How the Walleighs Found Purpose & Adventure

Rick & Wendy overlooking Lewa Downs' savannahBoomers Rick and Wendy Walleighs’ book details their inspiring move to Swaziland and then Nairobi, Kenya for a total of 18 months. These are documented on this website and in their book titled From Silicon Valley to Swaziland: How One Couple Found Purpose & Adventure in an Encore Career. It is available on Amazon, all online book retailers, and some Bay Area bookstores. Go to Media Coverage to see all the media featuring the Walleigh’ adventures.

ALL ROYALTIES ARE DONATED TO TECHNOSERVE, the international development organization for which the Walleighs worked, to continue its “Business Solutions to Poverty” in Africa and Latin America, so please buy this book for friends and family!

Meanwhile, enjoy the photos and descriptions of our many travels to nearly 60 countries on six continents.

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Kenya Successes: Subsistence to Substance to Business Success for Small Banana Farmers & Traders

Many of Kenya’s central and eastern rural poor have a few banana trees in their yards. But despite Kenya’s large overall banana crop, farmers are virtually unconnected to urban wholesalers, retailers, and consumers in cities like Nairobi, Kisumu or Mombasa.*  These...
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Botswana: About Botswana, Bayiye Culture, Tiny Planes, & Safari Camps

Botswana Has a Unique Combination of Topology: Desert, Salt Pans, Savannah, and Okovango Delta. When most people envision safaris, what they probably are thinking of are animals on broad, open, mostly flat savannahs or grasslands, with the occasional low bushes or...
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Kenya Successes: TechnoServe Organized Small-Scale Dairy Farms for Large-Scale Impact

Kenyans drink a lot of milk.  This tradition is probably derived from tribal culture—particularly the Maasai tribe--where cows represent wealth. However, the vast majority of dairy farmers own less than ten cows, each of which typically produces ten gallons of milk...
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Namibia: Etosha National Park & Desert Elephants in Doro !Nawas Conservancy

Etosha is Namibia's Largest National Park. From the Tsumkwe airstrip Rick, Wendy and Carolyn flew to the eastern entrance of Etosha National Park where they were met by Rosta who would be their guide and driver for the remainder of their  trip. Because it was the...
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Uganda Successes: Matooke Banana Farm Co-operatives

In August, 2007, Rick and Wendy learned about the then-main TechnoServe Uganda project underway: organizing farmers of Matooke (ma-TOH-kay) bananas, the country's main staple.  These are starch banana which when removed from the still-green skins are cooked, crushed,...
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Kenya’s Alkaline Lakes–Nakuru & Elementaita–AND Hellsgate

Wendy and Rick's first day trip in 2007 was about two hours north of Nairobi to the so-called soda aka alkaline lakes, which attract thousands of Flamingoes every year because of these lakes' huge population of fresh-water shrimp (lending the Flamingoes their pink...
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Swaziland Successes: Livingstone Protective Clothing Company

By the late 1990s Swaziland’s once-thriving textile sector had been reduced to mostly producing zippers and yarn due to the dominance of the Asian textile and clothing industry as well as the influx of high quality second-hand clothing into Africa.  However, as clever...
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Stormy Swaziland

Throughout our six months in Swaziland, many storms passed through.  Strong gale force winds hit central Swaziland on the night of August 2, 2006.   The damage was many fallen trees and power and water outages for several days in many places nearby.  A tree fell...
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Kenya Successes: Springsand Bakery “Puffs Up” its Market

Starting in 2002, Anderson Muchangi Misoniki opened one retail bread and cake bakery outlet in Embu, in Central Kenya. This growth-oriented business was on a US$57,000 run-rate for annual turnover.  He generally employed 12 people full-time. Anderson has a banking and...
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Kenya Successes: Rachel from Korogocho Slum Started Embroidery Business with Help from YWE

Rachael, 21 years old in 2007, was the last born in a family of seven siblings.  She had only attained a primary school education, due to a predicament that disrupted her entire life.  At age 14, her drug-addict uncle raped her, infected her with HIV and left her...
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Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia

Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia

by | Nov 20, 2017 |

Our four days in Victoria, the capital of Vancouver Island AND British Columbia (BC) gave us a feel for the history—human, geological, and cultural—of the southwestern-most province of Canada. Upon our arrival into Victoria, we checked into the historic Empress Hotel....

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Backpacking in Sierra

Backpacking in Sierra

by | Nov 20, 2017 |

After a two-night trip in the Santa Cruz Mountains earlier this summer, in August, Rick and two friends went backpacking into the Sierras’ Desolation Wilderness for a few days. The lakes were still partially frozen and the trail was still covered quite a bit in snow....

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“If you are nearing the end of your business career and wondering what’s next, you’ll find Rick and Wendy’s experience both illuminating and inspiring.”
Debra Dunn

Consulting Associate Professor & Former Senior Vice President, Stanford University, Hewlett Packard

 “Rick and Wendy Walleigh are my down-to-earth heroes. At the end of Phase 1 of very successful careers–still healthy enough to spend their retirement days skiing, golfing, lunching, traveling in style–they chose instead to take their energy and considerable skills and apply them in some of the poorest communities in the world.
Bruce McNamer

President & CEO of The Community Foundation for the Nation's Capital Region (Washington DC) & former CEO of TechnoServe

“For those seeking an encore to their professional lives, Rick Walleigh’s account of the adventure he and his wife, Wendy, began is as energizing as it is useful. This remarkable book summarizes the factors they considered before volunteering in Africa to foster economic growth through small business development. More importantly, it records their experience with cultural change, new applications for honed skills, the nature of contemporary economic development work in the face of poverty, and the sights, smells, surprises and encounters found in living and working overseas. This is not a “how-to” book for those of us wanting renewal; it is an “I did this and so can you” story that is unique, thought-provoking and encouraging.”

 

Ron Boring

Former Executive Vice President, Vodafone-Japan