We spent two blissful nights and three busy days at the GFSI project site in Suba before it was time to head back to civilization. One particular event from the first morning in Suba wound up having some bearing on our return trip. Early on Thursday morning, I woke up, took a chilly shower and walked over to the main building for breakfast and chai. The sun was well up and the birds were still singing in the still of the morning, though the light still was still tinged with the clear grey of dawn. I paused for a moment on the side of the cliff to take a look at the lake, which was now devoid of the previous night’s fisherman. I noticed what appeared to be a column of smoke rising far out on the lake’s surface. Looking closer, I saw other smoke-like shapes twisting and spiraling up in other places across the vista. The columns weren’t smoke, but tremendous hatches of lake-flies. Just like the summer evening hatches of caddis flies and midges on your favorite trout stream, the lake-flies of Lake Victoria periodically metamorphose and emerge from some sort of aquatic form, to rise in drifting plumes, millions strong from the water’s surface, and rising hundreds of feet in the air. Martens, swallows and swifts wheeled and turned throughout the towering swarms of insects.
On Friday afternoon, Pat and Leah headed back to Nairobi while I was to catch a ride to Kisumu (and the Hotel Palmers from the last post) where I would spend Friday and Saturday nights. On Sunday, I would be picked up and driven to Mumias Sugar Company for the week. I hopped in a Land Rover, crowded with GFSI employees headed to town for the weekend and we bumped off along the rutted dirt road. The ride was uneventful, and like most excursions here took one and half times longer than what I was told. I arrived in Kisumu around ten and hopped out of the vehicle to go and check in. Since the truck was filled to capacity with people, the bags were stowed on top and tied down. As the porter handed my bag down, I grabbed it from top and bottom and noticed that something had accumulated on the bottom part of the bag. Thinking it must be dust from the ride, I set it down and wheeled it inside. After the bellhop brought me to the tiny, white-walled room, I took a good look at the bag to see what had happened. It wasn’t dirt on my bag. It was flies. Apparently a fly hatch had been blown inland and we had driven through it. One side of my bag was coated in about half an inch of bug guts. Fantastic. Better yet, when I packed up Sunday morning, I discovered that a colony of ants had set up residence underneath it to feast on the dead flies. They were living in my clothes.
Saturday was free, and I needed to buy some new shoes for my suit. I figured I would try and buy some on the street to save money. I walked downstairs for breakfast and was sat a table with an older gentleman and a younger woman. I started talking with them and asked directions to the market where I could buy some shoes. They looked at me for a minute then started a discussion in Swahili. A few minutes later they looked at me, smiled and said, “Come with us. We’ll take you shopping.” The man was an engineer and the woman a doctoral student. They spent two hours with me, haggling with street vendors to find a pair of shoes. I learned that at minimum, street vendors charge white tourists double what regular Kenyans pay. The strategy was for my friends to approach the shoe guys while I hung back and discreetly pointed out what I liked. They would communicate my choices to the salesmen, who would pull out the pair. There are some terrible shoes on the streets of Kisumu. It took the whole two hours to find some decent ones, and those were purchased from inside a maze of tin shacks and walls with waving cloth roofs along a narrow dirt path. Shops were set in every nook and cranny, selling everything from electronics, to suits and wedding dresses. After purchasing a pair of Chinese knock-off dress shoes, they walked me back to the hotel. It turns out that the woman is a famous gospel singer, whose name I have since forgotten. All along the street people were stopping her to tell her how much they liked her last album.
I spent the rest of the day sheltering under the mosquito net in what was essentially a 15 by 10 foot cell. The Hotel Palmers rented me possibly the worst room I have had in Kenya – aside from guesthouse and bedbugs at KARI. The room was built into the middle of a spiral staircase in the center of the building, with a window at about knee level looking out into the stairwell. All day and night, I listened to people walking up, down and around my room. Plus, Kisumu is malaria central. There are mosquitos everywhere. Somehow, they even found their way up the staircase, through the shin high window, to alight on my net. I will say that the room was clean, which made it bearable, but honestly, I would have just stayed somewhere else had I had the energy. Luckily though, my modem was working passably, so even though the room left much to be desired, it was nice to lie around, read and check email, and generally have no obligations.
Sunday I brushed the remaining fly carcasses off of my hanging bag and waited downstairs for my ride to Mumias Sugar. At about 11 am, a Toyota Tundra pulled up with the Mumias logo on the side and I was off. As I have mentioned, my job at Mumias was to survey the facilities and try to make some positive connections for SPEA in the hopes of starting an official relationship between the two institutions. After spending a week onsite, I can attest that there are some great opportunities for SPEA students.
After about an hour’s drive through the boulder-strewn hills surrounding Kisumu and the lakeshore, the land changed to rolling hills with many small, fast running brown streams. Everything was planted in tall, green sugar cane. We entered the town of Mumias and turned off of the main road onto an official looking, cobbled drive separated by a grassy median in the middle. The facilities are inclusive, safe and quite expansive. Mumias Sugar is publicly traded on the Nairobi exchange, and the last time I checked, was the 23rd largest company on the exchange by market cap. They collaborate with foreign firms, both in East Africa and further abroad on everything from exports to engineering. As a result, the compound is superior. Coming through the gates, we immediately passed a full soccer stadium, where the Mumias team plays and practices – I believe the team is a part of the Kenyan professional league, but I could be wrong. Further on were two large primary and secondary schools, surrounded by extensive staff housing. We continued down the road and at the main gates to the factory, took a right into the Mumias Club, where visitors and businessmen are housed. Think about your local country club and you will have an apt comparison for this place. There is a pool out back surrounded by large, flat topped acacias, and the lawn slopes down to a tennis court and finally, a nine-hole golf course. There is a large, mahogany bar and restaurant where most of the executives can be found at the end of the day with a cold drink in hand. The accommodations were equally impressive – I had a sitting room for crying out loud! Better yet, I reveled in the walk in shower with a huge showerhead, pressure, and separate knobs for hot and cold water!
Mumias, like many of the other large domestic companies, was originally government owned and operated, established at the behest of leadership in the 1980’s. It went public around the year 2000 (if I am remembering this correctly), and experienced a change in management around 2005. Over the course of about a decade, it has gone from a barely profitable, pseudo-government entity to one of the most admired companies in the country.
In East Africa, sugar cane is grown in both the highlands and lowlands. Cane grown in the lowlands, like Mombasa, benefits from frequent rain and higher temperatures. It grows to a harvestable size in around half the time as a comparable crop grown in the highlands. Sucrose concentrations are around a third more in lowland cane. Mumias is a highland grower and as a result, it produces sugar at a higher cost than its lowland competition. It competes effectively based on capacity – it claims around 60% of market share within Kenya and is one of the largest sugar producers in East Africa.
From a ridge in the core sugar estate, overlooking the factory.
The sugar production process is actually quite simple. Cane is brought to the factory in trucks – it is only economical to transport the raw material from within a 60 km diameter of the factory – and is crushed in massive chambers containing huge metal screws. Water is piped from the nearby River Nzoia, treated, and heated in boilers, producing hot water and steam. Hot water is added to the crushed cane, and turned over and over with the giant screws. If I remember correctly, this is called the ‘diffusion’ process – by soaking the cane in the hot water, and constantly moving the mixture, a much greater percentage of sucrose is captured from the material than by simply crushing the material and squeezing out the juice. After a specific period of time, and several chambers, the water and sucrose mixture is drained and the material that is left is called bagasse, the crushed stalks. The system of boilers is powered by the burning of bagasse.
A satellite loading facility for cane - by placing loading facilities around the edges of the economically viable area for transport, Mumias can attract material from farmers who would normally supply cane to competing firms.
Africa has instituted various regional free trade agreements, much like NAFTA. Over the medium term, competitive strategy at Mumias is determined by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Under COMESA, beginning in 2012, foreign producers of sugar will be able to freely export their product to Kenya. The competition in Uganda and Sudan are predominately lowland, and therefore, low cost producers of sugar. Because sugar is a commodity, there is little to differentiate between brands, and consumers usually choose which product they will buy based upon price. When the Kenyan sugar market is opened to foreign competition, Mumias will be at a significant disadvantage because even with significant economies of scale, they will not be able to produce cane as quickly or with sucrose concentrations as high as their competitors.
Management has been aware of this for some time and steps have been taken with the government in order to delay the opening of the market. In fact, the process has been prolonged for the past three years through sugar industry lobbying. Meanwhile, Mumias has been attempting to diversify its revenue stream, and artificially lower its cost of production.
The company has constructed a power plant on-site that utilizes the combustion of the excess bagasse to heat water and produce steam. The steam powers a series of turbines that produce electricity. This electricity is not only utilized by the factory facilities, but the excess is sold on the national power grid as a source of income. Because of the integrated nature of the process, the power plant is essentially carbon-neutral. It is eligible under the Clean Development Mechanism article of the Kyoto Protocol to produce carbon credits, which may be sold on international markets. Indeed, credits are currently being sold to a Japanese firm as form of supplementary income.
Mumias is also in the process of building an ethanol production facility. As I mentioned, the final byproduct of the production process is molasses. Molasses will be gathered into tanks and allowed to ferment. The resultant ethanol will be captured and then sold abroad and domestically. Theoretically, production of ethanol will be the biggest supplement to revenues.
Further, plans are currently in motion to construct a water bottling facility. The water used in producing sugar is treated and purified before use. At this stage, you can drink it. After it is run through the boilers, the water is treated again and returned to the river. Under this strategy, a portion of the water would be retained, purified, and bottled for distribution around the country.
Hopefully my generalized explanation of the company’s operations has provided some insight into the significant relationship between the production of sugar and the environment. At the most basic level, Mumias’ operations are a function of the existence of the local river. Water piped from the river and heated in boilers powers all of the machinery for sugar extraction. Without the River Nzoia, Mumias cannot operate. As a result, the company maintains an environmental department, which is concerned with maintenance of the river, concerned with both upstream and downstream management. This close relationship with a natural resource means that there should be some significant opportunities for SPEA students to contribute in terms of both policy and science.
I had a good time visiting Mumias Sugar. Though I spent the majority of my time networking, I was able to tour the factory, power plant, and waste disposal facilities, as well as ride around the nucleus estate of sugar cane. It was especially nice to be able to talk about strategy with the people responsible for making it. At my job in New Orleans, a large portion of my time was spent analyzing reports and financial statements to get a feel for how a company was doing, and how I could expect it to do in the future. It was satisfying to actually visit and see operations and strategy on the ground, whereas I had previously been forced to perform analysis second and third-hand.
Anyway, by the time Friday rolled around, I was ready to head back to Nairobi and my own bed – there are LOTS of mosquitoes in Mumias. I hopped on a bus at 7 a.m. for the trip of 400 or so kilometers. That is around 250 miles. No big deal. At 60 mph, that should take between 4 or 5 hours, right? Sure, in America. I was on that bus from 7 in the morning to 7 at night. It was unbelievable. I didn’t know that the buses had mechanisms that cap their speed at around 40 mph. Better yet, the driver decided to stop and do some grocery shopping on the way back not once, but twice. The first time he picked up a bag of potatoes and a bunch of greens. About an hour later, he stopped again and picked up none other than a bunch of live chickens, tied around the ankles. He tossed them down on the floor of the bus by my feet. I discovered that I can’t sleep if a chicken is staring at me.
When we arrived back at my stop at Zambezi outside of Nairobi, I was in a particularly fowl mood. I hopped off the bus with all of my luggage and started walking down the road to KEFRI. I haven’t mentioned it before, but it is around two miles to KEFRI from the junction at the main highway where I left the bus. The road looks like it has recently been shelled. There are potholes everywhere, and some of them are really deep. The longest single part of the trip by car to downtown Nairobi is often just getting from KEFRI to the highway.
I was hoping to catch a passing matatu, but every time one would come creeping past, scraping against the sides of the potholes, 20 faces would peer at me from the windows. They were all jam-packed! My only choice was to walk home, which wouldn’t have been a big deal had I not been on a terrible bus for 12 hours and angry. Plus, I couldn’t just wheel my rolling bag along – there were too many potholes. I had to pick the thing up and balance it on my head, African style. A piki-piki (motorcycle) driver swerved too close to me and yelled something, and I’m afraid I called him something pretty rude in return.
An interminable period of time later, I arrived sweating at the front gates, wanting nothing other than a cold shower and to never get on a bus again. I put all my stuff down in my room and walked into the bathroom to wash my face. I turned the tap. Nothing came out. I ran over to the shower and turned the handle. Nothing. KEFRI House had been without water for a week, and it would be another week of bucket showers before I could take real shower! Talk about a fitting end to the day!
