Amidst tribal chaos in Kenya, Wharton students bring hope for future

Global Consulting Practicum promotes sustainable rural enterprise with jobs, schools and water pumps

by Jody Pollock | Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at (All day)

Wharton MBA students Jennifer Akpapuna, James Hogarth, Sachin Kaushik, Sushant Mukherjee and Kathy Park pose with Massai tribal artisans in Kenya. (Lisa M. Linn de Baro)

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They went for the beads. They left for their lives.

Amidst a hotly disputed election and the deadly violence that followed in its wake, five Wharton MBA students and a professor spent two weeks in Kenya this winter break.

The group is working through the Global Consulting Practicum, a Wharton course in which students consult for international firms. They signed on to help The Leakey Collection, a beaded jewelry and home décor company designed to cultivate rural enterprise among the Maasai tribe in east Kenya.

But the team never anticipated their trip would coincide with one of the most violent months in Kenya's history.

On Dec. 27, President Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent candidate, won re-election. Immediately afterwards, accusations surfaced that the vote count had been fraudulent and that Kibaki had stolen the win from his opponent, Raila Odinga. Riots broke out across Kenya and continue to wreak havoc on the population.

Nothing foretold there would be such an extreme reaction to the elections.

When the GCP team landed in Nairobi on election day, there were no State Department travel warnings in place, said GCP Assistant Director Lisa Linn de Barona.

Furthermore, Kenya has long been known as one of the "more peaceful, more democratic countries in Africa," said Wharton MBA student Kathy Park, a GCP team member.

After landing in Nairobi, the team found the city calm. They made the move to Watamu, a seaside city south of Nairobi, without further incident.

Then, the results of the elections were delayed, said Wharton MBA student Sushant Mukherjee, "and people started getting restive."

The dubious election exacerbated the ethnic tensions between two major tribes, the Kikuyu, to which Kibaki belongs, and the Luo, to which Odinga belongs. The Maasai people occupy a neutral ground between them, but they are still caught in the crossfire.

Now, ongoing violence and tribal warfare threatens the already-suffering tourism industry upon which the Maasai people depend even more. "You wouldn't want to go for a safari when there's political unrest there," Park said.

The Leakey Collection was founded in 2002 as a "social impact project," and has stepped in to promote sustainable rural enterprise among the Maasai, Mukherjee said.

A percentage of their proceeds is reinvested in the community to build schools, hire teachers and fund water pumps. The Leakey Collection also creates jobs for over 1,400 Maasai women, whose skillful handiwork is utilized to create beaded jewelry with locally sustainable grasses.

And as schools falter for a lack of funds and the Maasai struggle with resource shortages due to the riots, the GCP's work is "even more important," said Engineering professor Jeffrey Babin, the leader of the GCP team in Kenya.

"It's not just a project about making money or being profitable," said Wharton MBA student Jennifer Akpapuna. "It's about sustaining a particular tribe and culture in Kenya."

While the group of students focused on the Maasai, the GCP main office focused on keeping the students safe. They kept in touch with the Kenya group as often as every three to six hours, said Linn de Barona.

When the main office didn't hear from the team for an entire day, they considered sending out a search team, said Linn de Barona. Luckily, that proved unnecessary.

Still, she continued, with the death count quickly surpassing 300 at the time, evacuation plans were put in place, including the option of chartering a plane or helicopter to transport the group back to Nairobi.

But that, too, was unnecessary: the students managed the drive back to the capital safely. The group even spent a few hours dining out without fear of the violence that would soon rock the country.

"We weren't cowering in our hotel room," said Mukherjee.

The only remaining inconvenience the group faced was slightly reorganizing their original departure schedules to avoid the massive riot that was expected on Jan. 7.

Since the GCP group has returned, the death toll in Kenya has climbed to nearly 800 and tens of thousands have fled the country in the past month.

"As sad as this situation is, it's made us even more determined to help out," said Mukherjee. "This work matters much more than it did when we started."

After all, he continued, "people's lives are at stake."

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