Year: 2006

downtown

“So you are also going to Mombasa”, the three girls asked me, “which part – North Coast or South Coast?”.
The three girls are working in Ukunda (= Diani Beach, South Coast), and took the same bus at 10pm back from Shagz, equipped with a heavy bag full of potatoes from Mama. Vegetabools are kinda expensive in Ukunda.

“I am going to Mombasa. Downtown”, I replied.

“They call this place a city”, the 18yrs old young Kenyan from Garissa seated next to me in the bus told me this morning? when we eventually arrived downtown. Sorry, downcity?
He also told me about that police stop at the entrance to Garissa town where I’d been to in November, and how they use the polio vaccination signs to spot the difference between Kenyans and Somalis. “My brother is from Somalia”, he told me, “and just the other day I saved his life by showing my arm (to the police) first”. His polio vacc sign is on his lower arm – his brother’s on the upper arm. “Refugees” are assumed to have enough money as many deal in US-dollars. Which is why they are often targeted by the police.

It worked. Bloging via OperaMini actually works. Wow. Ok ok, just 400 characters, but still. Nice!

“The Shining Hotel”? – lemme me pls call it this way – actually has a photo on the internet. The place is quite impressive – the rooms not so. But it works, I waited 3hrs for? an empty room? and: it is downtown. Just 5 minutes away from Fort Jesus and the sea. The SEA!

I stood there, earlier this evening, enjoying the view on the ocean and just breathing fresh air. Beatitude.

Dear upcountry hoteli owners: IF you don’t know how to make proper chips/french fries – and I know you can’t – pls leave it to the experts. Or come to Mombasa and learn how Mr JKE likes his chips to be: deep fried. Until they are crisp. Yeah!
Eating in Mombasa is a dream-come-true. YES, I had my first steak (a real steak!) here and for the same price I get a daaabool cappuccino in Nairobi.

Makes me think I should travel more often. And start blogging with a satisfied stomach. Actually, yeah, I saw a few (many, actually) men at my age (~30) who were rather fat. It must be the food here.

One last rant for the evening: surfing at internet cafes sucks.
First, some idiot allocates you one of those f***** up PCs with a lousy screen at the size of about the palm of my hand + a worn out mouse & keyboard, then the connection is damn slow (GPRS is faster!) and the worst: MS Internet Explorer.
Ppl like it though – everyone here is busy (video) chatting with their loved ones via MSN/Yahoo IMs and you start thinking to yourself: how many bloggers are there on KBW from Mombasa?

6am Mombasa

So this is my first bloging attempt using OperaMini on my Nokia6230i (yesss, Daudi:-) while sitting in the lobby of a 1930s Hotel in downtown Mombasa which somehow reminds me of Jack Nicholson’s “the Shining”. Interesting place indeed.

Upon arrival at 6am I just had to ignore all “yes, taxi, my friend?” calls and go for the mandatory mandazi na chai first. Mbo ndazi are just the best! :-)

Gideon Boot

Nairobi is a weired place:

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A BARBIE doll within a cake!

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The exclusive public toilets @ Stanley Hotel.

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A flooded and congested subway @ Globe Cinema Roundabout…

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An awesome poster on haircuts (top) for 60 bob and some “complete sex guides with 750 explicit singles” for 100 bob @ River Road. Hey, that’s the Play Boy next to Farmer’s Journal!

You try to merge all these different impressions to one big picture – the Nairobi picture – and hop into the next Matatu where they are playing Richie Spice’ “Gideon Boots”.

…i got a strong Nairobi beat and a blog in me hand :-)

the confession

I quit church. Years ago.

The start of the ending came when the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany started to deduct 8% from my first salary. That’s the system there – the moment you officially state your confession, they take that amount from your income (before taxes!) and give it to the church. One of the reasons, btw, why so many ppl in Germany have quit church.
It wasn’t about the money though.

While as a child, I was always dragged along to church, to museums, uninteresting exhibitions and other stuff your parents do and of which they think it might have a positive and long lasting effect on you. I hated it. I hated being forced to do something, and I still hate being forced into a certain group. And I thought singing would be “uncool”. I couldn’t stand it. I was afraid of it.

I never needed that “group membership”. I never wanted to be part of any grouping or exclusive club. And neither did I ever become a member of a political party for the very same reason.

When my parents organized exhibitions, I prefered staying in the background, having a nice view on everything. I never wanted to be seated in the first row. I am shy, and this blog is one way of communicating my thoughts. People come here and read this because they want to – no one ever forced them. I believe in this freedom of choice. And there’s a reason why i rented my internet domain uhuru.de way back in 1999.

So today I went to church. Not to any church, but to one I had never been to before. I wanted to explore it, feel it, and feel the community spirit. And I liked it.
Very much.

It’s a catholic church.

My father is sick and old these days, and we have managed to organize a place for him at a catholic nursing home. This is the best place for him, and besides of my mum visting him every day, they are taking very good care of him. I like that. I like it how they actually put this charity as their first priority, and how they accepted him as part of their community.

The other day I had an argument with some friends on what makes you be a “real Christian”. Am I not a Christian in my heart when I don’t read the Bible frequently? Am I not a Christian when I don’t go to church and sing within a community? It was a strange discussion. On one hand these people who regularly worship their God with different liturgies, and on the other hand me, the lost soul who always opted to be the maverick.

I guess there’s no answer to this. Only, I never wanted to celebrate any rituals or liturgies, I never wanted to kiss the Bible or any other holy book to show my appreciation for any written wisdom or other rules that help to organize a society and keep it within a certain frame. It scares me. Weren’t we born with a brain so that we make use of it? Do I need any external guidance to show me a way on how to live my life?

When I went to church today, I felt the community spirit, and I even sang. It was this feeling that I missed. Singing is uncool? No. It’s just uncool trying to be cool all the time. And it’s nice to be among people who don’t give a damn about being shy – you just feel like to let it go. Being free, inside, where it matters.

Being at peace with yourself.

the DIY phone booth

Cross posted on Afrigadget.

I was travelling in an upcountry minibus today when the guy seated just next to me pulled out his new mobile phone he recently purchased in Embu, Kenya.

Safaricom, the biggest mobile phone network provider in Kenya with about 5 million customers, introduced some handsets in the past, which enable resellers to deliver phone services to the public. Such handsets, which look like phones for fixed-lines, often come with an external display that shows the units consumed by customers.

The two (gsm) mobile phone networks in Kenya have become very succesful in the past, as the state owned telecommunications company only provided the country with about 300.000 fixed-lines of which many are out of order or have been subject to vandalism.

Next to providing the public with mobile phone booths, these public phones also offer a great small-scale business opportunity for the owners of such handsets. And for those who obtain their pre-paid scratchcards at a wholesale price, there’s a 5% revenue coming along. These public phone booths are just a perfect way of helping people start their own business where the initial starting costs are quite low.

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(please excuse the poor picture quality)

So, instead of buying a rather expensive Safaricom handset which is specially designed for use with these roadside telephone booths, this guy next to me bought the Afrigadget-solution: This gadget actually is a very cheap MadeInChina fixed-line phone which has been ripped of it’s inwards. The person who modified it ripped an old Siemens C25 phone apart and installed its display instead of the one that came along with this phone. The keypad is soldered to the phone and a rechargeable battery is inside the box with an external power supply.

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The SIM card holder at the back of the phone comes with a dual-SIM-card adapter so that the operator may add another network and switch between both networks by simply switching it on and off.

These DIY-handsets for public phone booths come at a price range of about Ksh. 2.000 – 5.000 /= (~ US-$ 28 – 70) and are about half of the price the “official” handsets are selling for.

jam rescue 2

This scenery…

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…shall just remind me of peaceful Embu downtown.
If you watch closely enough, you can see a “promotion” going on at the left side of the road where two dudes tried to sell raffle tickets and promised some things like TV sets and other goods rural folks might be attracted to.

And then I arrived in Nairobi, it was starting to rain, there was a agonizing traffic jam and I felt hungry. 20 minutes waiting for a Matatu + fighting with other passengers over 20cm of space only to pay the rush-hour fare? Naaa…..

Java House downtown, I think, should be renamed “Jam Rescue 2”.

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And yes, I was wrong: they DO have toothpicks at Java House.

AOB:

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Just WHO still wants to have a fire brigade downtown? This fire truck took about 5 minutes to get out of its garage and drive to this spot (~ 20m away from the brigade) only to be stuck in a typical Nairobi rush-hour traffic jam.

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Anyone still in need of some last minute christmas presents?

Don’t look any further – this inflatable mzee krissimassi goes for 50 bob, the bigger one for 100 bob.

Nairobi. I somehow love this place.