I had been writing from a cafe earlier in the morning, during which I was thinking about how much time I've been spending in cafes. Perhaps that was what motivated me to stop in a few cafes on the way back. The first cafe was Chinese-owned, serving up every popular ABC dish you could think of: from swiss rolls and boba to zha jiang mian. I spoke in Mandarin with the Tanzanian staff for a bit. Truly absurd. The second cafe was top-rated; it was also closed. So it goes. The third cafe was somewhere Ali had mentioned — at least, I thought she mentioned it, and I remain forever grateful my mind thought she mentioned it, for that was what inspired me to walk in. The cafe was filled with books (huge green flag) and a man sat near the counter, working with three monitors. He kept getting up, talking to customers, like he was doing with another customer when I walked in. I turned to leave. He asked me where I was from. I gingerly turned around. He had finished with the other guy. I realised he was my height. We instantly liked each other. We talked. I thought he was the owner; he laughed, saying he was just the supplier of the coffee. I asked what the secret was to growing good coffee. He said he'd tell me over a cup. I figured I had a few minutes to kill. He recommended I get a cortado (as an "afternoon coffee") and a slice of banana loaf. That was how I met Jones. Jones was raised internationally (Kenya, Tanzania; he almost went to UWC Hong Kong had the local committee not been prioritising women) but largely settled in a small southern village suitable for brewing coffee. He worked as a telecoms engineer right when Western Africa shifted from Western to Chinese networks. Timing, a ride with the right people, and he found himself as a senior guy on most of the projects in six different countries.[^1] Fast forward a few years. He's waiting in an airport lounge in Nairobi; business was good but the industry is slowing. A guy sitting across for him works for Citi, and their communications system isn't working. "Just like that, business card". The Citi guy likes their work. He offers Jones a job building finance infrastructure for Western Africa. The first transaction that uses the system Jones creates is a Jamaican business wiring money to a Kenyan. Jones buys Bitcoin at 70. He sells it at 300. You never think you'll be disappointed at 4X returns until you are. A brief foray into crypto is ended when his mom buys a coffee farm, and "persuades" (with motherly authority) Jones to get into the coffee business. Jones then explained how he's expanded into the coffee business: selling machines, farming beans, roasting them, anything coffee-related, he does. He explains to me the details of peaberry beans, buying me a cup of peaberry bean espresso. It really was an excellent espresso. I asked him the secret. He said "I was an engineer, now I'm a farmer. But honestly, what means the most is going back to the farming village each year and seeing them doing better and better". Ask me, I think he's just a builder at heart — first of systems, but now of community.[^2] I asked him what he would do if he was 18. He told me this story about a friend of his. *This friend has turned this story into a book, publication forthcoming. I hope she doesn't mind me telling the abbreviated version below.* Jones and this friend met doing an online business course at Frankfurt University. Upon hearing he was from Tanzania, the friend explained her story. She hadn't seen her Tanzanian father for a lifetime. The father — who I understand to be a bit of a genius — had won a scholarship to study in East Germany, but the Berlin Wall meant he was separated from his young family. All she had was his first name — an extremely common name, like "Justin" level of common — and the fact that he was from the Kilimanjaro region. She had visited the region twice to look for him, but given she wasn't local, she had some difficulty. Jones invites her to come to Tanzania. She insists on paying for his flight to Kilimanjaro. They meet up and begin asking around. They're met with coldness. Yet they keep asking, and they finally figure out he is (a) alive and (b) living in Dar es Salaam. That's frustratingly all. She had booked a Kilimanjaro climb, so she decides to do the hike and fly home, figuring she'd at least get a mountain climb out of the otherwise fruitless trip. Turns out, people were closed off because they weren't sure if the dad was scared to meet his daughter. He wasn't. As she was summiting, word reached the dad, and the local porters (for every local knows every local in the region) made some arrangements. As she descended from Kilimanjaro, on the last day, at the last camp on the Marangu route, not knowing anything else was coming that day after her triumphant summit, she met her father for the first time in decades. They catch up. She learns of her siblings. She learns her last name (she had taken her stepfather's). She realised that two of her old acquaintances during her time at LSE decades ago had the same last name. She mentioned this off-handedly, not expecting anything, for she didn't know where the classmates was from, and a Tanzanian studying at LSE was extremely rare. Intelligence clearly ran hereditary, for it turns out the two girls were indeed Tanzanian, and the three of them were half-sisters. "At your age, travel". Jones told me. "You never know what you'll find". [^1]: I thought his description of his job was hilarious: "a lot of people had billion-dollar systems, with horribly incorrect manuals. You set up a billion-dollar system with a bad manual and it does nothing. My boss replaced the manual." [^2]: Jones was responsible for getting most of the farmers in his home village identification (by paying the government to bring in finger scanners), which has led to them getting driver's licenses for motorbikes to get around & micro insurance for healthcare. It also played a role in encouraging the government to construct the local school.