ATA Party Night Before Leaving - Whoops!

This is part of our awesome team, Ryan, Diana, me and Paul.  Patrick, Rob, Kathleen and Lore were unable to make it due to bad weather and sickness.  I had the bright idea to schedule a party for my company the night before we left and thought I was smart getting Ryan to agree to being a designated driver.  It was smart to get the designated driver but unfortunately I thought this would allow me to happily agree to the "shots" Paul would be pushing all night long.  I had a great time but next morning I was crushed and needed to leave for the airport by 11 AM  with about 5 hours of work to do.  Note to self:  Do not agree to let kids do sleepovers the night before leaving for 7 months. 

4 Weeks Left

The excitement is growing.  Just under 4 weeks left until we leave for Tanzania.

 

Holy cow has it been an enormous amount of work to get ready for this type of undertaking.  Put simply, this is by far the biggest undertaking of my life and my wife and I are extremely busy with getting ready for this trip.  What is interesting to me is how it all is coming together and that is what I would like to share with you.

One of my hopes was to mentor technology professionals and businesses in this part of the world but things have changed since I was there 4 years ago.  The government is not as welcoming to international volunteer assistance as they once were.  One of the techniques the government has implemented is to charge $200 for volunteer permit visas.  I have heard that they are charging more if you intend to volunteer in the medical community.   One of the reasons is that good intentioned volunteers are taking jobs away from Tanzanians.  This makes sense and it is a valid concern.  At our Rotary meeting in Evergreen two weeks ago we listened to World Bicycle Relief speak and they are manufacturing bikes in Africa by Africans.  They have many people, bike mechanics for example, who want to go over and volunteer and help but their help is turned away for the reason mentioned above.  World Bicycle Relief has manufacturing facilities, including in Tanzania, that have 100 workers, 98 of which are local. 

I don’t pretend to understand the needs of Tanzania but I believe, and have been told, that they welcome knowledge and advice that helps them be better at what they do.  In other words, they welcome education.  This type of volunteering interests me but what I have discovered is that to do this with businesses requires a special Consultant Visa that is $2,000.  One of my original hopes was to look into international business opportunities for my  company but have found out that this is called a Business Investment Visa and there is a $300,000 investment needed.  Ouch!  We have a tight budget for this trip that does not include paying 2K, much less 300K, to help other businesses and look into business opportunities. 

So what does this all mean?  At the present time I am going to go into Tanzania with Tourist Visas for myself and my family which are very reasonable.  Here is my understanding of a Tourist Visa:

• I’ll spend a lot of time with my wife and kids.  
• I won’t be able to volunteer or work in Tanzania under this type of visa but I can explore opportunities when I get there. 
• I’m pretty sure I can meet with businesses to find out what they do and what their needs and challenges are currently.  I just can’t start helping to address their challenges. 
• Jim Jackson, the founder of Project CURE which provides medical supplies to hospitals and clinics around the world, is very emphatic about asking people what they need and if you can help them with their needs then it makes everything easier.  I imagine this includes getting the appropriate visas to help if necessary. 
• I’ll regularly visit Rotary Clubs (there are 3 nearby).
• I intend to visit many of the non-profit funded entities that exist over in Arusha to see how they are managing.  There are hospitals and schools that our town of Evergreen is very invested in, I’ve been told that in the last 15 years 300 people from our small community have visited and many, many more have donated toward these very amazing institutions.
• GoAbroad.com is an organization that, in Tanzania alone, has 100 organizations offering a total of 274 volunteer opportunities (http://www.goabroad.com/volunteer-abroad/search/tanzania/volunteer-abroad-1) and I intend to meet with many of these organizations to find out how business is going.  The owner of GoAbroad.com, Troy Peden, is the father of a boy who is a very close friend of my son.  We both have similar feelings toward International volunteering, he just happens to have successfully made it his full time job.

So in closing I am not exactly sure what our trip will look like.  What I do know is this.  One thing you can depend upon in Africa is that you cannot depend on anything. Stay tuned on what will actually happen!


What we need:

Our house in South Evergreen may still be available for rent, click here for more details.

Prayers for safe travel, a safe trip and for our dog, Frank, who will miss us terribly.

Finally got the e-mail out today...50 days to go.  Here is the e-mail:

Since my first visit to Tanzania, Africa in 2002 to setup a computer lab at the Masaii Girls School, it has been my dream to move there with my family. I was so touched by the people, natural beauty and simplicity. On December 28th of 2012 I will make that dream a reality. My wife and 3 of my 4 children will travel with me to Arusha, Tanzania until July 10th 2013. Our oldest daughter, 16 year old Jessica, will complete her AP and honors filled junior year at Evergreen High School and join us in May.

It may seem reckless, crazy or irresponsible to leave a successful technology consulting business. Please rest assured that I leave my clients in extremely capable hands. Our vice president, Patrick O’Fallon, and business manager, Ryan Curtis, will not only sustain but improve our business during my absence. This is the direct result of work we have been doing for over a year and a half to prepare for my sabbatical. Patrick and Ryan are actually looking forward to “getting me out of the way.” Diana Ortiz, Rob Kibler and Paul Miller, who are also part of our client management team, will continue to deliver great support to our loyal clients.

While in Africa I will be looking into several international business opportunities. I will be attending many Rotary meetings and will be nurturing and growing my relationships in this special part of the world. My kids will be going to the International School of Moshi with 150 kids from 35 countries. It is the first international baccalaureate school in the continent of Africa. We will again be offering our volunteer help to Mark Jacobson and the Arusha Lutheran Medical Center (http://www.almc.habari.co.tz/) and hopefully helping out with the Plaster House as well (see http://plasterhouse.org). Since 2002 my family and I have been sponsoring the education of a Tanzanian girl named Miriam Joseph. She will be completing her undergraduate degree in education and we hope to visit her as well.

More to come soon! Please keep our family in your prayers. We do have a couple of needs, including finding someone to rent our house in Evergreen, that are listed here -> http://allenit.com/?p=2218.  Again, to unsubscribe simply click here -> Unsubscribe

Love,
Ben

PS - Our last trip was for 2 months in 1998...read more about it here -> http://allensinarusha.blogspot.com/

We are now in the process of formalizing our goals and plans for our next trip to Africa.  While we probably are not definite we are actually very likely to be making this trip at the end of this year, late December of 2012.  This is a dream come true for me, as I have been fascinated with living for a longer period of time

Goals

• As a family to volunteer for the Arusha Lutheran Medical Center, Plaster House and Africaid who have been in our hearts and prayers for over 10 years
• To put 3 of our 4 kids into school into school at the International School Moshi Arusha Campus that has roughly 150 kids from 35 different cultures
• To explore business opportunities for my business that could include creating partnerships with existing companies, considering establishing a new company (Tanzanian branch of Allen Technology Advising), finding work that can be done for my US based company and other ideas as well
• To regularly visit the Rotary clubs in the Arusha and Moshi regions
• To create loving and meaningful relationships with members of the Arusha Lutheran church and the Arusha culture

If you noticed above, we will have 3 of our kids go with us.  That would be Stephen, Mack and Zoe who are now 14, 12 and 9.  Jessica has a 4.2 GPA at Evergreen High School due to her intense application in honors and AP classes and she simply cannot miss 2nd semester, she will be coming at the end of the semester (late May) hopefully with one of her friends.  Mack and Stephen may have friends come visit as well.

This has been my goal since I met Mark Williams back in 1999 and helped raise money for the Selian Lutheran Hospital in Arusha.  Ashley Shuyler, founder of Africaid, is the one I credit for getting me out to Tanzania in 2002 and ever since then I have dreamed of living there for an extended period of time.

There is nothing easy about moving my family to Africa and leaving my business and my community for an extended period, you could say that I have been working on this for the past 10 years.  My company is a "good" company and we intend to leapfrog "great" and go right to "excellent" in the next 6 months.  Patrick, Ryan, Nicole, Rob, Diana, Paul and other team members are up to this challenge.  Enormous amounts of time are being spent internally to ensure that our company will grow in my absence.

I will still have a role but that role will likely involve short monthly meetings where we use some really wonderful and sophisticated staff reporting tools that give me a hundred plus metrics allowing me to know what is working and what needs improving and then we can focus our energy on how my team intends to tackle those improvements.  They don't want me to fix anything, they just want my guidance.
I have a lot of work to do, everyone in my company has a lot of work to do, but I am not worried.  I have 7 "passionate executors."  That's a way of saying that I have the right people on the bus, and they are sitting in the right seats.  We are so poised to excel and they actually believe that my leaving is a good thing for them and the company.

Here is my Strategic Plan that I am happy to publish to all who might be interested in viewing.  I am working with the Growth Curve Institute, my coach Bob Dodge, my TAB board of advisors, my company team and many others to make sure this is successful.   I cannot do this alone, I realize I need help to do this.  On that note, please, please, please keep me, my family and my company in your prayers!

Love, Ben

While there are still details to work out we have informally committed to moving my family to Africa for a period of 6-8 months in order to attempt to build an international version of my company, Allen Technology Advising, in the Arusha/Moshi area of Northern Tanzania.

This may seem crazy but it is actually more than that for me, it is my passion. To give you more of an idea of the background, see my posts associated with our visit in 2008 (note the pictures from my visit in 2002 on the left side of this blog). http://allensinarusha.blogspot.com/.