Today, I’m grateful to introduce Salam, the first ever fully indigenous Swahili writing system. It has taken quite some time to devise and refine, and I’m glad to share this with the world today. Salam means “Peace”. Why did I create Salam? Essentially, we as Africans need to write our own history, and to have routes that build on solidly indigenous intellectual foundations. Salam adds to culture in a way that supports local cultural creativity and intellectual foundations. ...
In 2001, in the remote village of Wimbe, Malawi, a teenage tinkerer put together bicycle parts, scrap metal, branches from blue gum trees and materials from rubber tyres to create Wimbe’s first windmill amid a devastating countrywide famine. Beyond starving families, the Malawi famine of the early 2000s caused children to drop out of school and significant political unrest stemming from undelivered promises from local politicians. The light of young William Kamkwamba’s innovation flickered through the tension to give hope to his family, powering household appliances and later, using more renewable energy in the form of solar-powered pumps to provide Wimbe’s first drinking water. The energy from William’s innovations eventually enabled irrigation across Wimbe’s farmland, creating a reason to celebrate on a path that almost led to hundreds of famine-related deaths and violence. Innovation and infrastructure brought Wimbe together for the better, weeks away from certain devastation. ...
I have all the constraints necessary for success. I first learned the philosophy of constraints in my Operations Research class. I signed up for the class out of curiosity after reading a course description that promised learnings in Math that would help me optimize essentially everything: from the volume and types of cheese manufactured in a factory, to layouts for grid connections, to even stock portfolios. While I wouldn’t say I became the best Operations Research practitioner, I can say that the class helped me understand how the paired forces of production and reduction serve to create optimal outcomes. In a classic maximization example where we want to produce the most of something - profit, returns on an investment or connected nodes in a network - we tend to have an equation that describes our inputs. The goal then, is usually to combine the inputs in a way that creates the maximum output. We call this the act of maximizing the objective function. On the other hand, we also tend to have a function that describes certain costs associated with the inputs, essentially defining a boundary within which we must combine our inputs. This boundary is usually pre-defined and isn’t something we can negotiate, much like the bounds of a basketball court or the amount of damage we can take in a video game. As we seek to maximize our objective function, our goal is usually to minimize the constraints. ...
My twenties have been an especially interesting season of back-to-back transitions under varying levels of uncertainty. One thing I’ve learned with each transition, across school, work, cities and even relationships, is the importance of genuine friends. Many years ago while I was still a bright-eyed college student, I was fortunate enough to receive wonderful advice from a tenured finance executive at a conference. She said, “treat your relationships like a garden and tend to it”. I’ve held on to this advice since, bringing a long-term view and intentionality to my relationships. ...
I like mood boards and I like blank canvas. I like studios and I like labs. I like cities and I like markets. I like kitchens and I like gardens. And I, most definitely, like galleries and garages. I’ve been thinking a lot about perspective, point of view, attitude and themes focused on how we navigate life internally and externally. For a long time, I’ve looked for a box I could fit comfortably into, but the more I searched, the more my quiet desperation turned into confusion, which then turned into disillusionment. It took many tries at thinking, asking, dialogue and contemplation to eventually synthesize a worldview I could live in and love. But first, I had to go through an existential crisis, earnestly consider nihilism, and experience spiritual awakening and spiritual rebirth. Like a drowning man, I floundered until I came to surrender, and in surrender, I floated. In the acceptance of my differences and quirks, I found my uniqueness. ...