Life is long, you think, there is time to kill, and then one day you find ten years have got behind you. You run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking—and you are older. That is the picture Fredd Kambo, the managing director of ARCH Emerging Partners, Cold Chain Fund, sketches as he talks about his childhood dream: To be a basketball star. Like Magic Johnson. But then the knees gave way. The ankles tore.
“There were younger, faster guys who were killing me,” he says.
The show however must go on. And so it did. He joined polo. At 41. Now 46, he serves as the Nairobi Polo Club chairman.
“The current world best player is 49, and he became the best when he was 17. So, he’s been the best for 32 years,” he says.
Is he that good or are the rest just bad? “He is scary good,” Fredd says, “Here in Nairobi, we have a member at our Polo Club who stopped playing competitively when he was 80.”
So, you have some time? “I have some time.”
When did you get into polo? I used to play basketball, which is quite a young person’s sport and I was getting beaten up by the younger guys. I am quite competitive. I looked for another sport I could play competitively for a long time—my friends then were playing polo. I tried it and loved it, so I started playing five years ago.
How has the journey been—any memorable experience, good or bad? The cool thing about this sport is you get open to the rest of the world. I went to Argentina, which is the cathedral of polo, just to see what it looks like there and met the best players in the world and saw how it’s a normal thing to them. I found that eye-opening.
What have you learned about yourself from polo? That I can be competitive for a long time. I thought I would settle into normal work and that shebang. But importantly, I learned that anyone can keep learning. I started polo at 41, playing against people who had been playing since they were children. I started from scratch. I learned that you can learn anything if you are interested enough.
Have you ever felt the need to prove to yourself, that you still “got it”? Maybe not still, but that I can do this. I didn’t feel like it was something to prove to myself, I just enjoy competing.
Has any of your children picked up the skill? I have a 10-year-old son who has been riding since he was eight. I hope he picks up the sport but if he doesn’t, I am pretty relaxed, I just want him to do whatever he finds interesting.
What’s the toughest part about fatherhood right now? I travel a lot in my job. I find it difficult to be away from home. He probably doesn’t notice, but I do, and I always feel a bit guilty and I miss him a lot.
Did you grow up under a present dad? I am extremely fortunate that my three brothers and I grew up under an extremely present dad. Maybe too present…
Then you went the other way? Haha! I am present, but I travel twice a month and it’s not for long, say a day or two in a month.
What parts of yourself do you see in your father? When I think about my working life, I see a lot of him coming out. I work in a demanding industry, with a reputation for being full of alphas. When I look at my dad, and the things he’s done, in many ways he was an alpha himself. At the same time, he is very down to earth. I try to operate similarly, in this highly competitive world, and I am happy I can operate like my dad. Make it about the mission, not me. The mission is bigger than any of us.
What’s a question you still have about fatherhood? I have many [chuckles] Does it get easier? Am I doing the right thing? Every day I wonder about that. How can I do this better? It scares me to see my son growing older but I also recognise it is an irrational fear, it is part of the paradox of life, I want him to grow older but I really enjoyed him at 10, eight, six…if he changes do I lose that? You don’t. It’s just different.
What is a tradition you hope is continued in your family? My siblings and I go home every Sunday to my parents’ place.
Where is that? In Tigoni. We grew up in Nairobi, and went to high school in Thika—I have no bad things to say about my upbringing.
What do you remember most about your childhood? Christmas time. Like many Kenyan families, my younger brother and I would be sent to my grandmother’s place in a small village in Nyahururu. We’d be there for a month with some of our cousins and spend December with grandma. That is my most defining memory very different from living in the city. We would cut a Christmas tree from the farm and come and put it up…
You can’t do that anymore…No, haha! But it was a great childhood.
What’s something you miss about your childhood? [long pause] I miss spending time with my cousins. With time people start their families, move countries, jobs. We were very close. We still talk but we don’t spend time like we used to.
What remains unchanged about Fredd since childhood? I was always optimistic. It’s the same now, only that as a child, I was sheltered from the realities of life because I was privileged to have parents who were involved. I always thought things were going to work out. Having been a parent myself, I am still optimistic despite seeing the way things sometimes don’t work out.
What was your nickname then? I had many. Some I can’t say [chuckles]. We grew up in Karen and moved to Tigoni last year. My nickname was “Flight” because I played basketball.
What did you grow up believing that has since changed? [long pause] I thought grownups knew what they were doing. As a grownup, I don’t know what I am doing haha! You never really know, no one ever really knows. You hope to do your best and be fair with people and I suspect that now the world is even more complicated than it used to be. You can never really know if you have the answers. The best way is just to be optimistic or if you are a person of faith is to proceed based on faith and to do your best and be diligent in whatever you are trying to do.
Earlier you had mentioned about this being an alpha world and very competitive. Presently, there is a lot of talk about masculinity—what kind of man do you hope to be? Exactly like my dad, well, maybe about 80 percent. It’s a good question and I think we have veered too far from where we used to be in our culture. We are/were in a world where it was a bad thing to be considered masculine and any kind of masculinity was rendered toxic. I think there is a place for masculinity and femininity, we should play toward balance. I hope to be the best of what masculinity is—building a sense of justice, fairness, truth, and strength. But there are also feminine traits I need to coordinate within myself, no one ever knows the answer, it is a struggle and process of growth and discovery.
Were you and your father close? We are now. Growing up not that close. He was present all the time, and came to all my competitions, but we weren’t close as such to have long chats.
What would you change about how you were raised? I have changed a lot of things already [chuckles]. I am not as strict as my dad was. I think it is a privilege that he was, he wanted to make sure everything was going the right way. He didn’t travel as much as I do, and I hope to change that and be present for my son.
What’s the funniest advice he has ever given you? Good question [long pause]. When we were going to university, he’d say, “Make sure you choose your friends.” Now we make fun of him for saying that because you of course choose your friends, they are not given to you. I also make fun of him for this one time we were on a drive and he asked me what I was thinking, and I said I was not thinking about anything. He got very upset and said, “You should always be thinking!”
So, he doesn’t believe in the “nothing box” of men? Haha! No. He is always on.
How do you show yourself love? By giving myself time to do the things I enjoy, be it sports which gives me so much. I also deeply love music so I set aside time to play music and be with my music friends. Those things are very selfish to me, and they are about making sure I am okay. I deejay…
You deejay…? Yes haha! It’s been over 20 years.
How’s that life? It’s amazing. We DJ in clubs. We have a gig every Saturday—I am part of a collective called the BoomBap ClickKE, very nerdy music types, and we started this thing where we play every month on a Saturday at Shelter in Westlands and a Thursday a month at Bamba in Lavington.
How do you marry your nights and days? I am very disciplined. I know how to compartmentalise things. During the day I am at work, but when I am doing sports or music, that’s where I am.
How have they added to your career? Through my career in sports, I have learned many lessons that I put to work, like the mission coming first. For any successful team, that is a core component. It is not about the star, but the mission. And then there is responsibility, if someone gives you a job, just make sure you do it. It’s taught me discipline and goal orientation, and also how to relate with people and navigate different situations with different kinds of people.
You seem to be good at many things, what are you bad at? I am not good at cooking haha! I am not a great mechanic; I can change a tyre, and a lightbulb, and that’s it.
What is a misconception people have about you? People say that I have a tough exterior and I find it very strange, but when you get to know me, you realise, I am not as scary as you’d imagine. I am easy.
What do you wish more people understood about you? That I am not hell-bent on world domination haha! I am hoping to, industry-wise, humanise our industry a bit more. We are very competitive and it’s all about financial returns. Important as they are, especially in the African context, we are trying to be builders, to develop the continent and countries we live in.
What’s your insecurity now? That we might not achieve everything we set out to achieve. We have ambitious goals and occasionally I get worried we won’t achieve all the goals we are going after. We are trying to build a cold chain network across East Africa to curb the problem of 50 percent of food getting wasted. The optimist in me foresaw us solving this problem in five years—I am insecure about being able to do that. If we get 70 percent done, we shall have made a big difference.
And as a man? [long pause] That I can be as good as a father to my son as my dad was to me. I worry. Hard times make hard men. Hard men make good times, good times make soft men, and soft men make hard times. Which side of the curve do I sit on?
What’s your idea of a great weekend? Playing Polo. I like to travel and spend time in the bush. Especially with my wife and son, with no cell reception whatsoever. That’s heaven.
Do you have a place you travel with your wife and son that keeps calling you back? Laikipia. And Watamu.
What’s your guilty pleasure? Dark chocolate.
First man ever…Haha! But I don’t know if I should be guilty. Why am I guilty?
What’s your superpower? I can learn things very quickly. And I don’t take myself too seriously.
What have you learned about people being in that seat? It’s very lonely. Everyone says that but it’s true. If you are doing it properly, it forces you to confront yourself, because a lot of the problems you encounter from the seat are problems around people, and so your relationships really matter. Some problems require emotional courage rather than technical skill…to make the phone calls that need to be made, to wrestle with your ego when you need to, especially when you have to be a diplomat and find a way to work together.
Lonely as a CEO and lonely as a man—as men grow older, they hardly make new friends—so how do you deal with your particular kind of loneliness? I am lucky and blessed. When I say lonely it is in decision-making. But generally, I have had a close-knit group of friends from high school, people I have known for 30 years, and we are still close. I made friends at university who I am close to, not to mention my wife and family. I feel like I am in a community that looks out for me, and I hope they feel I do the same for them.
What is one question you wish more people asked you? Huh. [long pause]. The one question I wish more people asked me is, “What does this feel like?”
This being? Whatever. Often in the job, people ask you, “What do you think?” We are in a logical scientific situation, but I wish they asked what it feels like—what is your sense of intuition around this, because I think that too is important. Emotional courage.
What does it feel like? Depends. Some things I am excited about. Some days I am terrified—how are we going to achieve our ambitions?
What do you fear now? [long pause] I have a sense of fear of being witness to anticipate the time when my dad is no longer Superman. In my mind, he has always been that guy. But now he is getting older and slowing down and that scares me a bit.
Are you a firstborn? Yes haha! Is it such a cliché?
Clearly…haha!
What’s one thing you have finally come to terms with? [long pause] Another cliché but it is true. It hasn’t happened but I think I am 95 percent there, which is that I am not a lollipop so I can’t please everyone.Or ice cream. Something that pleases everyone…a kitten. Money? Haha!
Who do you know that I should know? Allan Muigai. DJ Stylez.
Why should I know him? He is a good friend. He is extremely smart and works really hard. We are childhood buddies and went to school together. He blew up this idea that our parents had of what success was. For guys of our generation, they wanted us to be lawyers and bankers and whatnot. Even for him, he always wanted to be a DJ and he fought his parents, persevered, he insisted and now look at how successful he is.
