Cows in Nairobi

I spent five days in Nairobi in early August. I did not see much of the city besides the airport, the Silver Springs Hotel and the road between. But, sitting in traffic and crawling around-a-round-about, I did not miss the Marabou storks perched in the thorn trees, the sinister "Valkyries of Nairobi".

I learned a valuable lesson in Nairobi, presenting a Water Footprint training session to an important and sophisticated audience who made me sweat and challenged me in a delightful yet damp way. The lesson I learned was: I may have an Masters in economics and above average mathematical abilities, but I know very little about cows.

This become problematic when one has sensitive numbers and is presenting a case study off the cuff to people who know lots about cows. It turns out a 2 tonne animal is approximately a rhino and cows are more in the range of 0.4-0.8 tonnes.

As I attempted to use the weight of a 2 tonne cow in my denominator to correct my too big, uninteresting numbers, a very polite hand was raised and a gentleman asked :

"Is that realistic?"

He was too polite to ignore. I caved and my rhino-cow and perfect, "indicative" results were sacrificed to the God of Average Case Studies. The cow we used was skinnier and told a less useful story.