Stanford T-shirt and Random Encounters

Ziad and I had two interesting encounters this week.

First one happened when we were walking in the city center to meet Ryo. A local guy came up to him and asked "So you graduated from Stanford?" Ziad stopped and then realized it was his school T-shirt that revealed his identity. "Yes, I go to Stanford." "It must be hard to get into Stanford. What did you do to make it?" "Well, it is hard and you have to go through a competitive application process..." The conversation didn't last long as we were in a rush but it was an interesting encounter. We didn't realize that Stanford could be so well-known in Kenya, to literally people on the street. Later, we found out why. Apparently, there's a smart Masai guy who was born and grew up in Kenya but made all his way to study at Stanford as an undergrad. He used to get a lot of media coverage as he managed to make acquaintance with the Clintons through Chelsea Clinton. And he made himself a CNN news when he orchestrated a gift giving from Kenya Masai village to 9-11 victims. A nice by-product of all these is free advertisement for Stanford in Africa.

Second one was in the hotel business center. Again Ziad's T-shirt revealed his affiliation with Stanford and this time it was recognized by two other Stanford alum! They are working with Kiva, developing partnership in Africa. Now we have two interesting people to hang out with in Nairobi. Awesome! The Kiva guy also told us that Kiva is going to interview with Oprah Winfrey and Clinton will be in the same show, promoting his new book Giving. Coincidentally, both encounters have something to do with the Clintons...

So, wear your school T-shirt when traveling. There could be some random, interesting encounters because of that.