trashtoys ‘r’ us

Earlier in Januar 2006, the ecoblog Treehugger covered an interesting story on Arvind Gupta who is well known for developing toys out of trash / waste material and publishing books on various subjects. The “tinkerer and toy-maker”, as he is quoted in this article by India Together, has dedicated his life to demystifying the abstruse world of science for the comprehension of children”.
Looking at his toys, one understands his interesting approach on combining toys & with science and it also reminds me of this little scientific book I had as a child that featured similar ideas. No wonder I’ve become a geek :-)

“The best thing a child can do with a toy is break it !”
(quote on Arvind Gupta‘s website)

This morning I received a challenging short message by my dear friend Mbuzimoja, who asked me about creative toys that could be built with 4 to 9 years old children in an orphanage. Since I’d forwarded the above mentioned article to her earlier in January, she told me to have a closer look at do-able ideas – toys that could be produced in Kenya. Oh yeah – I DO like this idea!
Here’s what I had in mind (all links open in a new window):

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Crown-Cap “Tik-Tiki”

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Abacus

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Ballon Pump

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can top

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clap in the air (oh, i love this! :-)

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musical oboe

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Or for the older kids a simple generator (motor) that powers an LED (these parts are available on 2nd hand electronic markets or even from other old electronical gadgets).

…the list goes on and on and it becomes obvious that creativity knows no boundaries while at the same time the children learn something about building their own toys (like those wire cars we already know) and getting an understanding for technology. In case this triggered your interest, make sure to check out Arvind Guptas publications as well. A man who clearly enjoys the joy of sharing. Thank you!

P.S.: and here’s a special solar link for you, afroM :-)

ecomoney?

“There is no doubt that the market has spoken in a big way.
This leaves no doubt in the capacity of our economy to finance well-structured viable ventures”

Esther Koimett, Investment Secretary, as quoted in today’s DN on KenGen’s IPO.
I am not such an expert on private investment like Bankelele and his commentators, who are btw doing a great job in reporting stories from the monetary world in Kenya. What triggered my attention on the KenGen IPO, though, was that Kenyans apparently come out in great masses when it comes to investing money in (hopefully) profitable markets.

I was also going through an interesting advertisment (published in April 11th edition of the DN) on the launch of the Kisumu Water and Sanitation Project which is partly funded by the French Government through AFD – an investment to the tune of 20 million Euro.
Now, bearing in mind that people are willing to spend their savings on shares – an investment that promises a healthy divident in future, what if we take this kind of investment spirit onto different levels? So far, it seems, ppl are willing to invest their money into anything profitable – so why does the Governemnt have to look for funding if Kenyans actually do have the money needed to …repair Kisumu’s water supply and sanitation services?
All four speeches on the launch of the above mentioned project agreement held by the Minister of Water and Irrigation, his P.S., the chairman of Kisumu Water and Sewerage Company Ltd. and the Mayor of Kisumu contained a phrase in which they encouraged all involved parties to “embrace good corporate governance” or even a straight-forward challenge to the Water Services Board & – Provider “to live up to the expectations”. And, according to the P.S., “the support has attracted the Global Partnership on Output Based Aid (GPOBA) funding which if used properly should solve the problem of water and sanitation in low income areas”.
It is great to see this kind of progress since the implementation of the Water Act 2000, and a Ministry that is actively encouraging the people to greater achievements.

And as much as these new funding approaches (like GPOBA, Infraco or Guarantco) are interesting, what I would like to ask instead is: Are ppl ready to accept a completely different approach on the way we see water and sanitary needs under a financial context? What (for instance) if we can find ways to succesfully implement even more EcoSan projects in Kenya where human excreta and waste water become nutrients that could then be sold for agricultural use (~fertilizers)?

Or in other words: our waste => money.

The technology is already available, the understading for closing environmental loops is currently being thaught to future generations and the monetary incentive is given. So, what do you think? Would it be possible to attract ppl in investing their money into such unorthodox businesses that do not only fill the pocket but also help closing some much needed environmental loops?

hippopotamus balconius

Lady Kiboko, who diligently supervises all human activities on the balcony, had an unpleasant encounter with wood worms (anobium punctatum) right after her birth.
Since all attempts to persuade these uninvited visitors to go away and look for another host failed, Mr Kamau wa Gitau suggested that I should bath her in kerosene for about a month. Which of course didn’t change anything except for Kamau, who ended up with 5ltrs. of free Kerosene.
One day she was asked to join me on my trip to Germany, where she would guard the balcony. Being exposed to an extreme climate over here, which ranges from a temperature of -20°C during winter time up to a maximum of +40°C in direct sunshine, the people from Woodwormistan eventually decided to come out of their hiding – covering Lady Kiboko’s warm belly with a fine layer of wood flour. Well…as an external incentive, I used some chemicals on her that would kill all remaining dudus, so in the end it was only her and her perforated belly – which I painted with some brown varnish (hence the dark colour).

And today, while cleaning up the balcony and preparing it for tomorrows Nyama Choma BBQ, I discovered this:

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A little plant growing out of the belly…

Lifestyle, the Nakumatt way

Dear Diary,

today I’ve come across a nice bedroom set from Kenya’s leading discounter Nakumatt:

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While I can well imagine a lot of customers falling for this kind of interior design for the simple lack of an own taste (or mabye because the’ve seen this kind of style in USamerican TV shows), there’s only one thing I can think of when I look at it: KITSCH.

Are Aren’t there any Kenyan carpenters? who could produce such furnitures as well?

binary worlds

“There are only 10 types of people in the world:
Those who understand binary, and those who don’t*

Fellow blogger Mzeecedric recently bought himself a new DELL notebook and if I remember well, the first thing he did after starting his new computer toy was to format the main partition in order to install his own software and preferences.

Having mentioned that, I today came across an older fellow student (born in 1962!) who desperately tried to get her CV and job application letter she’d compiled in MS Works format (*.wps) emailed to a future employer.
Now, that very same woman recently bought a brand new AMD Turion64 notebook (100 GB HDD; 512 MB RAM) with LOTS of additional accessory like this really cool hybrid (digital + analogue) tv tuner + remote control from a supermarket sale for the sum of EUR 999,- …and actually, the only thing she really knows about this machine is how to start it.
I helped her to install the OpenOffice 2.0 suite and showed her how to convert her files into PDFs as well as how to email them via her yahoo account, etc….

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During all these years of free computer consultation for others, I’ve often come across typical user statements such as “Oh, maybe I should buy a new computer because the old one has (software) problems” or “Oh, I don’t understand this, it doesn’t work, but I’ve invested a lot of money in it so it should work….”. I am sure a lot of geeks out there have experienced similar stories, and one is often tempted to mention that it isn’t the computer or faulty software to blame, but instead incapable users who on one hand invest a lot of money but on the other hand expect these machines to function with the ease of a simple tv remote control.

And it is not that “we” know computers that much better – there are also a lot of software questions I am having and which I’ve often tried to ignore (like doing comparatively simple stuff in Office suites). It’s just a matter of approaching technical issues, and having an interest to spend some time in front of these machines figuring out how to solve certain problems.
We are having the year 2006 now, computers and their operating systems have come a long way, things may have improved over the years, but at the same time these machines have become more and more complex – and users have often given up trying to understand how things work. Mind you – I am talking about engineers, that is, about people who are supposed to have an analytical approach on technical issues. That above mentioned fellow student is a fully certified civil engineer who has also been working as a carpenter for more than 20 years.

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the perfect case mod: computer case BBQ

The reason I am mentioning all this is because I am still flabbergasted at the fact that the industry apparently tries to make computers, cars, mobile phones, PDAs, etc. more and more complex – but at the same time often neglects the fact that users just want to use their systems without worrying about technical details. Sure, there ARE interesting developments on the market – even Windows XP isn’t that bad and simple to use. Cars (except of course for BMWs :-) have simple menu-driven user interfaces on their navi systems, and it won’t take much for future generations for getting used to such systems as they are growing up with mobile phones and other gadgets. BUT! – marketing tells us to get our hands on better & faster machines, to invest again into complex systems that take us one step further away from the initial idea of just using technology for simple needs. In other words: it sort of brakes my IT-shaped heart when I come across such lost users like this fellow student who invested a lot of money in a brand new computer whose full potential she is never going to use.
Is this the progress we’ve been working on?

kumi na moja

The German Cultural Centre, also known as the Goethe-Institute, recently published a small flyer aptly named “Am Ball mit Goethe” to promote the upcoming World Cup.

The GI, whose job is to promote German as a foreign language and the German Culture abroad (in Kenya @ Maendeleo (ya Wanawake) House, next to the French Cultural Centre), put a small list of useful words from the soccer world in this small 22-paged booklet with translations between German, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

And they also included this hilarious visual dictionary (in German only) to succesfully distinguish the referee from the linesman as well as identifying who’s who on the field.

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Mimi, me I am not the football fan, however, I am very curious to see how Germany will play its role as host to the World Cup and what kind of performance it will deliver hospitality-wise…

Football is freedom. (Bob Marley)

AOB: My congratulations to all the winners of the Kenyan Blog Awards! :-)
Click here for an overview of the winners and please make sure to check out their blogs. The Blog Awards on the Kenyan Blog Webring (KBW) are an elegant incentive to promote the Kenyan blogoshpere online and they also set some sort of standards.Who knows, maybe we’ll soon see more and more Kenyan blogs online and joining KBW?!

kikuliciousflickr

Despite the fact that I am a lousy photographer and way too lazy to further edit my digital images on this old 19″ CRT monitor (which just comes with a horrible gamma value that can’t be adjusted no matter what I try on the Nvidia GFX settings), I just turned PRO on flickr.com.

Creative Zen Vision:M - the dongle

Aterere…The US-$ 24,95 for a 1 year pro account are a lot of money for someone who doesn’t have a regular income, on the other hand, though, I wanted to know what’s this all about and although my (public) collection on flickr only contains 116 images so far, I’ll definitely add much more content in future and – the reason – will be able to arrange / re-group the pictures into different categories. Nice :-)