Days 9 - 12

6-16-13

            I don't really have much to focus on today since I spent most of the day sleeping and reading. It was my first relaxation day of this trip and I suspect I won’t have too many like it so I tried to cherish it. I definitely needed it and I assume I will need them much more down the road. Unfortunately, I likely won’t get them later on so at least I get to say I had one.

6-17-13

            I guess you could say that I finally feel like a consultant and not a student. Even though I spend all morning in classes and almost all afternoon working with my team, something occurred today that helped me realize that I am not here to be a student, but rather, I am here to be a professional consultant for my clients, which they desperately need. Today was supposed to be our first client meeting that we had scheduled with Vuyile that wasn’t previously arranged. Vuyile canceled. He claimed that something cape up with something related to Stellenbosch but who really knows. All I know is that If he wants free consulting for his struggling business then he may have to start looking elsewhere. We met with Dr. Morris so we could inform him of the cancelation and he made it clear to us that we have to set a precedent with our client that he cannot treat us like locals. We do not have all the time in the world to evaluate his business and provide suggestions for how to fix certain aspects and we must work very quickly and diligently. At this point everything is starting to make sense. We really are consultants and not students anymore. It feels pretty interesting working all afternoon as if this is my career since I have never had an experience like this before. I really hope that we are able to convey the importance of our time and our demands to Vuyile tomorrow or else we will be forced to chose a new client. Clients that do not understand they have to be cooperative and forthcoming with everything business related do not understand the demands of consulting and seriously need to rethink their dedication to their business. Especially clients here because most run survival businesses so they go hungry if they don't sell and if they don't want our help, then I’m not sure what they’re thinking.

6-18-13

            Where do I begin? Today was far from normal, although at this point I am not sure if normal days are even possible here. Up until our client meeting with Department of Coffee this afternoon everything was running smoothly. Lets fast forward a bit to after the meeting and we will return to the meeting in just a moment. After our meeting we waited for twenty minutes for the van to pick us up in the middle of Khayelitsha. We then got in the van and drove two other students to their meeting nearby. After dropping them off we started to drive around, seemingly headed towards another teams location to retrieve them. This is where we ran into some trouble. Now, some people might enjoy sitting in a hot van for an hour driving in circles looking at the same scenery over and over again but let me assure you, that is not me. We finally pick up the other team after sitting in the van for an hour and a half and then drive back to where we dropped the previous two students off and at this point, I’m pretty annoyed. The plan was to go back to campus to drop us off before picking them up, but since we had driven around for so long, it just didn't make sense to make the trek twice. I don't particularly mind relaxing in a big van with my own row to lie down in but lets rewind and examine what happened just before we got in the van.

            The client meeting. We get out the van at the meeting only to see our clients sitting down with some other people at which point some questions arise. Who are they? What are they doing? Why are they with our clients? We walk up and introduce ourselves to them and end up finding out quite a lot about them and their connection to our client. Turns out, they own Department of Coffee and they branded the company and they acquired the location and they did all the hard work while Vuyile and his partners just waited to be the operators. These other people seem to have a three-year deal with Vuyile and his partners. In the first year, they finance the whole business and provide him with the tools and knowledge to succeed and they help him all along the way. In the second year, they take a step back and simply monitor their success, and in the third year they back completely away and just watch the company flourish. This means that Vuyile will be the owner in two more years so he doesn't really have the power to ask for our help until he is the outright owner. This whole dilemma ties back into a question I asked earlier. How can a few students successfully consult a business and help it grow? But now the issue is: How can a few students successfully consult a business and help it grow alongside other more qualified consultants? The answer is we can’t, but we didn’t know that yet. After learning all of this information my team and I were pretty frustrated with the lack of communication between Vuyile and us. It is impossible to accurately consult a business when the “claimed” owner is not up front about what is really going on. Fortunately, we conduct the rest of our meeting and still manage to learn quite a lot from Vuyile but the primary issue not yet resolved.

            Back to the van. At this point you should be able to understand the frustration we are all experiencing from the meeting and the mishap with the transportation. Upon arriving on campus about five hours after we left campus with only a two-hour meeting in between, we decide, as a team, that we should tell Dr. Morris the news. We inform him of the situation and he asks us what we believe is the correct next step. We all agreed that the appropriate form of action would be to switch clients as soon as possible. This kind of felt like a quiz and I guess we passed because he agreed as well. We expected him to be a little more upset with the situation but I think he likes us and will probably only reveal his anger to Vuyile when he calls him to let him know he’s been removed from the program. From then on it gets pretty simple; he gave us some new client options; we ended up choosing a preschool in Philippi (another township); and now we have to start all over. That's enough for today but to put it simply, my frustration has nearly hit a pinnacle so lets hope things run a bit more smoothly from here on out.

6-19-13

            Dropping Department of Coffee is starting to seem like a blessing in disguise. In our meeting today I realize that I may have not been the most helpful consultant but I sure had a lot of fun playing with the adorable children at the preschool and taking photos of them. They all had a trick for the camera and they all wanted to see the camera screen in order to see their faces. They swarmed around me and I almost couldn't move. What I was actually supposed to be doing was taking photos of the facilities and the financials, which I did complete, but you can visibly tell in the sequence of photos that I was sufficiently distracted every time I walked outside to take photos of the exterior. Another reason this may turn out to be a better situation is that Pumeza, the owner of Monwood Playgroup, the preschool, has already been a client once before. That means that both of our clients have already participated in this program so the social barriers shouldn't be much of an issue with either of them. Pumeza should prove to be a fun and interesting clients with real world problems that we should be able to help her with.

            I am excited to have the opportunity to work with children. Especially children that require further development because my team and I have the chance to assist in their development. Its going to be very interesting since none of us have ever worked in such a business but we will have to learn quickly or else we will certainly fail, and failure is not an option. Now that everything is settled down and all of the drama is over we can finally get down to business and focus on the days ahead. That is why I came here and that is exactly what my team and I plan on doing. Time to get a little muddy.