Thomas Bakeeff's Story
March 8, Day 1: First full day in Kenya
After a long 30 hours of travel, including back to back 8 hour+ flights, I woke up with so much excitement that I was finally in Kenya that I made it to breakfast at 8:00am and shared a great meal with Sam. Sam Kiragu is the head of my graduate finance program, teacher for multiple classes of mine, and grew up in Kenya. We then had Sam’s friend take us through the city to the Village Market which is a big mall with the strangest layout I’ve ever seen. Half of it is outside and the other side has no rhyme or reason as to where things are.
We took a different route on the way home from the mall, and we drove down what I like to call “Embassy Row”. It is a super long street where all the international embassies reside, and they say it is the safest street in Kenya as every embassy had a gate with barbed wire protecting it. I found it really cool because I’m kind of a geography nerd, and each embassy had a characteristic of what you would see in that country. For example, the Netherlands embassy looked like the typical Dutch house with a windmill that just embodies the Netherlands. I was able to snipe which embassy was which just based on the flag too which I think impressed the others. Then we went right through downtown Nairobi which is similar to Times Square in New York City, just so many people and massive buildings everywhere.
March 9, Day 2: Nyama Choma
Woke up from not my best sleep but we didn’t have much planned so was willing and able to just relax until the afternoon where we were meeting Dr. Marcy at the Public Service Country Club. Dr. Marcy is a teacher at the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) who we are collaborating with this week on our industry visits, as well as students from Strathmore University. Since TUK is a publicly funded institution, Dr. Marcy is a member of the Public Service Club, where we met her for dinner. Sam’s kids David and Hannah also arrived today so we all went for dinner. We had the national dish of Kenya, Nyama Choma, which is grilled goat meat along with many sides including Ugali, which is like a starchy rice that is used almost like a carrier for the meat. Same concept as using a roll to dip in a pasta sauce. I’m an adventurous eater so I was a big fan.
March 10, Day 3: Industry Visits start
We started our journey at TUK, where we were met in the boardroom of what seemed like an abandoned building that I played on Call of Duty. It was definitely a bit shocking to see, and I asked Sam if it was publicly funded which he insured it was. It didn’t feel unsafe, just worn down and neglected. We then met in the boardroom with Dr. Marcy and Dr. Beatrice who are teachers at TUK, along with some of their students. Then we met Dr. Mbithi and the students from Strathmore University who were also attending the industry visits. There were about 25 of us in total.
We did some introductions and shared some tea and snacks, which I wish I knew before I ate a big breakfast at the hotel. It is one of my new favourite traditions that all of these meetings either start or end with food and tea (or oftentimes, both). In Kenya for the tea, you either have the option for traditional hot water, or there’s a hot milk option which I found to be my preference even though I’m not a big milk guy. The locals also load it up with sugar even though the milk is kind of sweet.
After all the introductions were done and we laid out the week ahead and the expectations, we had a couple hours before we had to leave for our first official visit to I&M Bank. We all thought it was a good idea to walk around the city a bit as we had been mostly in our hotel or in cars. While we were exploring the city, Sam got a call from an old friend he went to grade school with in Kenya, who is now the CEO of Kenya Reinsurance Corp, and he invited us up to do a quick visit of his company and a rundown of what they do there. I thought Sam had connections in Halifax, but it’s nothing compared to his connections in Kenya.
We eventually had to leave as it was our time to head to I&M Bank. This was probably my favourite visit because it wasn’t really a presentation, it was like an interactive, motivational speech. He also seemed to take an interest in me and knew a lot about Canada. He just talked about the power of networking and exposure, which will take us further than anything we can learn in the classroom. He also emphasized playing a sport, as it mimics a work environment with different personalities coming together to achieve a common goal, and each person having a certain role to do so. The visit ended with some tea and some food. It’s always these little sausages that I really liked, but if I never see one again, I won’t be upset.
We then all took a bus back to TUK and got caught in Nairobi rush hour traffic for an hour, but we got to connect with some of the Kenyan students and hear some incredible stories on their life and perspective.
March 11, Day 6: Strathmore University and PawaPay
Remember how I said TUK reminded me of a Call of Duty map and I asked Sam if it was publicly funded? Well he also told me to wait until I see a private institution like Strathmore, and boy was he right. It was honestly one of the nicest campuses I’ve ever been on, and I went to Bishop’s University which is ranked in MacLean’s top 5 prettiest campuses in Canada. It was seriously a stunning school, surrounded by barbed wire gates and armed guards.
At Strathmore, we had a key-note speaker named Ali Hussein Kassim (after we had tea and sausages of course). Ali is a CEO, motivational speaker, consultant, along with many other titles all in the FinTech Space in Africa. Anyway, Ali gave an incredible and interactive speech about the emerging fintech landscape and just about all the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead as the landscape continues to grow. Actually, he believes it is reaching maturity. In the afternoon we visited PawaPay which is an emerging company in the mobile money transfer industry, but more on the side of B2B. I find it fascinating how one app has inspired an entire industry to blossom from the ground up.
March 12, Day 7: SAFARIcom
Safaricom is one of the largest and most profitable companies in Kenya and all of Africa. They created the M-PESA app, which was a revolutionary mobile app creation designed to give Kenyans a sense of online financial security. In 2006, only 15% of Kenyan citizens had a formal bank account. M-PESA was created in 2007, and because of that, now in 2025, 89% of the population has a formal banking account with M-PESA. You can send money, pay bills, pay at retail and many more innovations they continue to divulge in all on M-PESA. They told us about some of these innovations, and the one that caught my attention was Ziti, a way to make investments in the market all from your phone for no fee. I’m doing a work term in the private wealth sector so hopefully this doesn’t come for my job, but still I found it really cool to see and hear from employees about these plans.
A big highlight of the trip came in the afternoon as we had no more industry visits that day. We went on a safari through the Nairobi National Park. I think compared to some other safaris you can do, this one is pretty tame and there may be a chance you don’t see too much, but we got really lucky. Monkeys as soon as we started, then hippos and crocodiles in a pond, then a pack of gazelles and a giraffe. A mother rhino and her baby, zebras, a group of 3 giraffes, and then 2 lions just hanging out in the middle of the road we were about to take back out of the park. It was incredible to see them up close in a natural habitat unlike a zoo. I've attached a couple pictures at the end of the blog to show how close we were.
March 14, Day 9: Sam’s old school
I skipped Day 8 as it was just our last 2 industry visits to Kenya Central Bank and Loop, and they were very similar to the other industry visits. So I will skip to Friday, which was another major highlight. We were going to Charity Primary School, where Sam went to school as a kid in Kenya. We left at 6am to beat the traffic and had about a 3 hour drive ahead of us. Nairobi is very much a major city, but the surrounding areas very much are not. It’s just different vendors off the main road selling fruit or rice or wood bed frames, and then there is the Kenya Mountain and all the peaks and valleys and beautiful views that it gives, it was a once in a lifetime drive.
We got to the school around 12pm and as soon as we pulled in, the kids were all there and they were going absolutely crazy. Screaming and dancing with each other like they just won the Stanley Cup. I was instantly flooded with emotions but had to put on a brave face. They then gave us an introduction and a traditional dance, then it was time to give out the supplies. These kids were so fired up and since there are 600 kids at that school, and there’s only so much room in a luggage bag, they only each got a few things each like a pencil, a notebook, a ruler and a crayon for example. They were so happy and grateful that it's hard not to have a different perspective on life. I’m still not fully over how I felt during and after that entire day, I’m so grateful I got to experience it, and also see how amazing it is that Sam came to where he is now from that school, as it definitely didn't have as many resources as I had growing up.
Conclusion
We had a couple more days just to relax before starting the journey back, so I will just conclude with some final remarks. First, I am so grateful to have the opportunity to go on this trip. I definitely recognize that probably 99% of people will never have that experience in their lives so I am not taking that for granted. I also feel like I have a newfound appreciation for my life here in Canada. There are definitely some flaws but to be able to grow up, and hopefully work here, I really am incredibly grateful to be Canadian. I hope with my story that more people don’t have a negative connotation come to their head when they hear Kenya or Africa as I know many do, and honestly I used to have. I hope that I can relay even a percent of my experience so that when they think of Kenya, they think of my story and how highly I spoke of the place and so they think highly of it.