What Kenya Taught Me About Life and Business
What’s on your bucket list?
One of my items was going on a safari in Africa. When a feminist writer I follow (Jill Filipovic) announced her writing/yoga/safari retreat in Kenya, I knew this was a great opportunity. I’ve also been told that it’s better to go on safari sooner rather than later because climate change is affecting the landscape. And I am so glad I jumped at the chance to go.
The sights, sounds, and scents of Kenya are their own landscape. If you’ve ever imagined being in the middle of a National Geographic special, that’s exactly what it feels like. Not just your first game drive, but even landing on safari. The airstrip is surrounded by wild animals grazing.
New physical landscapes can open up new emotional and mental ones too.
Leave your laptop at home
There is no such thing as a transformative experience when you’re busy with problems at the office. If you want true rest and recovery, being in the moment, especially when you’re in a completely new environment, is the first step.
(If you don’t think you can take vacation because you have your own business, talk to me. This is exactly what I help entrepreneurs with.)
I did have my phone, so I could check emails. I don’t have email notifications on at any time, but you should definitely turn yours off while you’re focusing and when you're on vacation if you’re not up to a permanent shutoff. Without notifications, I chose when to read emails – generally in the evening after dinner and the game drive.
The phone was mostly to take pictures and to stay up to date with the group Whatsapp. FWIW, if you have a really good camera and know how to use it, you should definitely bring it with you if you go on safari.
After all, you can check your emails anywhere at anytime. But if you go on safari, or engage in another memorable trip or experience, you can’t get that experience anywhere at anytime. Make the most of it while you have it, and that means few to no distractions.
Be smart about where your energy and time go
The guides on safari are credentialed and have to take several exams to be able to take tourists around. They have to be able to drive the Land Rovers in rough terrain, know the flora and fauna, be a mechanic for those same Land Rovers, and speak at least one additional language besides Swahili. (Many Kenyans speak English.)
They gave us lots of information and patiently answered our questions. Someone had asked if the lions ate the Thompson’s gazelles, which were plentiful.They’re pretty small, around 50 pounds or so. The guide told us that the lions took on bigger prey because they can eat seven kilos of food at once. Chasing the smaller animals doesn’t make sense because all the energy expenditure isn’t worth it when there’s not enough meat for three days.
Also, fun fact, rhinos fight before mating. Our guide explained that the female rhino doesn’t want to mate with a weak male, so they fight until one of them taps out and then they have sex. She doesn’t want to waste her time gestating offspring that could be weak and die young. So she spends energy fighting the male to ensure that she gets some good genes for her baby. (I’m fairly sure the rhinos haven’t been reading up on biology, so she’s probably unaware that this is what she’s doing.)
I think this contains some great wisdom for business owners, even if you’re not having a sex fight on the savannah. (No judgment if you are.) I’ve heard so many entrepreneurs say, “It’s just easier to do it myself”, even if they have staff or even automation to take care of some tasks. Or they just do whatever’s in front of them to do, even if it’s not worthy of their time.
After all, the lion could kill a Thompson’s gazelle as a midmorning snack. And another for lunch, and maybe another small animal like a jackal for an afternoon snack and one for dinner. But all that hunting requires a lot of energy: scoping out the herd to find the weakest or oldest or whichever will be the easiest to pick off, then chasing them down and killing them.
She could kill a smaller animal that doesn’t provide enough food. (Despite the mane and the roar of the males, it’s female lions who do the hunting.) Or she could do what lions prefer to do, which is make one big kill that will keep them going for a few days – our guide said they only eat every three or four days. Hunt once and get enough food for three days, or hunt several times a day every day.
Which is more efficient?
Same with our female rhino. There’s an opportunity cost to having a baby rhino that's weak. She could have been carrying a strong baby rhino that would go out and continue the line of rhinos if she hadn’t taken the first male rhino who came along.
Sure, maybe it takes you an extra ten minutes to explain something to your staff member. Maybe you have to tell them two or three times (for a total of 30 minutes) for it to stick, and it only takes you five minutes to do it.
How often do you perform that task? If you do the same five-minute task just once a day for a month, that’s 5*5 days in a week* 4 weeks in a month = 100 minutes.
Even if you do need the full 30 minutes to explain it, you’re still saving 70 minutes a month. That’s 840 minutes a year or 14 hours that you could save, even counting the time it took you to have someone else take it over for you. On ONE task. How many tasks are you doing that don’t require the expertise of the business owner?
Turn off, tune in to new perspectives
We went to an elephant orphanage just outside the capital city of Nairobi. Watching young elephants get bottle-fed is adorable and hilarious. But the keepers told us the history of the elephants, and most of them are orphaned due to human activities in one way or another. The last two northern white rhinos on the entire planet are mother and daughter, and they are kept under armed guard 24/7 to ensure they live as long as they can.
The conservancy where we had our safari is designed to keep wild animals wild. It’s worked well because the neighboring tribes and villages are taken into account as far as their needs too. You can’t just kick people off the land they’ve been farming for centuries to allow wild animals to thrive. All the stakeholders are considered, which keeps everyone hopeful for the future.
Whether we like it or not, we humans are the apex predator of the planet. It’s up to us to make sure that we’re engaging in sustainable practices and taking action on climate change, not just for us but for entire ecosystems.
One thing that really came home to me (I actually got a little choked up thinking about it) was how closely we are all connected. Our culture celebrates the myth of the cowboy individualist and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. We weren’t in the Rift Valley in Kenya which may have birthed homo sapiens (exact origins are a lot messier than we thought), but Africa is still likely the place where we as a species originated.
In a way, we’re all connected to the land and to the animals. We’re all made of star stuff, as Carl Sagan said. I think business owners are all connected in a way, too. Lifting each other up as a community is actually easier than kicking those who are already down.
Time is finite for each of us: we only get about 4,000 weeks total. Take the safari. Don’t leave your bucket list items until retirement, because time is not guaranteed.
Recap (tl;dr):
My trip to Kenya was amazing, and I found some experiences pretty relatable for business owners. Go on the trip!
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