Description

In Chapter 5 of 11 in his 2010 interview with Capture Your Flag host Erik Michielsen, East African venture capitalist and conservation investor Josep Oriol elaborates on his decision to raise a family in Kenya's bush Safari countryside. Oriol contrasts this experience with a traditional Western mindset, noting how lessons of risk and responsibility, learning about nature and wildlife firsthand and engaging a resource challenged rural population give the kids an understanding of privilege.

Transcript

What Children Learn Growing Up in the African Savanna? Erik Michielsen: As a parent, what do you enjoy most about raising your family in the African bush around leopards, elephants, lions, giraffes and other wildlife? Josep Oriol: I think we’re giving our children a phenomenal experience. They are being exposed to things that matter a lot which have a very little coverage in a western professionals children’s life. We are exposing them not only to the wildlife experience which is incredible and it's an experience of beauty and of adventure and of assessing risks and responsibility. It's also an experience in which they get to interact with the rural people who live in Africa and have to watch a living out of a very harsh conditions and a very harsh ecosystem with enormous challenges in the part or in the form of corruption, in the form of low income. And I think it helps them to understand how privilege they are and it gives them a sense of purpose. They have to do something with this privilege and there’s no better lesson than that.