My New...Venture?

We’ve officially warmed our house here (had about 15 people over last night for homemade pizza and sangria good times) so it’s clearly time to get back to Boston levels of busy life. I’ve been working more seriously on finding volunteer work/employment for the past few weeks, but was hampered by a nasty two week cold, Malawian bureaucracy, the lack of an established network and the distraction of other “getting settled” tasks. All of a sudden things started moving this past week.

A new friend [Keith -- American who lived for years in Kenya, Afghanistan and the Sudan before landing here with his wife Melody] hooks me up with some of his consulting contacts and I meet three times in a week with Hestern Banda, Managing Director of the local Saliphera Consulting Ltd.

In our first meeting, Hestern tells me he’s impressed with my C.V. and spends most of the rest of our hour-long meeting walking me through the company’s capability statement. Consulting firms here keep files of possible resumes with few full-time staff, and I’m figuring that maybe I’ll hear from him in a few months. At the end of the meeting, he reveals that he used to run leadership trainings/conferences, but that his partner on the project moved to Lusaka. Would I be interested in brainstorming some ideas with him?

During our second conversation, it becomes clear that my new potential employer is nothing if not a big-picture visionary. He’s talking about putting together executive level trainings, mid-level manager trainings, a train the trainer. Maybe a brochure? Can I go home and write things up? As Hestern Banda is amazingly well connected in Malawi, and has been working in the civil society sector here for more than 30 years, I figure it’s worth a few hours of time on spec.

My proposal receives a resounding “Well done!!!” and, only moments later, another email arrives in my inbox proposing names and a range of services (including grant management??) for “our new venture”. I’m still confused when I show up for our third conversation. Is this just a language thing? But no, he’s all about going big or going home. He wants to set up a whole new capacity development brand (he thinks there’s a big need and money from the major donors) with me as director, a website; the whole shebang. And he wonders what my availability will be to take on the work full time once we get off the ground (he’s that certain of success) as well as whether we might eventually be booking the country’s president to help us do trainings for local Members of Parliament. “This is Malaiw – it’s small enough that you can do that,” he tells me with a laugh.

Of course all of the initial work is pro bono on my end until we actually book some work – a very different model than in the US (at least while I was thinking of myself as a consultant rather than an entrepreneur). As I’ve really enjoyed our conversations so far, it doesn’t seem like it will hurt to put some time into materials and see what happens. Who woulda thunk.

At the same time, I finally got the paperwork to start teaching at New Statehouse CDSS and am planning to report on Monday morning! And yesterday got an email from another consulting firm I spoke with wondering if I’d like my name to be put forth for a three month program evaluation project that would involve field work in the Central African Republic, Burundi and here in Malawi.

Zero to sixty in three days flat.