 When I was eight or nine, you know, it kind of hit me and I kind of realized, you know, that the hand that I had been served by Yosef Wachu of the geography I was born meant that I only had one shot and one ticket out of poverty, out of the village. And that ticket was doing well in the exams, we have exams at eighth grade. To be able to get into the boarding school I went to, the only way I could do that is if I would be ranked the first kid on the eighth grade exam in my county, so that I could represent the I could take the county's slot. So it's kind of like the NBA draft, but now the talent is just how you're going to do on a three day exam. As I approached eighth grade, as I approached this exam, it became a really young age, a do or die moment, right? Because if I couldn't be able to go to this publicly funded government secondary school, my parents couldn't afford to take me to any other form of secondary school. And if I can't go to secondary school, you know, the kind of dreams that I can dream, the kind of life I can live, you know, the kind of just different, you know, it's a different vibe, you know. And I am, I do consider myself to have been lucky. And I actually, and if you ask my parents, you know, people ask them, do you think like Tom going to Harvard is like the best thing that has ever happened to you to him or to you guy? And they always say, you know, it's Tom getting into high school, right? Boom. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. We are at the Elliott House at Harvard in beautiful Cambridge, Massachusetts. We are now going to be talking about actualizing Africa's potential. We have Tom Osborne, aka Okumu joining us on the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm pretty excited. I'm super excited. Thank you. Thank you for coming on. And huge shout out to Julia Schaefer hooking us together to do this. So for those that don't know Tom's background. So Tom is actually his Christian name. Okumu is his tribal name. So Okumu Tom Osborne is a psychology and computer science student at Harvard University focused on life outcomes of young people in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014, he co-founded Greenchart, which provides clean cooking fuel for homes, schools and institutions in Kenya, having raised venture capital and grew the staff to 20 people and have 3,000 clients. Since then, he is principal investigator of the Shamiri Mental Health Project at the Laboratory for Youth Mental Health at Harvard University and consulting with companies doing business in Africa with organizations like SafariCon, which is Kenya's largest telecom provider. All right. Epic background. Very young. It's very interesting that this move even from Kenya to Cambridge, which we're going to talk about and the differences in culture and kind of what's happening on a geopolitical level. Let's start things off with one of our favorite questions. What are your thoughts on the direction of our world? Wow. Once again, thank you so much for having me and sorry for making you go through a mouthful with the bio. But yeah, that's a really interesting question. I am optimistic about the direction of the world. I think right now more than ever, especially in the committees that I come from, we are seeing the way technology is impacting people's lives in terms of improving access to healthcare in terms of improving access to quality education in terms of increasing civic and political engagement. I think if we can democratize the world, I mean with this, if we can get 70% of the world, which has been left behind when it comes to making decisions about the future of the world involved in the table. If we can make countries in South Africa, the global south, not only just have to look at the dining table from the window, but also if we can give them a seat in the dining table and make them more important players in determining the direction of the world, then we can be able to unlock the potential that we have right now because technology is revolutionizing everything. And if we do it effectively, we can be on a path towards something great in our life. What a great analogy for looking at it, just not being at the dining table of decision making, just that the decisions are being made by other people for us versus being civically engaged and inspired. Which is kind of sad because majority of the countries in the world, majority of our societies are democratic and the philosophy of democracy is that we should all be in the dining table. But the way we have implemented democracy doesn't live to this ideal. We are sniffing the aroma from the table, but that's as close as we are to the actual table, right? And so we have a few global centers of decision making telling. So a good analogy is we have about 50,000 people telling 7 billion people how to live in making the decisions for the 7 billion people in the world. And this is a major difference in culture in terms of just having complete freedom over direction of decision of how I want to behave for what reasons. Maybe it's not for productivity and economic gain or reason. Maybe it's more for just living period, just being alive and just engaging with people in a playful way. So this is, although there is also some crazy benefit of being able to live parents sick, well some of the capitalistic healthcare infrastructure has also helped our parent or family member live 10, 20, 30 more years. So it's a very strange conversational balance. It's very nuanced and difficult to figure out exactly what it is. Which I want to, let's actually dive into that a little bit more in this next bit. Okay, so the, yeah just nuts the way you're putting it, just like tens of thousands of people making decisions for billions, yes, yes. So okay, finding yourself, Niabera? Niabera, Niabera in Kenya, this is in a Rongo district on West Kenya near Lake Victoria. So this is where you're born. And then I want you to speak about this life in Kenya. What is this like culturally, politically, economically? Yeah, yeah. So if you look at the map of Kenya in Nairobi with the capital is right there in the middle. If you go eight hours west towards Lake Victoria, you'll come to Niabera. That's how I was born. And I was born in a really, you know, interesting time. I was born when Kenya was as a country, you know, was going through what adults would consider a midlife crisis in its country, which was just in its 40s, approaching its 50s. But it was a country where we are still, you know, right now grappling with basic things like what does it mean to be a Kenyan, right? And we will, you know, talk about it later. But like, what Scramble and petition for Africa did is it made people citizens of countries for which none of them, you know, participated in the decision around, you know, the decision around that country being a country in the first place. And, you know, one of the things when I came to the US, for example, and I'm just going to tie it to Niabera, is people ask me, how do you deal? How do you live in such a diverse society as the US, you know, where there's all this kind of discrimination going on? I am like, the only difference is not everyone, but most people in the US decided that they were going to be part of this country, you know. So in Kenya, just to give you a background, we have 42 tribes, 42 different cultures, 42 different traditions, some of which historically have disliked each other, and then now forced to be a country to coexist, to be patriotic, to, you know, love the flag and all this kind of stuff. And so when I was born, we had perhaps one of the most iconic moments in our history as a country where we, in 2002, ended a 24-year-old dictatorship. So for 24 years, Kenya was in a dictatorship. But what I meant also is the living conditions were pretty, you know, difficult, you know. The challenges that I grappled with as a young boy were primarily around survival, you know, just around waking up, getting food, going to school, coming back home, seeing everyone is okay, you know, thanking God at the end of the night and, you know, repeating every day, you know. My dream when I was seven years old was to be a pastor, because, you know, in my village, that was the most respected, you know, person who was a church leader, or a school teacher, you know. Back then, thinking that I would, for example, be here, giving this podcast at Harvard College, we will think I was high on some kind of drug, you know. Yeah. And what I do like about my upbringing is I think I got a grounding on what I like to call the fundamentals, the fundamentals of humanity. I think these fundamentals are one which we do not appreciate much as just life, just being able to enjoy living. You know, we don't, we take it for granted, but I think it's a really great gift to have people, you know. When you're growing up and you don't have, you don't have television to keep you entertained, or you don't go on hikes over the weekend, or summer comes, right. You only have your peers, you only have your friends, right. And so you're, so people become, they play a much more important role when I was growing up, they're not only like friends, but also like social support outlets. Yeah. Yeah. And a couple things. First, crazy on 24 year dictator leaving around 95. So those 2002. 2002 is when that, okay, okay. But I thought you said it was when you were born, okay, a little later. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. So that was like the first thing I remember, like one of my first like childhood memories around the 2002-2003 period where we were moving on, because there was such a time of optimism, because we were coming from this long dictatorship. Yeah. And so then it became a time of more optimism, because it got out of a dictatorship that wasn't that healthy for the people of the country. Yeah. Okay. And then there, you said there's 42 tribes? Yeah, 42 tribes. 42 tribes that have historically also been interesting relationships between each other. Yeah, not all the 42 tribes, but some of the 42 tribes, you know, historically, you know, have relationships. So like a really good example is I went to high school next to Nairobi, and the high school event is a public boarding school. But the way the government admitted kids to the school is they emitted kids from every counting. And I remember before I went to the school, people in my village telling me, be careful of kids from X tribe because they eat people, for example, or they do X, Y, Z, or these people from the tribe can't be trusted because they're historically crooks or thieves or something like that, right? So we have all these like really interesting relations. And with these interesting relations, you have to form a nation, right? But it becomes hard to do that because in my village, you speak the lower, which they don't speak in 80% of Kenya or more, right? And yeah, so it's a different ballgame there. Yeah, so interesting. So the boarding school itself actually had kids from all these different tribes. So you kind of got exposed to that in a sense. And kind of did you feel for, well, these are all just young kids from around Kenya, like there's just it became kind of normal to interface with the different ones and see how you're kind of just all human. Yeah, and I think that was the intention of the school. And I think the school, the system did a really good job. Because of two, three weeks, you know, for a few months, you know, you realize that all this difference has, you've grown up with artificial differences that don't exist. We care about the same things. We want some, you know, dreams of a new life, right? And I think the only important thing is right now, not all kids in Kenya, you know, are able to kind of experience this kind of environment. And that's why, for example, tribalism is still, you know, perpetuated into generationally. And I think this kind of school and exposing kids at a really young age to devise people really helps break the stereotypes and such at such a formative age also. Yeah, yeah. Okay, a couple quick things. One of the things is that I also coming from a very heavily white part of South Dakota in the middle of the United States went to Minneapolis. Minneapolis, much more liberal, cosmopolitan melting pot immediately became exposed to people from Latin America, people from Africa, people from Asia, people from different parts of the world. And so immediately my all of those notions of any sort of bigotry were just like, these are humans. And so it was beautiful having that moment. And then also going to San Francisco after that again, another moment of more cosmopolitan melting pot. So and that's interesting that you can even relate that to like 42 tribes in Kenya as well. So you can be viewed that way. Okay, also you mentioned this really interesting, the fundamentals. I thought that was really cool, where here it can be as simple as being distracted by television, or any other one of these distractive things that we have versus one of the fundamentals that you listed is this wake up food, and then you need to figure out how to feed yourself, you need to go to school, you need to when you kind of you kind of the priest or the or the teacher is known as two of the highest positions amongst you. And then you come back home and you you are grateful that your family is still there and that everyone's healthy. And and then you have to learn like you said the social the social aspects, speak more about that. Yeah, I think one of the one is going to be one of the greatest challenges of a life frame is going to be around sociability. I think the internet and technology has done a tremendous amount of great things in the world. We cannot and we should not like understate the the value and importance of technological advances and the shall be encouraged. But I think one one byproduct if I'd call it of this rapid advancement in technology is that we have I think lost this element of sociability, you know, finding joy and happiness in human-to-human interaction just for the sake of a human-to-human interaction. We I think is a really important part of how we've evolved as people is kind of being lost because now we can go a day, two days, three days or even talking to anyone and will be, you know, perfectly okay. But because of that, I think we develop a lot of challenges, especially mental related challenges, you know, we people becoming less sad in some societies. For example, you you see new studies coming out that 30% of people in Japan like have never been in a relationship and they're like over 35 years old. And I think we we risk losing their value and enjoyment of just consuming human-to-human interactions for the sake of just those interactions without interactions having to lead per se to a specific end. And I think if we can figure out how to make technology a little bit more social and and more facilitating of these interactions, it'll be great. We have a lot to talk about that difference between just a social interaction for the sake of just well-being and life versus needing to get to some sort of an economic or productive goal from it. That's such an interesting point now. But I want you to give us, you know, going from from village to the boarding school. Oh, okay. Yeah. How did how did you get even into that boarding school first? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when I was eight or nine, you know, it kind of hit me and I kind of realized, you know, that the hand that I had been served by Yosef Vachu of the geography I was born meant that I only had one shot and one ticket out of poverty, my out of the village. And that ticket was doing well in the exams, we have exams at eighth grade. And basically, to be able to get into the boarding school I went to, the only way I could do that is if I will be ranked the first kid, my eighth grade exam in my county, so that I could represent the the I could take the county's slot. So it's kind of like the NBA draft, but now the talent is just how you're going to do on a three day exam. And as I approached eighth grade, as I approached this exam, it became a really young age, a do or die moment, right? Because if I couldn't be able to go to this publicly funded government secondary school, my parents called in a forge to take me to any other form of secondary school. And if I can't go to secondary school, you know, the kind of dreams that I can dream the kind of life I can live, you know, the kind of just different, you know, it's a different vibe, you know. And I am, I do consider myself to have been lucky. And I actually, and if you ask my parents, you know, people ask them, do you think like Tom going to Harvard is like the best thing that has ever happened to you, to him or to you guy? And they always say, you know, it's Tom getting into high school, right? Is that catalyzed all of the other doors? Yeah. And just imagining the kind of pressure are such a really young, formative age. And the other options being? Yeah. And so that's, you know, one of the things that currently inspires the water I'm doing is, you know, whenever you go back home, you know, there are kids in my age group who I grew up with, you know, who was such an integral central part of my youthful experience, my coming of age, who were not as lucky. And just seeing the kind of lives that I now lead is, it is, it is not only sad, it is really sad. Yeah. But it also just means that I can no longer be able to enjoy like my friendship and interactions with them, you know, as much as I will earlier. And yeah. And so it is, it is, it is really just kind of really unfortunate. When I went to the boarding school, I think the boarding school reinforced for me where I once again will call it fundamental. And so it was all by his boarding school. And we will stay in the school for nine months. We had no access to electronics. If you wanted to talk to your parents, you write them a letter or you'd have to organize with your class teacher to call them and they'd leave me that like once every two or three weeks. So we were cut off from the whole world. And once again, to be able to thrive in this kind of setting, you had to really spell out of time being able to socially indulge other kids and socially figure out your way around the school. I think one of the things I really learned in the school is, which is really helping now is just an ability to be able to not be intimidated in social settings, especially since it came to the US of realize a lot of my peers got a little bit anxious in social environments where some spotlight or some some pulling maybe in them and some kind of luck it have had that experience. But also one thing just before we move on about the boarding school was it also changed, you know, as I told you when I was growing up, just being a priest or a teacher, right? But I moved from the village was completely off grid, a village where when the sun went down our lives, you know, was closed for the night, you know, just told stories and went to bed at 8 to 9 p.m. I went to boarding school, you know, tried, you know, running water, access to the electricity, computers, internet, where like the alumni were lawyers like Supreme Court judges, entrepreneurs, doctors, businessmen, school heart exchange programs with kids, some from like American colleges, just like interacting with this new world, you know, exposed me to a new thing that I didn't have, but also created a deep internal battle because every time when I leave the school, I want to go back home, you know, it becomes hard to peacefully reconcile these two worlds, you know, and just, you know, just leave peacefully those two worlds, yeah. Wow. Yeah. The way that you're telling the story is sinking in very deeply into me and and hopefully others as well. And for such a variety of reasons, one of them being that when you find yourself as the young boy, it was eighth grade taking the three day exam, right? Yeah. When you're there and you know that that moment is can, it will bifurcate the trajectory of your life. And then the all the other doors that opened up from going to the boarding school and continuing to work really hard and and doing everything else in your life to get to here versus on the other side of like you described that when you go back and engage with socially with the classmates that you were with up till then that how do you engage then when what their stimuli that they've been around versus the ones that you've been around that the alumni of the boarding school are lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors, businessmen that that is so much different than being in a village where it's a priest and the teacher are the two highlights and that yeah, the the level of amount of of dollars per day that you can earn in those two locations is different not only is it economical, you know, but also just how you think and view life and how you you know, figure out your position in life or matters to you and your values, you know, it's it's it's it's it's different, you know, my classmates almost half an hour married and you have kids, you know, because you know, when you can no longer if you cannot succeed academically then maybe succeeding socially by building a family is an option and you cannot blame them for making that decision and just trying to in in their thinking, you know, get the best out of your life or when you meet people and socially, you know, talking about things like politics or how who are you going to vote for, you know, and if someone will prioritize a politician who gives them for five dollars for your votes, you know, you you you know, you cannot you cannot blame them and that is where I think most people get it wrong when we talk to the like Tom, why is it that we have spent so much money to national development, you know, trying to create to make people at the bottom of the pyramid in Africa change their behaviors, but they're not or X or Z, but you realize that when the system fails, when not just one person, but a majority of the community, you know, you cannot blame the individual for putting their own interest in the moment. You cannot blame them for pro-raising themselves right now and not everyone in the future. It makes it now hard, you know, when you're trying to do things that are important when you're trying to address issues around climate change and healthcare and financial sustainability that require, you know, more future thinking, you know, it becomes it becomes like it's kind of it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a vicious cycle, it's a it's a it's a cycle, it's a trap, you know, most people call it the poverty trap and I think it's a real trap and because the way you think, how you view life, not only the economic opportunities available to you, it's a totally different ballgame, you know, and then the other challenge is that people who are trying to help people get out of this trap also don't have a deep understanding of what it means to be in the trap one and so they can all be able to develop effective solutions and if they were able to develop effective solutions, they can also be able to convince the people that they're developing solutions for that is an effective solution, right? Yeah and it's it's it's something I'm probably with, you know, like just the way socially engaging with my friends and my classmates seeing where they are in life, talking about our goals and our visions and, you know, you know, politics and our ideologies, just totally, yeah, it's just really hard, yeah. A couple things. One of the things is getting access to internet electricity running water, shelter, other young people, this alumni network going to this boarding school, this again opened up your ideas, your imagination to see different ways that you could contribute to the world, your creative potential versus just a little family or whatever the other the other options are. We could spend hours just on this, yeah, segment because I think it's also really important for like, did you have what was the house like, what was the area of living like for you and your mother and father and siblings? What was the what was the sleeping like? What was the everyday life like? Could you give us a taste? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I grew up on a sugarcane farm. So my family, we have been traditionally sugarcane farmers. And how my home is structured, so my grandfather had three wives. And so in the lower traditions that's my tribe, we have we have customs around how the setup becomes if someone has more than one wife. And so my dad being one of the youngest kids, the youngest male kids in this polygamous setup, it meant that he had to stay according to because he was the last one. So he had to stay with his mom. So that is the the custom the last one son is supposed to take care of the mom and inherits everything from the mom when the mom passes away. So where we grew up, my grandmother's house, three bedroom, three bedroom house, and my parents are the sort of house just about 10 meters from my grandma's house. And yeah, and so it's daily life. So it depends, you know, Ali in my career, like I had to be a little bit more involved, like the manual labor of working in the farm. But as I was approaching eighth grade, I kind of know how to switch gears to focusing on academics. Your mom and dad were both alive and yeah, they're still and still and then your grandpa and grandma from both of their so my grandfather died in 2000. But my grandmother was alive. She died in 2015, but she was alive for most of my childhood. Yeah, maybe all of my childhood. Yeah. And the other two grandpa and grandma from the other? There's only one such two grandmothers. Yeah. Yeah. And then did you have siblings too? So I have three siblings. Three. Yeah, I have three siblings. So it was kind of because apart from my immediate family, so my extended family, we all stayed like within the same vicinity. So my uncle, for example, was only like 20, 30 meters from where we stayed and he had here a quite a lot of 13 kids. And so this was just from my like biological grandma and then also the kids of my two other grandmothers was living around. So it was quite a big setup in the farm. And so depending on what you do, so if your parents are farmers every morning, they wake up 5 a.m. go to the farm. They'll be doing that their whole lives apart from a few times where they moved to a land which is like a small town. Next by and my dad had a bakery for a while. Yeah. And it'd be also having you and your siblings also learn about farming and the land. Yeah. And you would then go through cycles of farming on the land, harvesting the crop, selling the crop to those that are coming to buy the sugarcane and you would follow a cycle. Yeah. Yeah. And so for example, if so, if, if, if I schooled into a car, then I'd be, I'd be running the farm. I'd be like, that would be like my primary vocation right now. What are your three siblings? Yeah. So my family has been, you know, just given the life trajectories of most people in we've been quite lucky. My other brother joined the military for a while. And it's a really interesting story. And I don't want to tell a story on his behalf, but for him, his ticket was joining the military not because of what love for the country, but it was one of the only ways he could get out of the village. And my sister also followed a similar route. You know, she didn't get as lucky as it was academically and joined the prison service. So she works in the canyon prison system. Yeah. My younger brother is just graduating from my school. I think he'll be at least going to the local universities in Kenya. Yeah. All of the siblings are left the village. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So everyone moved on to life trajectories that were outside of farming in a rural area. Okay. So exposure to internet and the young minds in the boarding school and how did you pick up your interests there? How did you even get? Oh, Harvard. How did, yeah, all that. So actually how it happened to me a little bit later in my like trajectory, it wasn't something that I had in my mind when I was in high school. You know, the fast thing that happened in high school was by, so in the kind of education system, by sophomore year of high school, you kind of have to know your path. You know, so it's like lock and set. And so in my high school, we had four careers. So you're either a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, or you're a loser. So they call it Dell, a doctor, engineer, a lawyer, a loser. And so by the end of freshman year, the careers department. Where's artist? You know, we're scientists. Yeah. So unfortunately, that wasn't in the business person. Yeah. Yeah. That was in the, that was in the, that was in the, it's not in the acronym. Yeah. That was in the ballgame. So I was in the law. I was, I was assigned to be a lawyer because for two things I could talk for a long time. And I also did a little bit better in English than chemistry. Chemistry is a hard subject, yeah. Yeah. So I decided, so you are going to be a lawyer. And as a sophomore, I was like, why should, why should I be taken from the village, exposed to all this wild, you know, especially at a time where young people in other parts of the world were doing crazy things. This was a time where like the tech entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley had were revolutionizing the entire ballgame. And they were selling as inspiration all into kids in America. But all over the world, you know, it was a time where, you know, young artists, you know, like Justin Bieber were going viral. And they were really young, still in school, you know, the people who we correlate with. And here I was, shown this whole world and told that I had to be a lawyer just because I talk a lot. And I did well in English composition. And so I felt really frustrated by the system. And I think it was something where I realized that the system that I had found myself in wasn't going to work for me, you know. And I part time, as I was figuring this out, this was the first time, you know, it's a really common poem here in the US. But it was the first time I read Robert Frost's The Path Not Attacked. And when I read it, it just crystallized what I had been thinking, that if I was going to be happy and successful whenever I was to do, I had to create my own path. And I figured out the best way to create my own path was to think about what is important to me, what I care about. You know, things that I will happily come a lot of time on resources to do. And the first thing that came to mind was just the living standards in my village. You know, I could be a lawyer and in fact I was like admitted to law school and still in high school in Kenya. Today Kenya is like best law school and I could have gone that path. But realized that I was like how I, and I might be wrong, but how I rationalize it was, you know, I have been one of very few lucky people in my community, you know, who has gotten the chance and the opportunity to be able to see a different world and explore different possibilities. And I could either think about it selfishly and be like I deserve this, I've worked hard, you let me leave a great financially viable life and join the echelons of, you know, canyons like establishment or something like that. Or I could find ways to give, you know, the community and the people that I care about with also where I call an opportunity to fight, you know, like it's not that we lack an innovation or creativity. You know, the saying is true that, you know, talent is universal, opportunities are not right. And I think it's pretty sad that most dreams are shattered not because of a lack of talent, not because of a lack of hard work, but just a lack of opportunities. And when I realized towards one of the breaks in sophomore year, you know, my mom had developed this respiratory tract infection, primarily as a result of just cooking for us and making food for us. And not because of any like personal negligence on on our side, not because of any like life choices that she had made to engage in activities that made her develop this infection. It was a really sobering moment. You know, I asked myself, why did I have to work really hard? Why did I have to leave my village and quote unquote get an education if I couldn't help my mom, you know? Like, why was I, why was I, why, why, why do all this if you can't, you know, have a profound impact in the lives of people who mean something to you. And so that was why our junior year started working on just various different projects. I didn't know where and them would lead or which direction it would take. I didn't know if I was going to be successful or not. I didn't know if I'd fail and go back to the village or wherever would come. But, you know, I had this, you know, it's just this drive and my deep personal connection to the problems that I was thinking about, I think, spud, that drive. Yeah. You being able to recognize that you got blessed with being able to realize, actualize your opportunities and then want to help those that don't have those opportunities is a critical moment of reflection in life. Because we can so often do what you said of saying that, hey, I got mine. But to be able to say that we stand on the shoulders of giants, that we have this unity, that we need to have a harmony together. And that one of the ways that I can give after I've been blessed is to help open up those doors of opportunity for other people. And I love that a lot about you. And there's also this moment of realization for you that this moment of realization for you that why is it that the numbers are staggering that 80% of Kenyan households use charcoal for cooking. So that your mom being diagnosed with this lung disease, this infection that this happens 4.3 million die every year from indoor cooking smoke. So these are preventable deaths. Your mind is think, how do we prevent this? How do we upgrade the code from old cooking code to new code? Yeah. And it's really even more sobering if you can use a word if the solutions of the prevention to these problems exist. And that is one of the greatest challenges that I still cannot resolve. We spend a lot of time with Grincha figuring out the native gritties of trying to make a solution which is great but still not perfect work yet create clean solutions. People for example in the US don't die when they're cooking. High income people don't die when they're cooking. The will for solving this problem has already been invented. But now we have to reinvent and create a new will just because of the way the structure and so it is. And just to piggyback on what you say, it's sad I think in our recent history as humans we've kind of forgotten that we are here, we are here on the backs of giants and our society just to be able to survive and evolve to be in a position where we can now build this great building. We had people who would figure out basic things like survival and they did not monetize or patent them. Fire, they did not monetize or patent it. Even the original will, they didn't create a one kill one economy out of it. And now we are in the richest time that we've ever been in the wild but we are also in the most equal that we have ever been at the same time. And so yeah it's clean cooking is a really special developing while you know 4.3 million deaths annually. Mainly women because the most in societies women have to be the ones who bear the burden of taking care of the family. And this is from using either wood or charcoal? Yeah wood based fuels. Wood based fuels. Yeah. It's endorsed too so that it's not like there's circulation. So that is the main issue because it is you know indoors right because there is some I mean you know this like especially with things like cooking there's like some element of privacy and you know family privacy that people want to have around like what they cook and what they eat. And so the result of that most cooking like in most parts of the world is primarily done indoors. And it is really you know unfortunate the way in this we are still here and it's just unfortunate that there's a lot of like resources and time and commitment that is being put to our child's problems. And we what we were doing is we were making alternative cooking fuel from sugarcane waste. And this is your company Grinchar. Yeah and so the three reasons I inspired that thinking so first of all just the realities of the economic condition right. It is easy for like an easy solution will be let us get everyone hooked to maybe the grid let us get everyone like clean gas cookers right. But that is because of the economic system outside the reach of those like a non-starter right. And then the thing is now we had to innovate around very innovative around cost. But then the problem in innovating around cost is you have to make a lot of sacrifices on quality and utility right. Because if I was designing iPhone that will cost $900 like I couldn't put state of the art LCD screens on the display. But if I was designing an iPhone that will cost $30 I'm limited in the amount of things that I can put aside to make a lot of compromises and sacrifice a lot of like quality and utility just for that sake. And so that's why we were using sugarcane waste and also making sure that the fuel we developed was as close to existing charcoal that was important because people already have stoves that they're using charcoals on. Most farmers wouldn't be able to afford the investment of buying a new tool for cooking. So we kind of had to meet them where they are. And so we consider the fuel that we're developing as a current bridge into the future. We don't think that creature fuel is how people in low income communities in the world should be cooking while people in other parts of the world are enjoying really high living standards. But we think that for now we figure out how to more equally distribute resources just giving people is reducing the chance of women getting respiratory tract infections potentially giving people who really need economic savings. Limiting the environmental impact of deforestation for fuel. It's 125,000 acres of trees lost each year to make charcoal. Yeah. So Kenya we have a crisis because our forest cover is now I think under 3% of of the entire country and it used to be about 20-30% like 40-50 years ago. Yeah. And so yeah. So that was what we were working on. And it was a great experience. Of course it was also really challenging because one of the challenges we faced was fuel was really cheap. It was about 30 cents per kilogram. And full of 30 cents would be not fuel for one or two days for most families. And then how do you scale up a business where the customer, the value of the customer from business perspective only 30 cents. And the margin that you have there is under 3 cents, right? Right. And the alternative is almost free. Yeah. It's free or almost free. Almost free. And then to get some green char is 30 cents a kilogram. Yeah. And most families are leaving on two dollars or less, right? So So to put one sixth or one seventh of their income into cooking fuel. Yeah. And so we thought initially that we could make people see the value of the fuel from my health or an environmental perspective. And the feedback we got was people would be like, yes, I love the environment. I don't want to see trees cut. I potentially don't want to get sick in the future. But you know, I have school fees, I have healthcare expenses, I have living expenses and I have two dollars, right? So you have to make, if you don't make an economic argument, you're going to have a lot of trouble convincing me to do that. And from another business perspective, you're also pointing out that you're making a 3 cent profit. So you make it for a 27, you sell it for 30 cents, a 3 cent profit to make, yeah, a dollar. You have to sell 30 of these, 33 of these to make a dollar. And then furthermore is trying to, you're putting this in comparison to something like, like let's say a Tesla, like an automobile that costs $40,000 for someone to purchase and maybe it only costs them $20,000 to manufacture. So they make a $20,000 margin. So to figure out what the best solution is to a problem like this, given the parameters like you described earlier, can't just go and get gas line running to natural gas stove. So to be able to focus on going and enabling the opportunities and decreasing some of the health issues like that. And you actually ended up going forth and doing, innovate Kenya, the New York City social entrepreneurship competition for seed funding to get this going. Yeah, yeah. I think when I was thinking there were two elements and it's kind of unfortunate that these two elements could not be reconciled. And so the first element is articulating the vision of the organization, articulating the financial need, articulating a plan or a path towards profitability. And when you're doing that, you're not doing that with your end customer, right? The people who are writing the checks, as you've mentioned, some of them are in New York. They've never cooked a single day with any sort of charcoal, let alone green charcoal. I mean, the lives are really removed from the problem. But to solve a problem, you need the money, right? And so it's something I call talking, the talk. And so to be able to get into the door and just have a conversation, you have to talk the talk. And often this talk is really different from what, you know, can work on the ground, right? And so when I was meeting investors, I'd present a plan and I'll be like, okay, so we need $20,000 to be able to set up a production facility. And we think we can be able to get like $500,000 in revenue from this. And there's a financial model, this is our distribution plan, you know, just making sure you take all these boxes that people take you seriously and trust you with your money. But when you go back to the ground, you're like, damn, I have a three cent margin. How am I going to make $500,000 for the three cent margin, right? Some things we just have to admit are not venture backable. This is not a venture capital thing. This is a philanthropy thing. Ideally, ideally, it is a philanthropy thing, right? With what you described, though, it's a model for you know what equipment you need, you know who you need to hire, you know how to get to more people, maybe you need to just drastically subsidize and get all the way to free as the alternative. That way your 30 cents for a kilogram is nothing for the modern economies of the world. So to be able to subsidize that to save lives around the world as from a philanthropic perspective is we just need to be able to do that better. But there's a big disconnect. Yeah. And there's something else about social capital entrepreneurship that we'll get to too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's really unfortunate, you know, though we can't be able to get supporting for this. And especially for me, and that will eventually be one of the reasons why I'm coming to Harvard is still when I come to New York and I meet a retired hedge fund manager from Connecticut, and I ask him for money, he still sees a 90 year old kid with a weird accent from some random village in Africa that he has never heard of, right? Even if I have an articulate plan, I have no experience doing this. I haven't been able to pull it. I don't come from a regional area that is renowned for its entrepreneurial initiatives. There are no quote unquote success stories of people of my background who have been able to pull off these kind of dreams. And so those two experiences, so that and just the reality of the market made me realize that I had great dreams, but I was also extremely naive. You know, I thought that all I needed was to have a good product, work hard, and things will work out. But I realized, and I'm not realizing it, it was a really young age, but unfortunately, in the wild today, it's still the idea that anyone from anywhere can work hard and access resources and be successful is great, but it's a fantasy. I realized that I had a glass ceiling. All the people who are giving me money were not giving me money because they believed in my idea or strength to do, but sometimes because of selfish reasons where they were either felt sympathy towards me or they having in their portfolio that, hey, I am supporting this kid from Africa, makes them look good in whatever social or river cycles that they are in. And locally, walking on the ground, I realized that I could not blame people who were like, we like what you're doing, but hey, you know, you're not going to buy this for 30 cents, just kind of doing. So I was in a position where in terms of raising money and getting capital, I kind of reached the ceiling. In terms of walking with local communities to get the buying, they just have ways to, you know, buying behind like putting the bulk moral support kind of way. Even though you couldn't get it from the villagers, the institutions, the schools, the factories, they could transition away, they could pay the 30 cents a kilogram. Yeah, they're cool, you know, but also coolant cause primarily I was still, you know, for example, this is one of the most sobering experiences for me when I was at Grinch, is the we have, I don't know if I think it's maybe it's a multinational called Batta, it's a shoe company. And they have like large shoe factories in Kenya. And for some reason we use firewood within in the production facility. And I had been corresponding with the head of sales and the CEO just trying to see if we could be able to sign them up to buy our products. And they needed like quite a lot of, they needed about like three tons a week, which if it was a delay if we could close, like would have given us quite a good revenue boost. But when I went to meet the head of sales and the CEO to like the in-pass negotiations or to like people in their 40s and 50s. And the little man they like, you young man, you're 19 years old, you want us to give you and you want us to give you a two ton a week contract for a much part of our production system. Unfortunately, while we think your proposal is strong, we just can't trust you because you're young. You know, because you have no quote unquote free life credentials that can show that you're able to help do this. Yeah, and sort of really, you know, it's kind of really We need to change that paradigm. Young people need to be given those opportunities when they just need to come with you and see, oh, look, look at the production. They can make two tons a week. Okay. Great. They can make it happen. Let's give them a shot. That type of a thing so that we can get more young people to have these opportunities. Like you're describing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we also will eventually need, you know, parts of the world trailblazers. We need one or two or three, like young people who see something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that other young people can see that. Yeah. Yeah. And also all people can see. Older people can see. And so like, yeah, like changes the narrative a little bit. Yes. Yeah. So in 2015, towards 2016, I kind of realized that you know, I realized that it was going to take a really long time for green technology to want to be realized that perhaps hired pushed the needle as much as I could. You know, I committed three years to it since 2013, grown into 20 people. We had like 3000 homes to buying our products, raise some venture funding. But I school in, I school in figure out how to scale and make the organization profitable. And just so people know, there's other variables like the fact that for some reason, Elshabab is somehow in control of the charcoal cartel. And that that exists, that these variables in a different part of the world add complexity. Yeah. You know, it's sort of, you know, I don't want to realize is much better here in the U.S. is I think there's opportunity for a fair competition of eight years in the market. Yes, it's going to be like a lot of pushback from the establishment. But I think over time, like good products and good ideas win against market forces. But in other parts of the world, it's not that straightforward. Okay. Hit us with the, what happened from Greenchart to Harvard? Hit us with that. From when I started it or from towards the end? Yes, because, because you took us through the boarding school, you took us through Greenchart. And then we didn't make, we didn't get to hit the real transition to Cambridge. Oh, okay. Yeah. And what that was even like, you know, going through the process of common app and yeah, and all that type of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's actually, it's, it's, it's really interesting and kind of non-traditional approach. As I was telling you, like in 2015, I kind of realized that I was coming to, like the end of my time in Greenchart, but the end of my time being like logistical and operationally and day-to-day, you know, in charge of, of Greenchart, you know, like when you are 19, 20, you know, and you have like 20 people who over age is about 38 reporting to you, you know, and that's like the livelihood, you know, like they have families and they have responsibilities. And it's really exciting, but it's also really stressful, you know, because at the end of the month, every month you have to balance, you know, balance the book, make sure everyone gets paid, make sure the bills get paid, make sure everyone is happy. Then after that, you have to deal with, you know, sponsors and investors and all that kind of stuff. And I realized three things. I realized that one, I had not allowed myself an opportunity to experience personal growth and really realize and discover who I was, you know. I had to grow up really quickly, you know, I had to take a lot of responsibilities really quickly of how to be independent in my life, like really quickly. And I'm really lucky in hindsight of what those experiences are, but I hadn't like taken time to just, just time to just think about Tom, for example. So that was one thing. The second thing is I knew I needed a break, but I also knew what I, like, I knew what I wanted to do immediately. I knew I was gonna still be involved in like fundraising and total leadership and that kind of stuff, but that doesn't, you know, that doesn't take 40 hours a week, you know, and so I kind of needed to figure out what I was gonna do, but I didn't, you know, effectively know what it was that I was gonna do. I thought I met this guy called David Sanger, who I really, reasonated with and I really connected to. He was a kid from Sierra Leone who had grown up through the war in Sierra Leone. It was a really impactful life story, some of his family, like their limbs were chopped off during the war. And somehow he came to Harvard and went here for his undergrad and I went to MIT for his PhD and I think he was developing, like, artificial prosthetics for his PhD. And he was also one of the, he would be involved as one of the co-founders of Innovate Kenya, just kind of hard to marry. And the minor, I interacted with him, and I guess so how, I call it, David walked the room, if that's how I call it, I traveled with him a few times and just saw how he will be able to go into, like, meetings in New York with, like, Rockefeller Foundation and Lemelson Foundation and, you know, they're driving, like, $100,000 checks, $800,000 checks, right? And he will do this in a really effective way and he was really effectively able to not only articulate what he wanted to do but also gather the resources to achieve what he wanted to do in a way that us 20-year-olds really inspired me and really, for the first time in my life, I kind of had this, quote unquote, troll model or idol who I called model my path around. And David, we were also kind of well connected within the Harvard community and within the Stanford community also. And so, in around March, February 2016, I remember specifically, I got two offers to one come to Harvard and another come go to Stanford, which is kind of really interesting because I didn't go through, like, the traditional, you know, application process, you know, for, you know, coming to college that most of my peers in college have. And so I kind of watched to see what I will do. And so I negotiated with both schools to see, you know, which school will give me the best offer. And well, like, both gave me really good offers, but I think Harvard kind of went out of its way to show that they really wanted me to come here. And so that's how I ended up in Cambridge, yeah. So David is a huge influence that you saw him in his action and that you saw him as a role model in that sense and that you see, he also had come out and went to, you said MIT and he came to Harvard for his undergraduate. And so it turned into that see it be it as well that we need more examples like that in order for us to be able to pursue our dreams in that sense. And then also that there's a, when you're going through this process of getting this, this is an unconventional style of application process and acceptance. So what was the unconventional aspect to it? Yes, you know, like traditionally, you know, you have to, well, I mean, I may not be an expert in this, they don't have like the good experience with it. But I think traditionally, you know, people have to do like a few of tests, you know, do like a more Tara application thing. But in my case, what I just had to do is to send in just to like, like just to mail in like my high school transcripts and also got David wrote them a letter. That's huge. And he also had, I think one thing David had that I also really far admirable is he for some reason has his ability to get influential important people in the world to listen to him and, you know, to trust his opinion. I am really lucky that he saw something in me and, you know, kind of helped me. Yeah, kind of helped me kind of notch me towards actually because I at that time was really, as I mentioned, was really against the system. And schools like Harvard and Stanford and similar schools were part of a system that I was against. And so I think out of my own free volition, I would have probably thought my time will be best served in different places. But I think what David told me is you have all these dreams, all these visions that you want to articulate, you know, you go to Harvard, you go to Stanford, you go to these schools, you can you're much, you're much better, much more effective at being able to achieve, you know, the goals that you wanted to do. And when I came to Cambridge, you know, August 2016, it was two things up. And so that was the first time in like three years I had been in a space where no one knew me. So, you know, part of being an entrepreneur in Kenya, especially Kenya's really small country is after a while, I kind of had like this kind of name recognition. Saturated. Yeah. And also being like one of the only young entrepreneurs who are like successful raise money and was like building something. Yeah. Those like some like tensions, scrutiny that came. And this was your second trip. New York was what year as well? Actually, that was my third trip. Third trip. This one. Okay. And you took two trips to New York? Yeah, I took two trips to New York. So, I also took a trip to Seattle in San Francisco. And Seattle in San Francisco, very good. Yeah. And so curious as you talk about, yes, coming in and nobody knowing you and kind of starting fresh, in a sense, simultaneously seeing a country like developed an area that's developed like Cambridge versus a village and a capital like Nairobi as well. Just the differences in culture, the differences in people, the difference, all of that stuff as well combined together. Give us a taste of that. Yeah. So, Cambridge is really different from Nairobi, which is really different from the village you grew up in. So, for example, in the village, you knew everyone who you interact with on a daily basis. They knew you, they knew your parents, they knew your sisters, they knew your family, whatever tradition or history, people went to the same church, people went to the same school. Yeah. So, it's kind of like, I wouldn't say life is static, but like life revolves around the same people. But then Nairobi is kind of the opposite spectrum, six million people really full of life, really chaotic city also. And so, I think staying in Nairobi for three years at high school, I developed what I call a sixth sense. Because in Nairobi, you say, you either thrive or you get eaten in the city. And so, to thrive, you have to develop this kind of a sixth sense of just being able to, I come to like small ways and big ways, small ways just like being able to never get traffic when no one really cares about traffic rules, like, you know, being able to deal with the cops when all of them want you to bribe them even if you haven't done anything wrong, right? Being like a young person who people think is a quote unquote successful entrepreneur, just being able to deal with the expectations that come with. And so, I normally, whenever I go back to Nairobi, I normally feel like alive, you know, just because of all these environmental stimuli. That's something I normally don't have when I'm in Cambridge. In Cambridge, most American cities are a little bit organized, like less chaotic, things run on time, people follow their calendars, don't show up late for meetings. And just because I'm not used to that, you know, I'm not excited by the day-to-day calendar of the activities of life. Whereas in Nairobi, I kind of wake up knowing that there's going to be something, at least something I didn't plan that's going to happen and say look for just to figuring out what is it that I didn't plan for that looks to happen. The thing is just the element of sociability that I mentioned to you earlier. I don't know if it's a function of the city of Cambridge or just broad American society, but everything is a means to some end. Conversations are a means to some end. Social interactions are a means to some end. We don't have the joy of interacting with humans just for them being humans, which is something that I found mostly in Nairobi, but also in Nairobi. Just the ability to walk on the street, meet a stranger and talk to them for a minute and none of you being considered weird. It's something I miss, yeah. But I think I've grown a lot as a person in Cambridge. I think the nature of the city and the nature of the culture here, because people spend a lot of time personally and individually, you really get to explore yourself in more intimate ways that you will do in a more socially vibrant, more socially dynamic society where you don't have as much time to focus on the person or where life or where like even focusing on the person is problematic because you're trained to the person is part of the society, not an individual entity. You're crazy. We're talking about before we went on the show that the when you move to a place like Cambridge that the devices, these things that we use to access all the knowledge that civilization knows that these are so complicated in the supply chain and in the development and the user experience and all that type of stuff that these are not ubiquitous in the village in Kenya. These are not ubiquitous around the world yet. There's only a couple billion of them around the world out of the 8 billion humans. Further is that another thing that's really important to understand is that you come to a place like Cambridge, you're automatically surrounding yourself with some of the most brilliant people that the most powerful nodes in terms of influence, power, intelligence across their fields as well. There are these interesting differences between this. Let's hit on the maximizing life outcomes of young people in Sub-Saharan Africa. It's a project that you're currently working on called Shamiri Mental Health Project. Teach us about this. Great, yes. Just as you've rightfully mentioned, most of these tools that are so common and so important in our lives, especially in the Western world, are unfortunately not as prevalent as utilized in other parts of the world, right? As a result, some of the opportunities that people have access to here. For example, you have this vibrant show, young people where I come from who may have similar ideas, similar visions, cannot be able to realize and actualize them in a similar way. And so I think the biggest challenge in my generation and what I mean like Sub-Saharan African generation is going to be that we have a really youthful population. I think the mean age is 18 years old in the continent. It is projected that this young population is going to double by 2050. But then the system has not been built to effectively provide this youthful population with opportunities that they need to succeed in the 21st century. And so we are kind of at a crossroads where we either have this vibrant, dynamic, energetic youthful population that is about to explode and unleash so much potential that can change the trajectory of so many people's lives and so many things in the world, right? Or we are starting just before a humanitarian crisis of tons and tons of young, youthful people who have given up because they don't have enough opportunities to succeed. And I personally think that there will be maybe the problem that I'll spend most of my life thinking about and trying to figure out. But it's also really big and broad problem. And so to tackle it effectively, you have to kind of like segment it into smaller segments that you can tackle one by one. And so right now, mainly focusing on the academic and mental outcomes of young people, especially adolescents in schools. And why I think this is important because most of life outcomes are determined during this really formative. And so it's kind of like your life is set at a really young age. Like what happened to you in grade? Yeah. And just because of this is also more pressure to, you know, because most things are, most of your decisions are at time when you still have a good grasp of the world is make or break your tummies, your future. And there's also just hardships, life hardships, and similar things. And so I think the toll on many young kids of mental health is high because of this increase. This is really tremendous pressure at a really young age. But still there is limited or no work being done to kind of address this issue. And so that's why I think mental health is really important for young adolescents. But then you think when you're working with young adolescents, especially in Kenya and similar countries, because most of their future outcomes also are tied to their present academic outcomes, whatever solution you develop for any problem has to go hand in hand with improving academic outcomes. Because that is the most effective way that you'll get buying from schools, buying from parents, buying from the kids themselves, right? If they can see tangible benefits in the academic performance. So we are currently in the process of traveling a few positive psychology-based interventions that we think can help kids realize just how much they can improve and change within, without depending on external forces. And whereas they may be in, they may have been solved difficult hands in life, but they still have the ability and the potential to take control of their futures. And hopefully we hope to give them some tools that they can add to their tool kids to do that. Yeah. Which interventions? So right now, Shamiri is one of the interventions we're developing. It's a Swahili word for thrive. And so the idea is they're really simple tools. In the Western tradition, they call them tools in psychology, but I just think the general life tools that we take advantage of, but, you know, can have profound, impactional lives. So for example, gratitude, you know, and especially in an environment where on paper, there appears to be little to be grateful for. If you can teach and provide kids with tools that can allow them to feel more grateful for their lives. If you can walk with kids and the peers and the schools to develop values and value systems that are important to them and figure out a way, you know, that they can leave up their values in the societies or within their schools and within their work, you give them an opportunity to be able to kind of replenish or rebuild energy and resources they need to cope with difficult life circumstances. But also more practical cases like financial literacy, you know, sociability skills, you know, like how do you effectively interact with people in social settings. And what I'm excited about this is because there's a local solution so it can be done by and delivered by local people within the communities don't require any extreme expertise to be able to effectively do. So you're delivering the interventions through local community leaders that work with the youth? So actually we walk with local teenagers, we work with high school graduates. And so we train high school graduates to go back to high schools and deliver these interventions. We're excited to follow up on that. All right, so we'll revisit some of these other questions that we have about the geopolitical side of what's been happening in Africa in the last especially decade. We saw initial scramble for Africa where it looks like we potentially will have another one and to be able to treat that like we're helping people versus just trying to exploit resources and gain capital and land. This is a very delicate balance. Yeah, yeah. And it makes a lot of sense why we are seeing this quote unquote second version of the scramble for Africa, you know, we as a continent have like the largest arable land at a time where populations are increasing and we have figured out new ways to feed human population. The tech industry specifically has been built on the back of Congo which is one of the poorest countries in the world. We have trillion dollar companies built of titanium and silicon which are mined in the Congo where the average income is about one dollar a day. And we have, as I say, a youthful and vibrant population which for a lot of people means accessible labor force. As we've been seeing, for example, China is becoming increasingly important in Africa because they're signing so many deals. They're doing so many infrastructure projects and the Chinese government is taking advantage specifically of what they understand is that the average person in the African country doesn't care as much about some of these trade deals that they're dealing with and politicians and government leaders are able to get away with corruption, get away with sub-par deals. And while, you know, a popular pushback is that unlike the West where we have a lot of Western governments, Western companies which pretend to have a humanitarian cause and pretend to be doing something for the world but have often ulterior motives. At least with China, you know upfront what you're dealing with. But I think an important thing that we have to think about as a continent and especially as young people in the continent who very soon will be the most important demographic in terms of determining who the leadership is, we need to put leaders who are able to and are going to fight to be able to negotiate from position at least of equality but potentially position of power, but ideally position of equality in my worst case, right? Because it is not a bad thing to have deals with China and with the Netherlands and Brazil and Russia, it's not bad. We are increasingly global. And there's more to on by remaining so. But we have to make sure that the kind of agreements we get in are not exploitative. Yeah. That the multi thousands of years of culture that has developed on those lands is not just come in one generation or two generations and just exploited and grabbed like a game of monopoly. All right. And on the way out, we're kind of in a crazy era of leveraging the technological tools. It's exponential technology is happening. What is a skill that you recommend young people, children to know as we move into this age? I think sociability. I think more and more. Most of the things we do now and require technical skills for will be done via technology. And you know, generation, the tables may turn and the most important skill may be just your ability to effectively interact with other human beings. Yeah. And yeah, I think 10 years ago, maybe learning how to code will be the skill. But I think you have quite a lot of people who don't know how to do that. And technology is improving really rapidly to the extent where most of these activities will be digital, as I mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. What a crazy thing a couple of decades of using technology can obsolete social skills to the point where they become so much in demand. What an insane thing to consider. Yeah. It's a good one. And last two questions. Are we in a simulation? I don't think so, but if you are, I would have gotten quite a shitty end of the simulation. Yeah. I would want to have one and one with the Grand Doctor Tech of the simulation. Yeah. It's not over, though. It's potentially a fantastic ending. Especially with that actualization, like we say of the young people around the world. And last question, what's the most beautiful thing in the world? Damn, that's a stuff on, I'd say life. I think with our life, we can't be able to enjoy any of the other beautiful things in the world. So it should be the most beautiful living and enjoying living there. Okay. So much beautiful stuff unpacked in this episode. Tom Okumu, thank you so much for joining us on the show. No worries. Thanks for coming to Cambridge and spending four hours with me just making this happen. I loved every single minute of it. It was such an honor and a pleasure. We learned so much. We greatly appreciate everyone for tuning in. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Also, go and check out Tom Okumu's links below as well. Also, do share the content like the share conversations about actualizing Africa, all of these different things we talked about with your friends, your families, your coworkers online on social media, get talking about this type of content. And support the organizations, the entrepreneurs, the artists around the world that you believe in. Support simulation. Our links are below. Let us keep doing cool things like coming out to Cambridge for interviews. And go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you soon. Peace. Can we even cry? Specifically the just getting behind the eyes of what it was like, you know, being in issues in his village and having the moment of the bifurcation and life trajectory. And boom, boom, boom, a couple more open doors with hard work and what the fuck you're in Cambridge at fucking Harvard. And now the stimuli that he's taken in to be able to go back and, you know, both, yeah, create opportunities, of course, but also just the fact that his brain cannot communicate with the villagers brains anymore.