One Year Ago...

One year ago today, I landed in Africa for the first time. Looking back at my journal, I arrived at my hotel, discovered I had no hot water, went to the office, and ate some chicken with jolof rice. Pretty typical day in west Africa, really, but it was anything but typical for me. I've come a long way since then, establishing an entirely new life and lifestyle for myself.

In short, some of my greatest accomplishments this year:

• Visiting 2 new continents and discovering a newfound love for parts of the world I hadn't even thought of before.
• Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and visiting my friend Alma in Rwanda after over a year of planning.
• Hitting 20 countries in the span of 12 months, many of them for the first time, and many of them more than once.
• Expanding my culinary comfort zone by eating all sorts of unusual ethnic dishes (see Nigerian giant land snails).
• Discovering frequent flyer miles and learning how to sleep on planes.
• Becoming comfortable taking bucket showers and surviving without proper toilets or electricity.
• Finally achieving platinum status on the Starwood Preferred Guests program (I'm actually way too proud of this given the fact that it just means I've spent way too much time living out of hotel rooms).
• Making friends with some pretty extraordinary people.
• Learning that I am in fact good at the work I've wanted to do for several years.
• Coming to understand a lot about myself, what I value, and what kind of life I want to lead.

Here's to hoping that this coming year holds just as much growth, fun, and adventure as the last!

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New Beginnings, Once More

Today is my last day at Google. Actually, to be more precise, today is my third last day at Google. After all these years, you might think that, by this point, I'd be used to coming and going, and yet, it's still pretty hard. It's been an incredible 12 months. Since I started this job last August, I've made my way to 20 countries, met so many fascinating people, and made some truly extraordinary friends.

And yet, one year later, I'm also ready for a change. The flip side of moving around so much is that I haven't had much of a home this last year, or more figuratively, much of a real place in the world. Living on the extremes of life has been profoundly eye-opening. Before I started traveling a few years ago, I had no idea that this type of nomadic, high-flying lifestyle was possible. Now I've lived it, and I can appreciate it for what it is. Many of my friends have commented that my life seems to be endlessly exciting and glamorous, and to some extent, it has been, though they miss the parts when I'm throwing up from food poisoning or stranded against my will in a strange city. But it's also been somewhat isolating. It turns out that the lifestyle I had growing up has some merit to it too: seeing the same group of friends more than once every few months, having a place to call home, feeling like you actually belong. These are the things I look forward to becoming reacquainted with next year at Cambridge.

Cambridge, approaching fast on the horizon. For the last few days, I've been receiving a barrage of emails about all of the places, activities, and people that await me. I wish I could express my excitement. If I decide to keep this blog through this next step, I think I'm going to have to change the title though... Suggestions welcome.

Until the next time, my friends.

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Watching and Calculating, African Governments Learn From the Arab Spring

It's no secret that Africa houses some of the longest-serving and most repressive dictators on the planet. Even among the states that have progressed past authoritarian rule, many governments still restrict basic rights with heavy-handed and often violent tactics. It's also no secret that Africa has the smallest Internet penetration of any continent, though it also cannot be denied that the advent of cheap, web-enabled phones has been precipitating broad changes in the continent's Internet landscape. Up until recently, these two facts may have seemed only peripherally related. Most governments had taken a pretty laissez-faire approach to the Internet; it wasn't enough of an issue for most leaders to take the time to learn about, let alone address with policy. But as the Arab Spring continues to roar just a stone's throw North, tremors have rippled well into the heart of the continent. In response, many African governments have begun taking strong stances on Internet freedoms, even before most of their populations have had the chance to experience the free and open Internet as it was originally formulated.

Read more on the Huffington Post »

One Year Later: Reflections on a full year out

Another significant milestone came and quietly passed for me yesterday. It was the one year anniversary of my graduation from college: one year since I said my teary goodbyes to my alma mater, to my friends, and to any semblance of life as I had ever known it. It's been quite a year since. I've explored more new places than I care to count; I've met just about as many new people as I did in my first year of college, and at some points, each week seemed to feel like an entire lifetime. In that sense, I've lived an awful lot in the last 12 months, perhaps more life than I lived in the first 20 years of my life. Here are a few of the lessons I've taken away.

A Very Ghanaian Passover

Holidays this year have been interesting to say the least. My first holiday abroad, Thanksgiving, I spent  alone in my Lagos hotel semi-miserably working and eating room service (though it was fortunately followed a couple days later, by a belated celebration at the home of a random expat couple who happened to be friends of friends of friends). I spent Christmas exploring Bangkok with my dear friend, Kathy, and we reigned in the New Year at the infamous Countdown Party on Koh Phangan. For my birthday, I made very certain to travel back to lovely New York to be with my family and friends for the first time in months. But after all of this, I have to admit, Passover has been the most interesting of all.

Personal Update: Plans for Next Year

Those of you who have been following my adventures closely will know that I set out on this journey to Africa with the intent for it to be one year long. The plan after that was to do graduate school. Well, it's been quite a ride since I first set off, and I've since been blessed with many extraordinary opportunities to pursue when this year comes to an end.

Back in Ghana: Home, Sweet Home?

After 4+ months of nonstop travel, I'm finally back in Ghana for more than a week at a time. Home, sweet home, eh? It's a strange feeling being back. It's strange to be anywhere for more than a few days, but strange here especially. I remember when I left back in mid-November. I went out to a local jazz club the night before and met a few new expat friends. "Will be you be my insta-friend?" one girl asked who was still new to Ghana. That's how it had been. In the months leading up to this massive trip, I had met so many people from all around the world, and none of us knowing anyone else all became fast friends. Some of those friendships became full relationships and others remained fleeting acquaintances, but when I left, I left a life behind. Settling in again some 19 weeks later, I realize the life I left no longer exists.

Year in Review: A Look Back at 2010

365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, one year. To think, if it weren't for a few natural laws, these numbers would be nothing more than that, just numbers. And yet, we each use these constants to measure the progress of our lives. How much have we grown in the past year? How much have our lives changed? In a way, I'm grateful for this cyclic nature of life -- it forces us at certain intervals to step and reflect.

Growing up, my plans for the future only ever went up to the year 2010, and even that always seemed impossibly far away. 2010: The year I would graduate college, the year I would enter this "real world" I had heard so much about, the year I would be forced to be independent, and in many ways, the year I would have to say goodbye to those last vestiges of childhood. Sounds kind of terrifying, doesn't it? Well it was. 2010 was a year of many emotions: fear, yes, but also love, wonder, happiness, anxiety, and so many others.

Just before January 1 of last year, I found a present for myself in a random bookstore in New York. It was a five-year journal. Each page is assigned a day of the year, and seven lines of each page is allotted to each of the five years. (Complete the first seven lines on each page in your first year, start from the beginning going through the second seven lines, and so on.) I knew that the year ahead would be one of the most memorable of my life, and so I've been very persistent at keeping up with it, bringing it with me everywhere I travel, and even defying the laws of my personal nature by not losing it. It chronicles a number of monumental experiences that this last year has encompassed: exploring eastern Europe with Robyn, living atop a bookstore in Paris, visiting friends in the UK, spring break in Cancun, my final semester at Cornell, senior week and graduation, backpacking through Europe yet again, starting a new job, moving to Africa, and traveling the world over. I did the calculation the other day, and in one year, I've managed to spend time in 20 countries spanning 4 continents. During my travels in Asia, I heard an old Chinese proverb that seemed to relate particularly well to this past year. Roughly translated, it says "to go 1,000 miles is to have read 10,000 books". In that case, I've done pretty well for myself this year.

Here are some of my most memorable entries from 2010:

One Day, 200 Nigerian Businesses Online

There I stood, in front of my first group of 100 small business owners at ChamsCity, the world's largest cybercafe, in Lagos, Nigeria. I had just been informed that none of the equipment I thought I would have was functional. No projector and only a broken microphone. And then, to top it off, due to a last minute schedule change, I was going to be giving the entire workshop rather than just the second half. Lovely. If I were going to pull this off, I would need to be quick on my feet.

Being Thankful

I have a confession to make. It's not easy for me to say, because I try always to be grateful for my life, through the ups and downs regardless. But on Thanksgiving last week, sitting in my hotel alone, eating the same dinner I had eaten for days before, and working away on my project for work, I'll admit it: I was pretty miserable. It was the first time that I had been away from home on Thanksgiving, and while the holiday may not mean a lot to many American families, it always has for mine. Tonight though, maybe a few days late, I was blessed to be invited into the home of some fellow American expats, people I didn't even know before, for their version of an expatastic American Thanksgiving. I can't even express how thankful I am.

What Will Our Legacy Be?

What motivates today's young leaders? What factors from our collective youth have given this generation its unique character? What legacy will our generation leave behind? These are the questions David Burstein, author and founder of Generation18, is trying to answer. Last Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking with David over VC from Ghana about my work, his background, and our opinions on where this generation is headed.

Conjuring Stability from Chaos

Would you believe that in the five months since I graduated college, I haven't stayed in any one place for more than three weeks at a time? At the beginning, it was easy. I was traveling around Europe with friends or bouncing around between a few of the places I consider home, places that I have solid friends and family to visit and enjoy. Africa has been its own challenge. This post is my attempt to tackle one of the great challenges I face in this chaotic, ever-changing life: the lack of permanence, the lack of any routine, fundamentally, the lack of stability.

Google Tech Talk in Kumasi: Meeting Bright and Motivated Students

We arrived about ten minutes late after getting thoroughly lost driving around the campus of KNUST, Kumasi's science and technology university. Fortunately, in Ghana, ten minutes usually isn't late at all. It was my first time giving such a talk to university students, but it felt like a natural thing to do after being on the other end of so many at Cornell. To our surprise though, when we got into the lecture hall, there were already about 50 students eagerly waiting for us.

Life's Getting Better All The Time

This post is adapted from an email I sent to some friends and family a few days ago. My apologies to those of you reading it twice.

I was sitting in my apartment the other day trying to think of a song that adequately summed up my experience over the last few weeks since I got back to Africa, and this was the first thing that popped into my head: "It's Getting Better All the Time" by the Beatles. I have to admit, it's getting better. Life here wasn't easy from the start; in fact, it was really damned hard. But so much has changed in such a short period of time. Since visiting my colleagues in Europe, I have a deep understanding of my job and what's expected of me, and more importantly, I feel like I'm being effective at it. What's more, all of a sudden, I have a thriving social life here. I had no idea how easy it would be to make friends once I broke into the social scene. Last Thursday night alone, I was invited to four different functions ranging from an expat mixer to an MIT alumni gathering. Hard to believe only a matter of weeks ago, I didn't know a single soul.

Home, Sweet Home

On Monday night, I landed once again in warm, muggy Accra, but unlike the first time, this time I was greeted by a feeling I hadn't at all expected. Arriving in Accra Monday night, I felt like I was home. Sure, gallivanting around Europe had been fun, and sure, I had been reluctant to give up all of the Western luxuries, but I have to admit it; I'm starting to see the virtue in the whole concept of home, even if it is fleeting.

Life in High Contrast

This last week and a half in Europe has been hard. Hard for a number of reasons, not the least of which including food poisoning, not staying anywhere for more than a few days, and not knowing my way around. But more profoundly, these last several days have made me realize that I live life in high contrast and just how much my perspective has changed from my short time in Africa.

Venturing into the Night

The dirt road was dark and uneven, and I had been walking for some indeterminably long time. I had tried to follow the directions given to me: turn left on Oxford Street and keep going on Papaye Down, but as anyone who has lived in Ghana knows, most roads here do not have commonly known names. I had walked, and walked, and walked. A hair salon, a mobile phone voucher hut, a series of makeshift homes... Nope. It was nearly 8:00; they were all shut up, and I was sure I was lost.

TEDxAccra: A Day of African Luminaries

On Monday morning, many of the world's great thinkers and doers gathered in solidarity around the world to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the unveiling of the UN Millennium Development Goals. This worldwide event was termed TEDxChange, styled in the format of the TED conference, and convened by Bill and Melinda Gates on behalf of their foundation. In an open letter, Melinda declared the aim of the gathering to be "to reflect on the Millennium Development Goals ten years in, and to look forward to where we’ll be [by 2015, the MDG deadline]."

Very luckily for me, I got to be a part of this movement, this moment in time.

Landing in Accra, Beneath the African Sun

Yesterday morning, I landed in Accra, Ghana, where I shall remain for a time yet undetermined. The flight took the full 11 hours, starting 4:20pm EST and landing 7:20am GMT. It may have been long and mostly sleepless, and I may have come close to crying for all that I was leaving behind, but alas, I made it in one piece. After a year of planning, I'm in Africa.

Very fortunately, Google's driver, Daniel, was waiting for me at the airport, and I only got mildly swindled by the scam artists waiting there. (I suppose it was inevitable, but I still felt dumb.) Daniel took me to my hotel where I dropped off my luggage and promptly realized that I had no idea what to do with myself. So I went to the office, the empty office. You see, this week is Google's G-Kenya conference in Nairobi, and the entire Subsaharan Africa team is there. Thankfully the receptionist had been alerted that I was coming, so she showed me in, and I got to work trying to figure things out. I wish I could express how comforting it was to be there. Even if it's only two, disconnected rooms, the Google office in Ghana feels like a Google office nonetheless. For lunch, I ordered some traditional Ghanain food, basically seasoned rice and chicken, which was brought to me by someone I can only describe as the office footman. The seasoning was not what I expected since it looked so close to something I might get in the US, but once I got over the initial hurdle, I rather enjoyed it.

Around 6:00pm, I headed back to my hotel, watched a movie and the news on TV, and tried to get some work done on my laptop. That didn't work as well as I would have liked. The Internet connection in my hotel, and from what I hear, in many places across Ghana, is shoddy at best. This resulted in a nontrivial amount of frustration especially since so many of the people I need to work with are in time zones so different from mine.

Today was my first full day in Ghana, and very kindly, the Google Ghana Country Lead, Estelle, who's out of the office this week, sent her personal driver to pick me up and show me around the city. We hit some of the major tourist sites like the soccer stadium and the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park as well as a decidedly less touristy market where they sold mostly traditional clothing, masks, and even swords. Being led through by a local, it was starkly clear how singled out I was as a white man. On the upside, I learned a new word from the experience, obruni, which means, you guessed it, white man. In the afternoon, I headed back to the office to get some more work sorted out, finally met one of my sometimes office mates, Ego, who's from Britain, and got lots of advice on the expat life.

From my two days here, a few basic observations have stood out to me. The first is the culture of servitude. It's been discomforting having someone wait on me; I've always just taken care of myself, more or less. Stranger still is the attitude servants seem to have have, that of utter, well, subservience. In the US, even people in service professions usually seem to have a sense of entitlement that doesn't exist here. Another significant lesson has been about the state of Internet connectivity/telephony. I knew it would be bad, but that's entirely different from actually understanding it. Between not being able to do my work online and having to ask people to repeat themselves every other sentence on phone calls, I can tell I'm already starting to make headway on one of the pieces of advice I got before leaving: Feel people's pain. The last observation I've had is a less serious one, basically about how people carry things here. I wish I had a picture to illustrate it, but I've never before seen everyday people carry so much atop their heads, and without using their hands to balance it.  Huge baskets of everything you could imagine: eggs, pineapples, hair brushes, everything, all perched feet high atop their heads. The notable exception to this rule is for carrying a baby, which is invariably done on one's back, strapped on with a large shawl. Pictures to come, I promise.

For now, that's it. This weekend will consist of lots of apartment shopping as I seek to find somewhere more permanent to live. Wish me luck!

Pictures after the jump!

New York, New York

I've noticed a theme in my life recently: as soon as I begin to feel settled into one place, I know it's just about time for the next. This last week in New York has certainly had its ups and downs. Five days to scramble around, trying to coordinate logistics across three continents certainly wasn't easy; in fact, it was probably the most stressful week I've spent at Google in any of my internships, but I suppose that was to be expected. On the other hand, there has been so much awesomeness too: tons of delicious food courtesy of the Google NY Culinary Team (I think I ate a full meal every other hour), a new smart phone, and most importantly, catching up with lots of old friends and getting to make a few new ones.

Aside from the scramble to get ready, I spent the week meeting with some key players on the Google Africa team, getting as much advice as I could amass. Here are some of the interesting tidbits.

• Understand the user. Do as the locals do. Go outside major cities; see where people live. Try to spend a night living with a local 

• Feel people's pain. Try the Internet connection and cell phones that the locals use. Understand their experience.

• Beware of corruption. When money is so hard to come by, many people have to engage in unethical behavior to make a living. I heard about a project that was sabotaged by the people it was built for because it made selling services on the side too easy to track.

• Use my novelty to my advantage. There's no arguing that I'm clearly going to stick out like a sore thumb wherever I go. Instead of taking it as an obstacle, turn it to my favor. Don't be apologetic for being different.

• Go with the flow. The work culture in many of the countries I'm going to is just fundamentally different. People won't follow schedules in the way we do, for instance. Just accept it.

Another fun part of the week involved the six-foot talk K'Nex Ferris wheel that I (and three other interns) built two years ago. It used to sit up on the sixth floor with sales but has since been moved to a new seat of honor, at the very entrance to the office that nearly everyone passes going in and out of work. On every tour I gave this week, I would point it out and note, "I built that." The reactions ranged from laughter to respect to disbelief. My favorite was a friend proclaiming, "only at Google do the interns get paid to play with K'Nex." A true statement if I've ever heard one. In fact, we got quite a bit of publicity for it when we did.

Our K'Nex creation in its original location two years ago.

Tomorrow, to Africa! More pictures after the jump...