I really am honored to be here, and as Chris said, 

it's been over 20 years since I started

working in Africa. My first introduction was at the Abidjan airport on a sweaty, Ivory Coast
morning. I had just left Wall Street, cut my hair to look like Margaret Mead, given away most
everything that I owned, and arrived with all the essentials -- some poetry, a few clothes, and,
of course, a guitar -- because I was going to save the world, and I thought I would just start
with the African continent. 

00:33
But literally within days of arriving I was told, in no uncertain terms, by a number of West
African women, that Africans didn't want saving, thank you very much, least of all not by
me. I was too young, unmarried, I had no children, didn't really know Africa, and besides, my
French was pitiful. And so, it was an incredibly painful time in my life, and yet it really started
to give me the humility to start listening. 

00:59
I think that failure can be an incredibly motivating force as well, so I moved to Kenya and
worked in Uganda, and I met a group of Rwandan women, who asked me, in 1986, to move
to Kigali to help them start the first microfinance institution there. And I did, and we ended up
naming it Duterimbere, meaning "to go forward with enthusiasm." And while we were doing
it, I realized that there weren't a lot of businesses that were viable and started by women,
and so maybe I should try to run a business, too. And so I started looking around, and I
heard about a bakery that was run by 20 prostitutes. And, being a little intrigued, I went to go
meet this group, and what I found was 20 unwed mothers who were trying to survive. 

01:40
And it was really the beginning of my understanding the power of language, and how what
we call people so often distances us from them, and makes them little. I also found out that
the bakery was nothing like a business, that, in fact, it was a classic charity run by a well-
intentioned person, who essentially spent 600 dollars a month to keep these 20 women busy
making little crafts and baked goods, and living on 50 cents a day, still in poverty. So, I made
a deal with the women. I said, "Look, we get rid of the charity side, and we run this as a
business and I'll help you." They nervously agreed. I nervously started, and, of course, things
are always harder than you think they're going to be. 

02:22
First of all, I thought, well, we need a sales team, and we clearly aren't the A-Team here, so
let's -- I did all this training. And the epitome was when I literally marched into the streets of
Nyamirambo, which is the popular quarter of Kigali, with a bucket, and I sold all these little
doughnuts to people, and I came back, and I was like, "You see?" And the women said, "You
know, Jacqueline, who in Nyamirambo is not going to buy doughnuts out of an orange
bucket from a tall American woman?" And like -- (Laughter) -- it's a good point. 

02:51
So then I went the whole American way, with competitions, team and individual. Completely
failed, but over time, the women learnt to sell on their own way. And they started listening to
the marketplace, and they came back with ideas for cassava chips, and banana chips, and
sorghum bread, and before you knew it, we had cornered the Kigali market, and the women
were earning three to four times the national average. And with that confidence surge, I
thought, "Well, it's time to create a real bakery, so let's paint it." And the women said, "That's
a really great idea." And I said, "Well, what color do you want to paint it?" And they
said, "Well, you choose." And I said, "No, no, I'm learning to listen. You choose. It's your
bakery, your street, your country -- not mine." But they wouldn't give me an answer. So, one
week, two weeks, three weeks went by, and finally I said, "Well, how about blue?" And they
said, "Blue, blue, we love blue. Let's do it blue." So, I went to the store, I brought Gaudence,
the recalcitrant one of all, and we brought all this paint and fabric to make curtains, and on
painting day, we all gathered in Nyamirambo, and the idea was we would paint it white with
blue as trim, like a little French bakery. But that was clearly not as satisfying as painting a
wall of blue like a morning sky.