We are about to celebrate our two-month anniversary of living in Accra. We’re blessed with a great living situation, wonderful teammates and ambitious clients. We’re experiencing lots of new things … some good, some not so good:

 House “Fairy”: On Sunday night, we had a dinner party for seven grownups and two 18-month olds.  We made veggie pasta, salad, garlic bread, and fruit salad. The dinner was great, and the two children had lots of room to chase each other around. They even shared their pacifiers!  Both moms are Stanford grads, so this duo comes from a smart gene pool:

At the end of the evening, we realized that we had dirtied every dish and every pot we owned. We left all of these in a pile on the counter for Francis. We didn’t see him prior to leaving for the office on Monday morning, but by the time we had returned in the evening, everything was clean and put away. Now this is a service we’ll miss!

The Music: Ghanaian music is ubiquitous and wonderful. Since our last post, we attended a concert of Ghanaian Highlife with a New Zealand twist. Zohzoh, the artist, is a big personality who struts on stage in true Mick Jagger style! His band includes an incredible drummer and a brass section that fuses big band, funk, Afro, and reggae. It was so fun that we bought the CD.

Drivers: When we need to go to a client meeting, we pop into one of the three cars under contract to Stanford. We primarily use Randy as our driver. He is very conscientious and knows his way around Accra. This is very helpful since there are no addresses! Once in a while, he yells at the other drivers in Twi … but the windows are closed and they can’t hear him. It’s a good thing we’re not trying to drive here since there is definitely a knack to merging and cutting in front of the other cars.

Cabs/Ditches: Sometimes we take cabs, which are usually ok. We have to negotiate the price before getting into the car.  They are likely to start with the “obruni” (White person) price. We now know how to bargain them to a reasonable price, since we have a vague idea of how far it will be to the various locations.

One time, when Ed hailed this cab, the cab turned around to pick him up, but landed in the ditch.

These ditches are open sewers that are on the sides of most roads. Some homeowners elect to put grates on top of them (which is much appreciated). When it’s hot, the smell can be bad. For this taxi driver, Ed had to get another cab (because he had to get to his meeting), but Ed noticed that other drivers rallied to the cause and helped lift the car out of the ditch!

We have learned to pay rapt attention while walking down a street. We do not want to twist our ankle in a pothole or fall into a ditch. (We heard a story of one WHO manager who fell in and was waist-deep during the rainy season.)

Internet/Phone:  Since we have a huge task of serving six clients per coach, we depend on “always on” Internet and phone service. Over the last week, it’s been more like “always off”.  Ed was nominated to be the point person to assist the local manager with dealing with Stanford’s (complicated) Internet system (complete with firewall.)  This “opportunity” allowed Ed to have an 8-hour conference call with the US for troubleshooting!  The coaches were switched from a MTN “prepay” to a “post pay” phone plan, but as a result, we had no phones or Internet on our phones for two days. This caused quite a problem, as no one could reach us, and we couldn’t call or email anyone. We went to an interim solution with a temporary phone, but this wasn’t so good. Later we found out that the whole country was having MTN phone problems!

Elevator Landing:  Our apartment is great, but there are some things about it that make us scratch our heads and wonder, “why did they build it this way?” For example, the elevator landings are on the half floor.  This means that on the ground floor, we walk up a half of a flight to get in the elevator. Then, we push “5” for fifth floor. We get off the elevator and walk down half of a flight of stairs to get to our apartment. This is especially confusing for guests, who don’t know where to go when they get off on the 5^th floor stop. Up half a flight?  Or, down half a flight? Perhaps the builder wanted to make sure that elevator riders got at least a bit of exercise!

Cash-Only Society:  Due to the extent of credit card fraud around Ghana and Nigeria, it’s a cash based society. This means that even most plane tickets have to be purchased with cash. The last time we went to Nigeria, Jan took a wad of cash ($700) to the airport to buy the tickets. This required two trips … because during the first trip (4:00 pm), the agent said I had to pay at a bank. Then I went to the bank, which was then closed. Later I called the airport to see if our “hold for 24 hours” reservation had been cancelled, and a different agent asked me to return to the airport (with the cash) by 9 pm. So, Ed and I took a moonlight cab to the airport and bought the ticket by 9 pm. Not the most efficient use of time!

We’ve learned a new way of coping with some of the nuances brought about by life in Africa.  This was a suggestion put forth by Bill’s son.  When something is frustrating, we say “WHEEEEEEEEEEEE” in a high pitch voice. You can’t help but smile while saying this.

The adventure continues!

One of the delightful aspects of being in Ghana has been the chance to  meet  some amazing people. Here’s an example:

Why not start a University for Women in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? Princess Lolowah al Faisal was in charge of the project her mother, Queen Effat, had started, and the need was certainly there. At 60 years old in 1999, when most of her generation were contemplating retirement, Marcia Grant  “leaned in” and moved to Saudi Arabia to help start the University.  She arrived on August 2nd.  By September 8th, 37 students were enrolled and Effat College was born.

Marcia ran the college for almost two years, and was “on again, off again” for the following two years. The remarkable Saudi woman who took over the helm, President Haifa Jamal al-Lail proceeded to start an engineering School for women and Effat University now enrolls 1500 students.

But that’s not all. Marcia spent four years pioneering the liberal arts in planning the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, and then two years developing the liberal arts in Forman Christian College (no relation!) in Lahore, Pakistan. She’s currently the Provost at  Ashesi University College outside of Accra, Ghana, an extraordinary new university focused on educating a new generation of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders who will transform Africa.

Marcia Grant is no ordinary woman.  Higher Education in the developing world is better because of her contributions. We joined her for lunch in Accra recently and learned about her life journey.

At age 6, she moved with her family from Walnut Creek, California (right next to the town where Jan grew up) to Colombia where her father designed the American School in Bogota.  In fact, he designed it after Acalanes High School in Lafayette—Jan’s alma matter!

At age 9, now living in Mexico City, she decided that she wanted to pursue an international career.  She told her mother that she didn’t like the American School in Mexico City at that time, and switched to be the only American in a local Mexican school.

When she returned to Walnut Creek, she lamented, “will I ever get to travel internationally again?”  She became an accomplished flautist, and earned money by teaching flute lessons, washing cars, and babysitting to purchase her own custom made Powell Flute for $450.  (She still has this instrument, and it was recently appraised for over $7,000.)

At age 16, she graduated from Las Lomas High School and headed for Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.  She flew in blue linen suit, hat with veil and white gloves!  These items of clothing did not get much wear once she arrived at the college, as Swarthmore provided quite the culture shock.  There were many New Yorkers, and guys with beards. Hey, it was 1956!

One of the reasons she selected Swarthmore was that it offered a scholarship to Peru.  Of course, she applied for this and was granted the scholarship, so off she went.  During one summer, she also traveled to Africa as part of the Crossroads Africa program, where she learned construction and fell in love with Africa. She graduated from Swarthmore at age 20.

She spent two years at the Fletcher School at Tufts and received two Masters Degrees.  Then, she moved to England on a Fulbright, and then ended up in Nigeria to work on her PhD, studying the workings of the press in Nigeria. She received her doctorate from The London School of Economics.

She became a tenured Professor at Oberlin and was a member of the Faculty Council. She later worked for the State Department in various roles, including as the cultural attaché for youth programs in Paris. Her career spans many countries, continents, and leadership positions.  There are too many fascinating positions to list in this limited article. But the central thread is challenge and contribution.  This is one dynamic woman who never stops!

As an illustrious alumna, Marcia received an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore. You can read Marcia’s commencement address that she delivered in 2007 at: http://bit.ly/12SgvCL .   She focuses on “lessons learned.”  What an amazing journey.

And we spent part of our lunch pondering, “where she wants to live when she grows up.”

Wow. We’re on quite the ride!

In the last two weeks, we’ve spent four days in Lagos, Nigeria and six days in Accra and have initiated contact with ten of our twelve companies. (The remaining two are in Cote d’Ivoire, and we’re arranging our visit there later in the month to conform with the clients’ vacation schedules.) Our client companies are excited and ready to roll towards “transformation”. The journey will be long and complex, but everyone has to start somewhere.  Our goals for the past two weeks were to get to know the key issues facing the companies and start developing the vision of where they want to go.

With 20 million people (compared with a total of 24 million people in all of Ghana), Lagos is vast, congested, and swarming with a myriad of commerce. Luckily we had an excellent driver who was skillfully able to navigate the roads, including backing up in the driveway of our hotel at 8 am, when all of the hotel guests were leaving for meetings with their drivers and all wanted to back up down the driveway at the same moment.  This was not a job for the amateur.

Also, in Lagos, the business life is very competitive, and even street vendors have to differentiate themselves to get noticed.  This was the first time we’ve seen a hawker on stilts!

Nigerians are resigned to the fact that they have to “BYOP”—Bring Your Own Power.  The national electrical grid is completely unreliable, so each company has at least on generator and needs to have backups as well. (We know of one telco services provider who has seven levels of backup!) Generator power is huge hassle that presents a big, unpredictable expense for every business. The factory of one client company was without power Monday through Wednesday. They have to pay workers regardless, so they incurred three days of labor cost with no production output. They paid all the production workers double time to come in on the two-day national holiday since they were late on delivering orders and had reputation and cash flow at stake.

We’ve learned a lot lessons and we’re just six weeks in.

Leading “Design Thinking” workshops with several clients can open up new ways of approaching problems and challenges.  With materials developed by Jim Patell (of the previous post) of the Stanford d.School and GSB, we took groups from two of our clients through a crash course of Design Thinking, first working on a fun design exercise and then moving on to challenges that confront their companies.

These folks created the ideal wallet for each other (by listening to customer needs, iterating on ideas, and making a rapid prototype.)

This group was able to propose solutions to key issues facing the sales department.

This manager summarized the findings his group had about HR issues and their proposed solutions.

And, what was even more gratifying, a team in Lagos had already implemented the brainstorming concepts back at their company.  Here was the CEO at the Stanford SEED session in July:

And here she is in her conference room in Lagos, showing us the outcome of the exercise that she had done with her staff!  The goal was to learn how to improve the production flow. They had this brainstorming with the entire company, including the factory floor workers and came up with some “out of the box ideas.”

Other lessons included learning about the margin structures of various paint grades and application techniques. This paint company has lofty goals for expansion and is currently in the process of building a new factory.  But, apparently the road to the new location is abysmal; so, to really beef up production there will take some capital investment.  Jan toured the current facilities, where paint was finally being made again (since they had just spent $2,000 to repair the generator.) One thing Jan learned was the importance of putting a lab coat over her black dress BEFORE going in the paint plant where white pigment was being combined with water in the vat.

At an ecommerce company, they ‘re implementing a move of their call center in a 48-hour window during the national holiday. Since this company is on a “rocket ship” pace of growth, they don’t want any downtime for orders during this move.  So, they’re planning carefully and are confident they will be able to pull this off.

And they’re deploying their fleet of motorcycles to deliver products to people’s homes and offices. In Nigeria an ambitious ecommerce company has to take on the roles of both Amazon and UPS/FedEx.

Another company is pioneering the farming and distribution of healthful vegetables to quality conscious customers in Accra. Providing the right incentives to farmers so that they grow what customers want, when they want it, is a major challenge.

Turning to electrical contracting, the team is analyzing the bottlenecks in the supply chain for their products and services.  Getting paid on time seems to be a universal problem throughout West Africa.  Without a Dunn and Bradstreet type of service, there is no sharing of information about “deadbeat payers.”  Each company has to deal with this challenge independently.

Wearing our “dry cleaning hats”, we observed professional client service and exceptional quality control.  Ed also read in the local paper that the Nigerian Federal Government is now requiring all workers in the capital to wear “suit and tie”, instead of traditional dress.  This could be a bonanza for our client who is about to open a branch in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.

In food products , Jan used her “store check” experience (learned when she was working in consumer products right out of Business School) to visit the small shops in Nigeria to find out more about how they buy and sell their oil.

She also checked out the supermarkets to learn about how the larger stores display oils.

Ed coaches a  client building a world-class, business-to-business, software platform.  They’re dealing with the universal problems of missed deadlines, tardy features and customer pressure to customize the platform and applications for specific scenarios or integration requirements. The challenges of delivering enterprise software transcend national borders.

The past two weeks have whizzed by. It’s now Saturday night and we’re watching the sun set from our deck, sipping South African Sauvignon Blanc.  Tonight’s entertainment will be a concert of Ghanaian Highlife music, joined by another group from New Zealand (!), at the nearby Alliance Francais.  What a rich international mélange!

One of the central figures of the Stanford SEED program is Professor Jim Patell – the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). His initiative, curriculum, and involvement in designing products and services for the developing world have been pivotal to the launch of SEED. Jim has been in Accra for the last three weeks, sharing his enthusiasm for design thinking with the SEED entrepreneurs and Ghanaian high school students.

Ed and I originally met Jim at the GSB in 1977, where he taught Cost Accounting as part of the First Year core curriculum.  Ed was in his class, while Jan was in a different section, so only knew him by sight.  And what a sight.  All of the students thought he was younger than we were!  He, and another professor, Mark Wolfson, looked very young. We called them “whiz kids” since they already had PhD’s and were professors.  We also called them the “accounting guys”, but we now know that was selling them short.

So, when I tell my friends from the GSB class of ‘79 that our Accounting Professor, Jim Patell, is a renowned expert in “Design Thinking”, they are intrigued.

Chatting with Jim over lunch recently, I learned that his career has been much more than an “Accounting to Design Thinking” transformation.  In his academic life, his path has followed conscious choices, amazing mentors, and brilliant collaborators.

Jim’s higher education started out at MIT, where he studied from 1966 to 1972, during the height of the Vietnam War. He worked at MIT under contract to the Department of Defense to help fund his education.  During this tenure, he worked on the design of the Spruance Class destroyer and also worked for Dr. John Craven, who had been the Chief Scientist in the Polaris-Poseidon FBM submarine program. The years spent at MIT were a time of amazing technology development, and he received a BS in Navel Architecture and Engineering and a Masters in Ocean Engineering.  And, he studied Finance under Bob Merton, who later won the Nobel Prize in Economics in conjunction with Myron Scholes for option pricing.

After MIT, Jim had the choice of getting an MBA at Stanford or earning a PhD at Carnegie Mellon University, where Professor Bob Kaplan, “saw himself in me” (Jim’s words).  Kaplan also had an engineering degree from MIT and a PhD in Operations Research from Cornell.  As a formidable mentor, Bob convinced Jim to go to Carnegie Mellon, where he received his PhD in three years.

In 1975, at 27 years old, Jim landed a job on the faculty at the GSB.  Initially, he taught Financial Accounting and Cost Accounting as part of the First Year Core Curriculum.  According to Jim, “Accounting and Finance were closer together then”.  His research focused on empirical finance and the effects of corporate disclosures on stock and option markets.

After teaching at the GSB for 6 years, Jim and Mark Wolfson both became Visiting Professors at the University of Chicago.  During this year, Jim traveled to Africa and consulted with SAB (South African Brewing) as they were divesting their holdings in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia).  Little did Jim know that many more African adventures would be in his future.

Jim returned to Stanford and became a full professor in 1985.  He became an Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Business School and managed many innovative programs, as well as revamping the Public Management Program.  He served as Associate Dean for six years, and when left the Deans’ Office, he shifted fields from the Accounting group to the Operations and Information Technology group in the GSB.  He taught the core Operations course for seven years, developed Operations electives, and then taught the core Computer Modeling course with Jeff Moore.

In a Computer Modeling elective in the late 90’s, Jim offered two extra units for students who wanted to hone their skills on a real-world project.  He found out that non-profits were great clients for student projects.

 “I learned that when students do a project for for-profit companies, the companies say, ‘Thanks so much.  Well take it back and evaluate it.’  But when the students work for non-profits, the non-profits say, ‘Thanks so much.  We’ll begin implementing your recommendations next Wednesday.’’”

The Modeling course ran for two years, and then in 2003 Jim launched the course now entitled, “Design for Extreme Affordability (aka “Extreme”). http://extreme.stanford.edu/

This “Extreme” class, initiated by Jim, David Kelly of IDEO, and one other professor, encourages graduate students from various disciplines – Business, Engineering, Medicine, Law – to form teams to learn about the needs of the poor in the developing world and design solutions to meet their needs.  Over the last 10 years, this course has grown into a very popular magnet for grad students (who have to survive a competitive application process to get in.) And, many long-lasting solutions have come out of the course, including Embrace, a sleeping bag incubator for at risk infants in rural villages and d.Light, a solar powered lantern that allows kids to do their homework without kerosene fumes in their hut at night where there is no electricity.  Many projects have turned into successful companies, which are exploring new models of business structure and governance.  Even the tax laws in California are changing to fit the needs of these social businesses that come out of this course.

Also, the course, and collaboration between Jim, David Kelly, and others, provided the foundation for the development of the “d.School”, also known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. http://dschool.stanford.edu/

Bob and Dottie King were initially introduced to Jim during an open-to-the-public final presentation of student projects from “Design for Extreme Affordability”.  They were intrigued and inspired by the students and their work.  They met Jim, and their friendship began.  The rest is history.

As in any life story, this brief synopsis doesn’t do justice to the rich and complex subject matters that Jim has mastered over his career.  But, hopefully it paints a picture of the amazing journey of a Professor who never sits still or rests on his laurels.  Constant change. Innovation. Exploring new areas.  What a privilege for us to be with him in Accra to share this part of his personal transformation.

Our journey (5 am – 8:30 pm) to Cape Coast and the Central Region started and ended in the dark of Accra.  But it was filled with brilliant color, African heritage and emotional impact.

After a delightful breakfast en route with Kweku and his friend from the University of Ghana, we arrived in Cape Coast and encountered a memorial celebration in honor of the Ghana’s late President John Atta Mills.  The current President of Ghana, John Mahama,  was in attendance for this 1 year memorial of Atta Mills’ death. Security was tight, as various musicians performed and dignitaries gave their tributes.

President Atta Mills is beloved by Ghanaians, and many people honored his memory by wearing clothing emblazoned with his picture.  (When I expressed my admiration for her dress, this lady offered to make me a similar version!)

After the service, we were moved by the emotional tour of the Cape Coast Castle,  a World Heritage Site. The Castle was one of the largest slave-holding sites in the world during the colonial era.  The men’s dungeon could hold up to 1000 men for 3 months while they awaited their transport via a crowded ship to England or America.  The conditions were horrendous.  It is very sobering to see how humanity can treat one another.  The loud clang of the closing “Door of No Return” brought the serious situation home.

Barak and Michele visited the sight in 2009, and our guide said that Michele’s ancestors probably passed through this castle.

After the tour, we headed to Victoria Park for  Panafest – the Pan African Historical Theatre Festival, which celebrates African Heritage and History. It was a music-filled event with lots of drama. The reenactment of a march of slaves was gruesome.

But, the general mood of the Chiefs from the various tribes was joyous and jubilant.  They were decked out in beautiful traditional outfits, complete with abundant gold jewelry and ornaments.  The Chiefs visited one another, traveling from tent to tent under the shelter of an umbrella held by one of their tribe.

After the Festival, we traveled north for 12 kilometers to see the Elmina Castle – the oldest Castle along the coast,  dating from 1482.

At the Elmina lagoon, the fishermen were headed out for their all-night journey.  The sights and sounds were vibrant and lively.

We didn’t have enough time to do the Elmina Castle and town justice, so a return trip is in order!

On July 18, Stanford SEED celebrated its official launch in a two distinct parts. In the morning, government officials from Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d’Ivoire spoke in a formal ceremony at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.  The speeches were about the commitment the governments to focus infrastructure improvement in the areas of job training, electricity, logistics and the availability of equity financing in order to foster growth in business and employment. All the ministers expressed enthusiasm for the SEED program and Stanford’s commitment to aiding the business sector in West Africa.

The “dress code” in the morning was Business Formal.  So, as coaches, we “dressed as brothers (and sisters)” for the occasion.  Here we are on the red carpet with Gina Jorasch, the SEED Director for Alumni and Student Programs:

The evening called for a party at the Stanford SEED Center.  We invited the participating entrepreneurs and their spouses, as well as local business professionals and local academics.  A local tailor created a Ghanaian outfit for the Stanford staff and the coaches.  Now we were truly dressed as brothers!

Ed’s sister saw this photo and pronounced that we looked like “Homecoming King and Queen”!

Since our name tags read “Bill Coach” and Ed Coach”, perhaps they are actually brothers!

And maybe Jan and Melissa are siblings too!

All the gals sported dresses with different design.  (My only request of the tailor was, “Please, no peplum or ruffles around the hips!”  He replied, “But Madam, most Ghanaian ladies prefer to accentuate their hips.”  When, he saw my reaction to this, he noted my request and made the dress to fit my preferences.

The party featured a great band, with a vocalist who has appeared all over the world, and members of the National Dance Theater of Ghana. The entertainment was fantastic. It was also fun to meet others in the expat/NGO community as well as more members of the Stanford diaspora in West Africa.

Even though it was exhausting—and the staff and the thirty entrepreneurs in our Immersion Week had to “report for class” at 8:00 the next morning—the SEED launch was an enormous success!

“If you want to walk fast, walk alone.
If you want to walk far, ​walk together.” ​​
African Proverb

“Walking together” sums up the spirit of the Stanford SEED program. But before the Accra Center’s opening at 2 pm on Sunday, the Stanford team had to “work together” to get it ready for action. This extended the meaning of an “all hands” meeting! We balanced desks, moved chairs from room to room, and hauled furniture up the stairs. Trying to employ the traditional Ghanaian way of carrying heavy items, Gina, the Director for Alumni Relations for SEED, and Jan balanced the desks on our heads!

We also assembled the rotating white boards for the Design and Innovation workshops. Since the pen tray had been put in too high, Ed and Jan became the “rework team” to move the tray lower so the board could rotate effectively. Naturally the boards came without any assembly instructions, so team had to create a process that worked. By the time the team was done with all 10 boards, we were experts, but the job was finished.

Before the guest arrived, the sign crew (construction employees) put up the sign for the Center:

And it was perfectly in place to welcome the companies on Sunday.

Even the signs on the street corners were in place. This is important, because there really aren’t addresses in Accra – people reference their whereabouts based on landmarks and “close to” locations.

The companies began arriving at 2 pm on Sunday and the energy level of the room started to rise. Since most of them didn’t know each other, it was a great chance to meet and greet others from the five West African countries represented in the program. By the end of Day 2, we were working in teams – designing prototypes of new products and brainstorming ideas that will form solutions to client problems.

On Day 3, we were decked out in Stanford garb. We created storyboards for our proposed solutions…

And even performed a play for a client company to show how they could improve corporate communication!

The first three days have been a blast.  Three Stanford faculty members are here — each with a different, engaging style.  We are learning about design thinking, leadership, and supply chain management.  The executives from the companies are terrific. As coaches, we are delighted to “walk together “with this great team.

Thursday is the official public launch of the Center, complete with local dignitaries and officials. More to follow!

Hitting our heads on the van ceiling because of the bumpy dirt roads; waiting for 4 ½ hours for a 45 minute flight back to Accra from Lagos, Nigeria; rising at 5 am to catch the 6:50 flight to Kumasi, and other logistical hassles has not diminished our sense of inspiration and appreciation for the entrepreneurial spirit that is alive in West Africa. Persistence, perseverance, succeeding amidst all odds … these business folks may get knocked down, but they get right back up to keep fighting the good fight.

So far we’ve visited a wide range of business – paint manufacturer, soybean factory, organic farm, furniture maker, makeup training center, mobile technology company, and micronutrient processor among others. Each of these entrepreneurs who have built these companies will be participating in the Stanford SEED program. They will all assemble at the Stanford Center in Accra for an intensive week of business training (July 14 – 20) and then the coaches will work one-on-one with them on their individual issues from July 20 through December 15.

We’ve learned about the issues and opportunities facing these businesses and look forward to digging in to the details when we’re assigned to our selected firms.

Along the way, we’ve learned:

It takes a lot of work to process twenty tons of soybeans each day! The factory runs three shifts a day, except on Sunday. For an estimated salary of $3 – $5/day, these workers roast the soybeans, extract the oil and extrude the byproducts into dried chunks which are then ground into poultry feed. The shells are used for fueling the roaster; nothing is wasted. This is a multi-step process where several people need to carry large loads of beans on their heads between the steps. (When the average income of the “bottom of the pyramid” in a country is under $2/per day, this wage is a significant step up!)

Empowering women to offer makeovers and sell makeup to their neighbors and colleagues has created many success stories. The graduates of “Makeup ‘U’” (our name…) have created their own businesses selling African-centered makeup (not unlike Mary Kay in the US).

Growing and selling organic produce opens up the door to better nutrition and more delicious meals for local Ghanaians. We were especially enchanted by the restaurant opened by the entrepreneur to showcase her products as well as to use vegetables that are not quite “pretty enough” for sales through supermarkets.

Getting to and from these businesses, we’ve been traveling in a van, accompanied by Kwabena Amporful, a very accomplished young Ghanaian GSB grad working with the program. He has developed personal relationships with many of West African entrepreneurs over time, and has shared his contacts and insights with us.

Also, from the van, we’ve witnessed other entrepreneurs, who may not be in the Stanford program, but who hawk their wares each day to make ends meet and provide products and services to greater Accra. These sales folks are working on “George W Bush” highway.

Luckily, this seller made a transaction.

Another sales person was delighted when Jan purchased a hand-printed African shirt. She even altered it to fit in 20 minutes!

Our introduction and orientation to West Africa winds up on Sunday when the “intensive week” begins at the new Stanford SEED Center in Accra. We have enjoyed our meetings with entrepreneurs over the last week and look forward to meeting the others in the thirty-company cohort on Sunday.

We landed in Accra, a city of 4 million, from Namibia (population 2.1 million) and were instantly struck by the heat, color, and energy of our new home. Looking at our fellow travelers on Air Namibia, we assumed that we would be the only folks in the “non Ghanaian citizens” line at immigration, but this was incorrect. Instead, other planes had landed at the same time and this queue was teaming with Africans in local dress. Many fabrics and styles were represented– a kaleidoscope of color! Immigration was quite slow, as everyone seemed to have some type of story to explain to the immigration agents.

The next morning we reunited with our group of coaches and took this picture on the roof of our building overlooking the airport and greater Accra. Melissa Nsiah, a Stanford grad from 2008 is managing our orientation. She has been very helpful since she lives in Accra, but grew up in New York! Pictured here are: Melissa, Bill Scull, Jan, Ed, Clinton Etheridge, Kweku Flemming.

We have settled in to our apartment in the Airport Residential section of Accra. We share a 3-bedroom fifth floor apartment with Clinton. Bill and Kweku are across the hall. Since we’re the only couple, we have the master which is filled with natural light. Nice! In fact, it’s bigger than our bedroom in SF. The living room is very spacious–perfect for group meetings and dinners on our laps with colleagues. There is air conditioning throughout, so it is quite comfortable. Our neighbors include two guys working in Security at the Saudi embassy (who waved at Jan when she went out on the deck in her pj’s the first morning.) They later invited us up for a beer! There’s also a gal working for UNICEF upstairs who apparently jogs every morning.

Our building has a reasonable gym on the roof with a treadmill, spin bike and all-in-one gym for weights. We’re hoping for air conditioning in the gym soon. One of the most important features of our compound is the diesel generator which is supposed to kick in whenever electricity from the grid dies. Reliability of power is a very major issue throughout West Africa so virtually every building has a generator for backup power. Our building generator is huge, resembling a freight locomotive albeit without the wheels.

Our neighborhood is a mix of old and new. Our building is two years old, but people have only moved in recently. Down the street is Auntie Paulina’s vegetable stall which provides fresh fruit daily. Also nearby is the Diplomat’s liquor store. The shopkeeper took one look at the five us and declared that we were instantly diplomats (and thus able to purchase French wine, chocolates, and other goodies.) There are two other six story buildings going up around us. Soon the sunlight for the remaining one story homes in our neighborhood will be eclipsed by these buildings, and we think these smaller properties will soon be torn down to make room for bigger and better. There seems to be no zoning, so business are located right next to residences –sometimes even in the same building. We are also down the store from the Koala grocery store, which seems to be owned by Lebanese shopkeepers. There’s a wide assortment of items, including Ghee, cassava, baguettes, hair straightener, and ice cream. Our apartment even comes with our “house boy”(that’s what he’s called), named Francis, who cleans, irons, runs errands, and helps out whenever possible. He has a shy smile and is very helpful.

Traffic is crazy! We are lucky to have a driver to navigate the streets. After our first day, even Ed said he wouldn’t be driving here! Every street is teeming with hawkers — salespeople who carry food or other merchandise on their heads and sell them to passengers in the passing cars. They walk up and down the middle of the street hoping to make a transaction through the window. You can buy a ThighMaster, fresh fruit, coffee mugs, phone cards, clothing, electrical adapters, etc. We have yet to purchase anything through this method.

The local people are extremely friendly and hospitable. They call us “auntie” and “uncle” or “madam” and “sir”. No question is too small or off limits. We have visited the local bars and pizza parlors (!) and made new friends.

Our team of five has begun to bond. We all feel honored to be a part of the SEED program and look forward to the weeks ahead.