Safaricom

We didn’t get the money. Drat. Well at least not yet.

Simon and I got all decked out in our suits and headed off to Nairobi for the day with Dan (the Center’s director). We made it to Safaricom headquarters and walked in like we owned the place. I mean, we were two white guys wearing three-piece suits, what else were we supposed to think?

Our attempt to be punctual on African time failed miserably as we showed up early, even on Western standards. That wasn’t too bad though as it gave us a chance go over everything one last time. When the call finally came, we went up and found ourselves in a cubicle-filled room and were shown to a little lounge area where we set up our laptop and took one final deep breath. Greatings were exchanged and then we were off! Surprisingly we were given a full 45 minutes to give our presentation before being rather abruptly shut down.

The woman we were dealing with, the sponsorship chairman, was visibly shocked by how much money we were asking for. I think we blew her away with the presentation though, and it was a very big reason why we were given the courtesy of finishing. She said that there are tons of organizations that send requests for meetings or money as we did, but it seemed like we were a little more prepared than the others.

We joked around for a few minutes to keep a light mood and gave one final pitch, to which she gave us the good old corporate tag line “it’s not that we don’t care, per se, it’s just that helping you doesn’t help us.” To be expected from the largest company in Kenya I guess, but she did tell us that she might be able to help us balance our budget for the current year (roughly $10,000).

We will hear back on our written proposal for that by next week.

All in all, it was a pretty neat experience and something that I don’t think too many other people in our situation have had the opportunity to do. And we learned quite a bit in the process. That all comes second to the fact that we still may be able to gain a large sum of money, securing the program for another year.