Door Dragon

Sorry for my lack of posts on this blog...we've been so busy with interviews I haven't had time!

We've been trying to contact this one company for six weeks but they have a particularly adept door dragon whose job is to make sure no one gets any information. We called, sent her an email with our questionnaire, and called some more. On our last phone call, we suggested that maybe we could drop by and she told us the building was located in ACS Plaza.

Lo and behold, ACS Plaza does not exist. However, there is a CPS Plaza that we decided to check out and we discovered the company is actually located in the building next door to that, in Labioni Plaza. So, lying is not her strongest skill.

We went to the office, told her who we were and her face immediately became animated. She apologized and explained that unfortunately the person she sent our form to is out of the office. We told her we would be back later in the day. Several hours later, we returned and she explained to us that the staff was all at a Corporate Social Responsibility event and out of the office. First, CSR in Kenya??? Really? Not a likely scenario. In fact, I almost laughed right there. Second, we could see people walking around, so it is clear that they are not at a CSR function. But, good effort, Door Dragon. We accepted her answers but decided to come back another day in the morning.

**Note, the reason we were so intrigued by this company is that they are a French-American telecommunications company with no listing of ANY work in Africa, let alone an office in Kenya. But, they were listed on a document from the Chinese Embassy in Kenya of Chinese firms working here. And the parent company has a subsidiary in China that is half-owned by the parent and half-owned by the Chinese government. So, we wanted more information!

Fast-forward to Thursday. We arrive back at the office in the morning and the first thing out of Door Dragon's mouth is, "You're back. So, when are you leaving Kenya?" Haha. We say not for a few more weeks. She apologizes again that the person is very busy and cannot see us. So we tell her that it is quite alright and we are able to speak with anyone and can wait all day until someone sees us. After some phone-calls to different departments, she tells us that everyone is busy. We tell her again that we will wait. She makes a few more phone calls and informs us that unfortunately the information we want is not available. We explain to her the reason we would like to talk to someone, as we are a bit confused by they were listed as a Chinese company. We show her the list from the Embassy and she quickly takes it to her boss.

After a few more minutes of waiting, she ushers us into a conference room and sits us down. She quickly states that she is speaking on behalf of her boss and they are not at liberty to disclose any information about their company and that they do not know why the Embassy listed them. She says they have no connection to the Chinese and in fact, compete with other Chinese companies. We smile, explain that we understand, and note that we will inquire back at the Chinese Embassy why they were listed, because perhaps it was a mistake.  Immediately she responds that we should not do that because it will look like we are investigating.

My first reaction was "they are definitely hiding something." My second reaction was "why would it matter if we were investigating something?" The entire experience was a bit surreal. Kyla and I politely took our leave, though we both desired to give the Door Dragon the middle finger as we got in the elevator.

We went to an internet cafe immediately afterward to see what else we could find about the company. Hysterically, the CEO of the Kenyan branch has an open LinkedIn profile that lists almost all the information we wanted about the company anyway, including profits and staff numbers.

Though the Door Dragon was one of the hardest nuts to crack, we ended up finding most of the information without her help anyway. Sometimes I feel like I am harassing people when we become persistent in our pursuit of information. But, if she would have told us from the beginning that they do not provide information to the public, we would have noted it and dropped it. I think it would be very difficult and slightly immoral to be an investigative journalist. Some of the information we have found in this project does not necessarily paint the brightest picture of the situation, but we did not intend that from the outset. I don't know if that makes it any better, but the experience is definitely revealing many new skills I did not know I possessed :)