Cross posted from MIT Sloan's Admissions blog At 8pm the heat is still stifling in that slow-moving Equatorial way of things. Shadows dancing against the night sky could be large insects or small bats—a question I choose not to ponder for too long. We’re in the rural community of Zingiziwa, Tanzania, about two hours from the dusty metropolis of Dar es Salaam. Thirty children and adults have crowded around the television—a half moon of people curious and transfixed by an electrical device in an off-grid world. We are about an hour from the closest power line, where few families have a working light-bulb in their homes, much less the television and DVD set that plays before them tonight. The roadside TV, powered by solar energy stored in a battery, is a weekly marketing event for EGG-energy , an off-grid energy distribution company launched by MIT and Harvard grad students three years ago. My classmate Jorge and I are here for two weeks to round out a semester-long consultin
Reflections on finding and holding the Center.