I got my first motorcycle when I was 16 and started to ride the streets of Nairobi.  Fortunately, we had fewer cars on the road back in the early ‘90s. I started to understand the way to see and think when dealing with the odd assortment of experiences you face on Kenyan streets.  Today, I still ride my piki piki (“motorcycle” in Kiswahili) to work each day, and I’ve also been fortunate enough to take it to some far flung parts of the continent. During my daily commute, I started thinking about the business lessons I’ve learned from riding my motorcycle in Nairobi.  Each week, I talk to the 100-person strong BRCK team and decided I wanted to share these lessons with them. Here they are.

1. When going at speed, focus. Filter out everything else.

This, like many of the lessons, are not just for Nairobi rides but for everyone who is on a bike.  The first point here is to stay hyper-focused, and not let your mind wander.  The second is to learn to “see” everything so that you have situational awareness, but only watch what’s important.  

The business analogy is the same. When we’re really hitting our stride, or when things are moving faster than we can control (hello Coronavirus), then it’s incredibly important for me to know what I’m focusing on and not to try to do everything.  The same holds true for every person in the company; have a tight understanding of what you need to spend your time on so that we don’t waste energy, resources, and time on things that aren’t going to move the needle for the business. 

2. Deal with what you have, not what you wish you had.

I remember riding down one of Nairobi’s new bypasses – two lanes each way, with a divider in the middle – going around a long corner and finding a car driving the wrong way down the road directly towards me.  This isn’t abnormal. Shoot, I’ve got stories of U-turns on three-lane highways, pedestrians doing odd things, cows suddenly appearing (or camels, or sheep, or goats – you get the idea).  It’s part of what you have to learn to deal with. 

Running a company is much the same.  You’re pleasantly building your platform, doing sales or marketing, talking to investors, creating a solution for your primary user, and then something happens that you’re not expecting. 

I happened to be in San Francisco when the US banned travel from Europe. I was on my way to another tech CEO’s house for dinner.  When I arrived, we looked at each other and stated that raising capital just got 100% harder than it had been just a few minutes before.  You still have to find the capital to grow your company, but now you have to do it in a different way.  The truck hurtling down the road in the opposite direction just waylaid your plans. You either bail and find yourself in a ditch by the side of the road, or you swerve and find a new path, madly holding on to the handlebars and keeping the bike upright. 

3. It’s not about speed, but efficiency.

When people see you riding a motorcycle in Nairobi they think you’re driving fast. Sometimes you do when on the big highways, but mostly you’re just putt-putting along in first gear as everyone else is stuck in standstill traffic.  Riding a motorcycle in Kenya isn’t about speed, that’s what gets you in trouble (revisit my last point to see why), it’s about efficiency of consistent movement.  When everyone else is stopped, I can keep going.  My commute each day in a car would be approximately one hour each way, on a motorcycle it’s 20 minutes. 

There are times running a company where you are in a speed moment. We’ll find an opportunity with our customers that we need to act on now to clinch a win.  That’s great, and when those happen we have to sprint to get there.  No company can survive doing that all the time, though. So instead, we design for efficiency – for making sure we have constant forward movement and not being bothered that we can’t go fast all of the time. 

I think about how we rolled out our Moja Network across Kenya’s public transportation system over the last two years.  The first few months, when things were on a tight deadline and we were dealing with all kinds of issues, it was an all-hands-on-deck sprint.  Then we were able to gear down, continue growing the network, put in standard operating procedures, and build processes.  This network team today does an amazing job of being efficient and effective without tiring themselves out in a constant speed battle.   

4. Don’t get comfortable.

I remember jumping onto my motorcycle, and taking a friend for a lift down Ngong Road just outside my office.  One lane wasn’t moving at all, and the other oncoming lane was completely empty (back when it was just two single lanes).  As we’re moving along slowly passing a bus, a guy blindly walks out in front of the bus directly into our path.  I slam the breaks and swerve away from him.  He double-takes, his eyes get as big as saucers, and he jumps forward…!  By this time I’m riding forward up onto my tank as I hit the brakes hard, and my passenger is shoving me forward too. The pedestrian smacks my handlebars and my wheel goes sideways – the bike leans over and drops (my passenger and I were on our feet and didn’t go down with it) – then the pedestrian leaps up and sprints away.  Nothing broken on the bike or person, but we’d just gone from comfortable to shock in about two seconds.

At BRCK we created the Kio Kit, which I still think is the best and most holistic solution for bringing digital education to places that have never had it.  It was truly innovative and we were happy and comfortable with just how good it was.  While we basked in that, we crashed into the slow turnaround time for decisions in the education sector.  We had this great product, but the sales funnel was so long, and the cost of holding inventory was so high, that we just couldn’t make it work.  After two years of pushing it, and getting independent longitudinal studies of how it improved learning outcomes, we had to put the Kio Kit aside and focus on something else. 

5. You can’t complain about the rain.

This is a short and simple one.  If you buy a motorcycle, you know it will rain and you’ll get wet.  Don’t buy a motorcycle and then complain when it rains, like it’s some great surprise to you. 

In business we know there are going to be things that are uncomfortable to deal with.  You’ll have to fire people.  A new feature won’t quite do what you thought it would do.  A partner lets you down, or a company you relied on just isn’t there any longer.  This is business, this is entrepreneurship.  Don’t complain about it, you know it will happen. Instead, get to work and find a way to deal with it.  However, like a motorcycle in the rain, you can plan.  Get insurance, save cash for that rainy day – in other words, carry your company’s equivalent of a rain jacket. 

These lessons from riding a motorcycle often came to mind during my commute. I kept forgetting them by the time I reached my destination, so I  soon found myself pulling over onto the side of the road to scribble them down. As an innovator and an entrepreneur, things can feel uncertain even in the most ordinary seasons. It’s important to make sure we remember what we’ve learned along the way. 

Loading up the Kio Kits for our education expedition to Samburu

The trip from Nairobi went well, as you can expect when you’re on the best roads in Kenya. There was only one small problem with a fuel line on the tired out old 1981 R80G/S when we got to Archer’s Post. I’m not bitter at all that my much nicer 2007 Suzuki DR650 is constantly overlooked by everyone as they drool over the old Beemer. We fixed the fuel line by finding a local motorcycle mechanic and raiding his parts bin.

Fixing a fuel line on the 1981 BMW

Shortly after, we shunted off of the main road into the dirt and made our way past Kalama town. Kiltamany Primary School lies about 15km past Kalama, and is the education facility for 170 children. We rolled into the school as the sun was setting, to the singing of the women in the community and the elders waiting for us for initial introductions.

An unexpected outcome of the evening was that we were going to be shown how the women are learning. Sylvester, the younger Samburu man who was responsible for this program, explained that he had built this program to teach the older women and mothers in the community how to read and do basic maths in order for them to understand the value of it. This encourages them to send their girls to school for the full first 8 years of primary school, and possibly beyond.

What was encouraging to see was just how hungry for learning the women in the community were. Sylvester asked us to be the teachers for the evening, so Nivi took over the classroom and worked through some mathematics with the ladies.

The Kio Kit was brought from the vehicle and the ladies watched a video on counting and number placement in Kiswahili. It’s by one of our partners, Ubongo Kids, out of Tanzania. This is one of the great values of the digital education kit, and our content agnostic approach, since we can partner with specialists on education content from anywhere and help get distribution of their content to the far edges of the country.

The Kio Kit about to be introduced to Samburu women

We ended the night with the Samburu elders showing us a luga (dry riverbed) and leaving us to camp for the night. Most places don’t have great connectivity, but we’re getting fairly strong 3g reception here and are able to do posts like this fairly easily.

Day 2 is going to be spent with the children from the school. Focusing on training up the teachers on digital tools like the Kio Kit and making sure that they’re comfortable, then doing some classroom exercises with the students.

(By Erik)

I’m writing this blog post using my Mac, connected to a BRCK which is connected to a satellite internet connection using an Inmarsat iSavi device, somewhere about 100km from Arusha towards Dodoma. Inmarsat gave us this test device, a small unit, made for global travelers, so we could test out what worked and give them feedback on their tools. It also helps us figure out what connecting to the internet looks like when you’re beyond the edge of the mobile phone signal in Africa.

Here’s Reg, using his phone to do the same at our campground this evening:

Reg using the BRCK and iSavi in Tanzania

The Journey

We left at 5:30am from Nairobi to beat the traffic out of the city. With the beautiful new roads, we were at the Namanga border by 8am and cleared by 10am. Before you go on one of these trips, make it easy for yourself and get the following:

• Carnet de Passage for each vehicle (get this via AA)
• COMESA insurance (get via your insurance company, or buy at the border)
• International driver’s license (get via AA)
• Yellow fever card
• Passport

By noon we were in Arusha, and took a chance to see the cafe that Pete Owiti (of Pete’s Coffee in Nairobi) set up with some Tanzanians, called Africafe. If you ever find yourself in Arusha, this is the first place you should go. Great food, good coffee, right in the middle of everything.

Knowing we were only going about 100km more today, we set off around 1pm. We got to a roundabout, and I knew which direction the main road was, so even though Philip mentioned we should go right, I went left to the main road. 45 minutes later we realized my mistake when Philip checked his GPS and realized we were further away than we were supposed to be.

Lesson learned: always listen to your cofounders (especially the one with the GPS).

With many sighs, we turned around and went back to Arusha, where Reg had been smart enough to stay with the Land Rover when he realized we went the wrong way. We quickly split off in the correct direction, aiming to get to the camping spot by 4pm latest.

As we were sitting in traffic in Arusha, Joel says, “Erik, your bike is smoking.” I replied that it was likely just the car I was parked next to. Nope. Sure enough, I was leaking oil… For those of you who don’t ride motorcycles, this is the last thing you want to hear when on the front end of a 4,400km trip. I ride a 2007 Suzuki DR650 – they have some of the most bullet-proof engines, and are perfect for Africa’s roads.

Working on the DR650 in Arusha

Fortune smiled upon us, and we were pointed towards Arusha Art Limited, which turned out to be an amazing garage (the best I’ve ever seen in Africa). Their director, Hemal Sachdev helped us out by helping to troubleshoot what could be wrong, and even fabricating a high-pressure oil hose, with compression fittings on the spot. There was oil everywhere, so we washed it off and kept going.

Lesson learned: there are a lot of people willing to help you in your journey, especially if you ask nicely.

5 km down the road, I was still smoking… Thanks to Hemal’s help, we knew what the problem wasn’t. It was now that we chanced to notice that the problem seemed to be coming from the timing chain setting hole. We realized this could be filled by a normal M5 screw, so got trucking to the campground where we could let the engine cool down and screw it in.

Now, I sit here in Wild Palms Camp, some place we saw on the side of the road near the Tarangiri game reserve. For 10,000 Tanzania Shillings ($6) each, you get a patch of ground to put a tent, there is a banda with table/chairs, and there are even some showers and toilets. Not real camping, but definitely nice after a day on the bike!

It’s that time of year in Kenya again – the “short rains” are coming, there’s a slight chill in the air, and every now and then, the sky opens up for a brief deluge of water. It’s hard to avoid getting wet during the rainy season here, something we’ve designed the BRCK to handle (in small doses, at least).

It just so happens that one of our key partners, Hackers for Charity – who help schools and nonprofits solve technology related problems so they can get on with their jobs – has some interesting problems they are trying to solve in their work with schools around Jinja, Uganda, at the source of the White Nile and on the shores of the largest body of water in Africa, Lake Victoria. Time for a water-bound expedition, methinks.

Going into the wild to test our products in some of the most remote and challenging environments we can find is a core principle behind how we design in Africa, for Africa; to eat our own dog food, so to speak. Last year we took a trip to the barren shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya to live stream one of the best views in the world of a hybrid solar eclipse. Despite having that view blocked by a massive dust storm, the BRCK performed admirably, and we learned a lot about how to design for reliability in extreme weather. You can watch the video here:

This year, we’re taking a slightly different tack. When we started making the BRCK, we found some of the greatest need for affordable, reliable connectivity is in schools. We’ve been pushing hard for solutions in the edtech scene ever since, working with partners such as eLimu, Mozilla, and Sugata Mitra’s “School in the Cloud” TED prize wish to develop projects around innovative caching solutions to cut down the costs for data, a Raspberry Pi MRTR to turn your BRCK into a remote server, and testing connectivity solutions in schools from India to Ghana.

When Johnny Long, the founder of Hackers for Charity, first contacted BRCK back in June, he showed us his own attempts to build a rugged and reliable remote connectivity device. It looked remarkably like some early BRCK prototypes. It was clear we were trying to solve the same problems, and that by working together we could make a dent in the challenges facing students in rural Uganda. We set Johnny up with a BRCK and gave him free reign to hack it however he needed to build the solutions that worked for the schools he and Hackers for Charity supports.

At last, we have the chance to work with him directly. On Sunday, six of us will load up the Land Rover and make the 12-hour journey from Nairobi to Jinja. Johnny has graciously offered to host us at the bed and breakfast he and his wife run while we set about training up the Hackers for Charity staff on the technical aspects of the BRCK, testing antennas and signal amplifiers, and ultimately working to get several local schools online.

One of these schools is on an island in Lake Victoria, an hour and a half journey from Jinja by boat. Seeing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, we decided to bring an OpenROV with us. We’re hoping we can work out a way to control the ROV through the Ethernet port on a BRCK, meaning we could “wirelessly” pilot the ROV through the waters of Lake Victoria. Since Ushahidi, our parent company, partnered with OpenROV to create OpenExplorer.com, a platform for sharing the fruits of grassroots exploration with the world, you’ll be able to follow the progress of the entire expedition at:

https://openexplorer.com/expedition/brckexpedition2014

As if this wasn’t enough, Jinja also happens to be at the headwaters of the White Nile, with some of the best high-volume whitewater in the world. A BRCK expedition can’t be all bed and breakfasts, so we looked up Pete Meredith, one of the leading explorers of the Nile (he’s ran it from the furthest source in Rwanda all the way to the Mediterranean), and Nalubale Rafting to help us spend a couple days exploring the river.

In addition to the edtech sphere, some of the primary use cases that are emerging for BRCK’s technology are around conservation. We’ve been talking to people who are monitoring the effects of hippo feces and wildebeest carcasses on water quality in the Maasai Mara and streaming live data on animal sightings and pH levels (and much more) in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. You can read all about the Mara Project and Into the Okavango here and here:

http://mara.yale.edu ; http://mamase.unesco-ihe.org

http://intotheokavango.org

Both of these projects have very kindly shared info about their open-source sensor package designs with us. We’ve put together our own package to test pH and water temperature, and will attempt to stream data from the river as we go. This will be a fantastic learning experience as we further develop IoT use cases for the BRCK, and we hope will prove a valuable source of insights for how we can better enable our conservation partners to inform the wider public about the amazing work they’re doing, and the importance of these fragile ecosystems.

So, with a very full docket, our soldering irons packed, and our heads and hearts full of excitement, the BRCK team is once again setting out into the wild blue yonder. Get ready to follow along – BRCK Expedition 2014 begins tomorrow!

Since we last updated you a month ago, a lot of great things have been happening.

Reg and Erik are on their way to Austin, speaking at SXSW on Friday. If you’re in town, do come by and talk to us. We’ll have some BRCKs with us and will show you how it’s going. You can also ask any questions and geek out with us on what you can do from the software and hardware sides to extend the BRCK core functionality.

Though Austin is always a fun place to be for SXSW, this isn’t the only reason we’re there. While the BRCK is designed and engineered in Kenya, the final assembly and manufacturing is done in the US – in Austin, TX. We’ve started our production orders, production boards are being flashed, and we’re doing regulatory testing now as well, trying to get that all accomplished quickly so we can get your BRCKs to you as fast as possible.

Some other goodies:

The BRCK Eclipse Expedition A couple months ago you might remember that the BRCK team was chasing a rare hybrid eclipse in Northern Kenya, to the shores of Lake Turkana. If you missed out on following our adventure, you can read about it on Erik’s Blog. Here’s the video of that trip:

BRCK Eclipse Expedition to Lake Turkana from BRCK on Vimeo.

Boxes and Dashboard Sneak Peek

Jeff Maina joined the team in February and we’re excited to have someone of his design skills on the team. Here’s a sneak peek of the box and the dashboard.

Jeff holding the BRCK packaging (note: the final will be cardboard colored, not white).

Both Jeff and Emmanuel have been crunching out a bunch of pixels and code, so that everything from the initial setup process to the dashboard work. It’s all completely responsive design, so that you can access it via your browser on a phone, tablet or computer.

The Sandstorm (@SandstormKenya) team in Kenya is making the special pouches for the BRCK backers who came in at over $300. The original design was cool, but they just came back to us this week with an even more amazing and rugged case made of canvas, leather and brass. It feels like we moved from a Landrover to a Range Rover with it!

But, when does the BRCK ship!?

This is the date we’ve been hunting as much as you. It’s been a longer road than we though, due mostly to component manufacturing issues and having to redesign things at the last minute. While we could have pushed out a basic BRCK earlier, it would not have been something that you (nor we) would have been happy with. Assuming all of the final issues lined up around components, assembly and regulatory issues, the BRCK should ship in April. We’re bending all of our time, energy, sweat and tears towards making that happen. Thank you for your patience!

Erik Hersman, for the BRCK team

We started out early from Kurungu towards Baragoi, we didn’t have any issues with bandits as there was an increased police presence in the area. It had rained the night before, so the ground for our whole trip was a bit damp, perfect for fast riding. It also created some very waterlogged areas, where we had to get completely soaked up to our waists in the water as we rode through.

Taylor Martyn riding through a deep puddle, north of Maralal, Kenya from WhiteAfrican on Vimeo.

Until we got to the rocks near Maralal, it was a fairly easy ride, then things began to toughen up. One puncture on Taylor’s bike, a quick change, and then off on our way again put us into a rainy Maralal by lunchtime.

We went through some massive puddles along the way, so our boots were completely soaked and we were then able to empty the water from them as we enjoyed some hot chai, chapatis and stew at a local hoteli.

Back into our wet socks and waterlogged boots, and we were off for some rocky, wet and slippery riding down towards Rumuruti – where the tarmac roads begin.

From there it was a quick run down to Gilgil, which we reached by 6:30pm and started for Nairobi, only 1:30 ours away (or so we thought…).

Now, due to the number of spills the bike that I was riding had endured, none of the lights worked, except for the headlight and the right blinker. We put Taylor’s fully functioning bike in front, me in the middle, and the Land Rover behind. The car alternator had gone out the night before, so we didn’t run the car with much electronics all day and the battery seemed to be holding up well.

20 minutes later, just past Naivasha, my headlight went out.

Now, the only place more dangerous than driving on a road in Kenya at night, is the side of the road. But, there we merrily sat, Philip and Reg testing out the electronics and finally realizing that the bulb itself was burnt out. I wondered what a flashlight would look like inside the headlight casing. It turned out to be surprisingly bright, so Fady donated his super expensive and very bright bicycling flashlight to the cause, which turned out to fit perfectly.

As we duct taped that jua kali light into place, the Land Rover’s batter gave out it’s final death call and the lights went out.

No problem, we put it in reverse and pushed it back down the hill to jump start it. Fortunately, we had a 12,000 mAh Brunton Solo 15 solar charged battery on hand (similar to their new Impel), and we hooked that up to the vehicles lights.

Off we rode into the night, now the truck in front, me on my raggedy old cludged together light bike in the middle, and Taylor riding anchor. It was now very cold, as it gets in the Kenyan highlands during the rains. Then, as we got up towards the top of the escarpment, at the 8,000 feet high level, it started to seriously rain. Now, it’s already hard to see at night on a bike with a headlight pointing up and blinding pilots, with people’s brights deflecting off of the droplets on your visor it becomes even harder. Pop up the visor and you can see again, but the cold and stinging rain now hits you in the face. Better to live with a little pain than die in a collision, so up it went.

We had just passed the Kijabe turnoff when the Land Rover’s second battery died. Fortunately, we were in my territory, as my alma mater RVA was 15 minutes down in Kijabe. We pulled over at a petrol station, called up my old dorm parent Mark Kinzer, and he found a friend who was willing to donate us a fully charged 12v battery for the remainder of the trip. 20 minutes later we had a battery and were moving down the road again.

16 hours after leaving Kurungu, wet, cold and utterly fatigued, we arrived home and well in Nairobi.

Thank god for old friends, good (enough) roads, no bandits and safety through the night drive. A bunch of creative problem solving was needed to get through, as well as stamina and perseverance in the face of the friction that is thrown at you on a trip like this. I can’t tell you how happy I was to get some warm food at home, a warm shower to thaw out my body, and a warm bed to crash collapse into as I went comatose for the night.

Would I do this trip again? Absolutely. In fact, “BRCK Expeditions” are a new thing for us that we’ll continue to do as a company and that we’ll look forward to hearing about from our BRCK users around the world.

I wrote up another blog post on my personal blog today about some of the things I learned about our team. They are:

1. Work together, help each other selflessly.
2. Think creatively and push harder to get through the friction.
3. Always get back up, persevere.

Yesterday we took off from Sibiloi towards Loiyangalani and then on towards South Horr. Besides a tire puncture along the way for the car, it was nice and easy. We were able to stop and talk about the eclipse with a few eclipse chasers from Spain and they said they got a somewhat clear picture of it, with just a small bit of cloud cover. There were so many vehicles leaving the north, that big clouds of dust covered us and made us look like brown powdered humans.

While stopped on the side of the road, about 100 Kilometers from Loiyangalani we could get a very weak Edge mobile phone signal. Enough to send some tweets and call people, but no real media uploads. We spent some time with the Wilson amplification antennas, but didn’t have too much luck because we didn’t know the exact location of the tower from where we were. It’s a great piece of equipment though, one we love to break out and use with the Yaggi antenna from the top of the Land Rover.

Fady got his second motorcycle riding lesson. Again, on some of the worst roads that Africa can throw at you… amazing really. He did it all with speed and grace, and just a single tip-over.

We overnighted at the Swanepoels again, where we talked about the route possibilities. Massive rains have cut off a lot of the roads. Our 3 choices were: Marsabit (safe, long), Korr (not possible due to rains) and Baragoi (security issues, but short). We were heavily cautioned about Baragoi and Maralal, so opted for Marsabit and set off at 5:30am.

Today’s trip started off with eating a lot of flying ants. They flew so thick as we rode that it was like riding in a snow storm, except with wings. I got the all in my goggles and helmet, light and other gear. Everyone was covered in flying ants when we stopped 30 minutes later.

2 hours later found us sitting by the side of the road wondering how we were going to unstick a very stuck Land Rover. We had slipped and slid our way through, and Fady earned his “wet” riding badge with honors.

4-hours later, we were still stuck, after trying every trick we knew. I even tried something very stupid, and paid for it, trying to pull with my Suzuki DR650 and burning out the clutch plate. Now my motorcycle isn’t running and I have to leave it in South Horr with my friend to get it back down to Nairobi in a few weeks. This, I’m not happy about, but I should have thought through what I was trying to do.

A Landcruiser came through in a few hours and helped pull us out. 2 riders and 2 motorcycles sat by the side of the road while the others tried to push through. However, a new lake had formed on the way to Kargi and Marsabit, so they turned around and came back. A Land Rover had showed up, and we hired him to take my motorcycle back to South Horr.

So, now we sit in the same place that we sat yesterday at the same time.

Tomorrow we shoot off towards Baragoi. Though there have been bandits on the road, we’ve heard from another friend who went that way today that there is a lot of extra security on it and that they’ve just graded the road. With a lot of luck, we can make it to Naivasha and onto Nairobi by tomorrow night.