I have no doubt that we're leaving AIESEC Kenya in the right hands.
During the night, celebrating Phil's birthday, Godi came with some tequila for the MC and MC elect - I think I drank like 4 shots, hoping that the Kenya Kane afterwards would never reach me... Fortunately it didn't so we went to dance and I managed to keep myself awake till like 4am :)
Next morning during closing plenary I promised delegates I would try hard not to cry during my speech... Well... I didn't succeed... It was really powerful how our memories started coming back from the very beginning of our term, not just from my own point of view, but also the way Leah and Phil were talking about it. It was really deep, really touching.

Hmmm soooo much impressions again, only within a few days. And all this on the top of a lovely, warmish feeling that I've been having recently... :) I'm happy!!!