I’ve been in Nairobi for a little over a month and thankfully things are starting to fall into place.  One of my goals while I’m here is to visit as many micro-finance, job-creation and artisan groups as I can – I’d like to see what’s working, who is benefiting, how goods are currently being marketed and how I might help groups here take advantage of new opportunities (like WorldofGood.com).  Thankfully there are plenty of resources at my fingertips – everyone knows someone who is working on the ground in the fair trade or NGO arena.  However, it turns out that in a developing country, Development is also big business (ok, this isn’t news, it’s just that I’m still learning to navigate through things).  When I’m downtown and looking at various crafts and trying to identify where they come from and if there’s an organized group or project responsible for them, I have to be very careful that the information I collect is accurate.  There are simply so many people involved in the buying and selling of crafts that it can be really challenging to access groups directly.  For the past two weeks I’ve had “visits” lined up, only to find that my “guide” was a late-tier middleman who was feeding me lines about the “micro-finance” projects responsible for the purses or baskets I was looking at.  After talking to some of the shop owners I found out one of the lines of purses I was looking at aren’t even made in Kenya, so there’s no way I’d be visiting the women who make them during a day trip from Nairobi!

Thankfully, I have a number of contacts through organizations in the U.S. to meet directly with artisan groups who are already established exporters.  Next week I will head to Nanyuki to visit a group of weavers and do some research on how feasible it would be to introduce their beautiful rugs to the U.S. marketplace.  Because of their size and weight shippling will be exceptionally expensive so it’s going to be challenging to get them to the U.S. in a way that’s profitable both to the artisans and the groups that would sell them.  I’m hoping to find a way to make this work – the market in Kenya has been so disrupted following the post-election violence that artisans are really desperate for new markets.  On that front, I’m hoping that paypal and web-based markets will start to come around and realize how much they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face by refusing to work with African buyers and sellers in an electronic marketplace.  I’m going to be exploring this as well – so stay tuned!