Happy Madaraka Day everyone!
Category: EAKenya
AfriGadget
A satellite dish mounted on top of a bar/restaurant as seen somewhere in Industrial Area, Nairobi, Kenya
==> Does this qualify for AfriGadget? Thx, Hash… :-)
Forodha
We went to Forodha Towers today and got our Kenyan Driving Licences renewed. Charges are Kshs. 500 /= for an annual renewal and 1250 /= for a triennial.
inside Forodha Towers…
the counters
a neat way to conceal non-working lifts, isn’t it?
Keeping in mind that we were there on Friday afternoon at 4 pm and remembering the times back in the days when such services were only offered at Nyayo House, the whole process was extremely fast and well organized.
I was told that a lot of offices are still vacant at Forodha Towers as a lot of institutions were transferred to (the overcrowded) Times Tower and are now slowly moved back to the old premises.On our way out, we came across the following view(s)
By the way…it takes more than 2 years (without KK) to get a certificate for tax exemption for an NGO (~ a charitable trust) from the Treasury. For each application!
AOB:
the soil for (new) trees on Moi Avenue?
Apparently, this is what happens when huge multimedia screens (at Westlands old-Uchumi roundabout) have a date with the rain….
Nairobi, it seems, has become the city with the most billboards, advertisments and “buy two get one free”-styled promotions. No wonder people here tend to be so capitalistic these days…
=> I’d like to blog more often from here, but internet access is such a pain although I’m privileged enough to be using the DSL connection @ AEM (thx, Harry & Lelle!) which is just great! I guess I’ll need to get my hands on my own notebook soon (where i’ll be able to install my own email client) + urgently need to rethink my blogging strategy (~offline blogeditor or blogging via email).
Simu holdaaaa
I was looking for a car holder / handsfree unit for use with mobile phones in a car. Something were you can put your mobile into once you enter the car to either have it placed somewhere near the radio or get it recharged. These rather passive holders aren’t necessarily specific to a certain phone model but instead just work with many phones. In short: a “mobile phone holder”. Just like a cup-holder, but for mobiles.
The booming telecommunications business with major cashcows like Safaricom attracted a lot of vendors in Nairobi who have specialized in mobile phone parts. While some are experts even in phone repairs (as pictured – using a hot air station to desolder the SMD pcbs and reflashing & unlocking the phone’s firmware using these long caboooools), others are just vendors who basically have no idea about technology and just think in terms of mbeca.
Many of the old shops on Moi Avenue & Co have been turned into dukas / small stalls – sometimes containing up to 30 stalls in one big house and the owners are often owning 5-6 of these stalls.
The sheer amount of shops selling the same mobile phone parts and maybe only differing in their pricing makes you think that there’s no business due to high competition, but nevertheless we were told some shops on the front row sell about 3-5 phones per day on average, leaving a profit of Kshs. 8.000/= per vendor – which is a lot for secondary school leavers with no further education. University Students also work there (I can already picture me renting one of these stalls for repairing phones & Co. :-).
Coming back to my phone holder – I asked almost ALL of these vendors for the desired nini but they never had it EXCEPT for ONE vendor on Biashara Street – who btw also had a neat solution for double SIM card adapters. Since his phone holder included a jua kali a.k.a. 1998-styled handsfree unit which we don’t need (only the holder), there was nothing else but building my own mobile phone holder for use in a Suzuki Jimny (Samurai).
(pls try to ignore the temporary white adhesive tape – which btw also makes the whole construction to be pothole-proof…)
“Look for solutions, not problems” (Dan Eldon)
Pop-In
After entering Pop-In on Moi Avenue, Nairobi (Kenya), and asking the owner for kind permission to take pictures (“I like this place, the machines are sooo unique”….”ok, basi…”), I instantly realized why you, dear Steve, started doing “something with computers”. Thanks for that great tip to pay them a visit!
I consider this and other “amusement arcades” the incubator for our never-ending interest in anything IT….? :-)
Pop-In is one of those institutions that actually requires huge funding to buy, repair and preserve all these old machines that introduced us to the world of 1010010100101 & Co from their death somewhere in dusty downtown Nairobi…
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the corner with “spare parts”.
Please excuse the blurry picture quality – I shot these pics without a flash and was so excited that I forgot about everything else! I’ll try to upload them on flickr in a higher resolution when I’m back on my (own!) computer…
impressions #3
Remember Harrison Munyui of Ruaka? The man I contacted in October 2005 (through his mobile number as painted on the door of his taxi) to get in touch with my Mbuzimoja? Well, I met him earlier this week and he was very excited. Visual evidence will follow asap…
The weekend saw us getting out of Nairobi on a short trip – and where do spoilt Nairobians like us go? Right, to one of those viewpoints behind Ongata Rongai. “Somewhere up there on the hills”…
OLEPOLOS Country Club (~ buy sodas and forget about the picnic fee)
the view from one of those viewpoints / camp sites
So this is the interesting part now – the beauty of the view on one hand, and on the other hand lots of Nairobians who come to these viewpoints to “misbehave” in terms of running their own private disco via the stereo system in their cars when the night sets in…
(ParkplatzRavers, as I call them in German. OMG! :-)
And then we asked for Coke Light and received this tin. Which is of course great, but still: they are transporting all these drinks & stuff to a remote place like this one (remote as in no Safaricom network) and have no waste management at all.
Haven’t you ever asked yourself what happens to all the waste which is being produced by the civilisation? Those Maasai herdsman surely don’t need to worry when they throw away their (organic) goat bones. But us city people, we bring all this stuff into nature and throw it away.
What happens to the waste? The tins are collected by locals and the rest is either burnt or buried. What a waste of nutrients and resources. I feel so ashamed on this.
Views like this one surely make you forget everything else:
One of the most interesting spots on the planet to have a round of Mancala…
(see it? => follow the yellow arrow :-)
On our way back, we came across this interesting signboard:
“Housegirls wanted & available” – a commodity?
The visitor at home came in form of a chameleon jacksonii – contrary to what many (traditional) ppl believe on this continent (~ it can bite you, the cham. is a messenger of death, etc etc) – I LOVE these creatures. I love the elegance with which they move forward.
Nature just blesses us with beautiful sights every day.
Passion fruit blossom…
AOB: I went to meet Kenyan painter Evanson Kangethe today at his shamba in Limuru and took some pics of his artwork. He’s a Kenyan artists I’ve mentioned earlier and it was good to see him again after all these years. Plans are to blog some of his artwork soon (though of course he belongs to the older group of Kenyan artists who try to remain in the humble background).
Having spent lunchtime at a very chilling invitation among friends in a very luxurious surrounding, it was once again such a sharp contrast to know about these two worlds (posh NBO home belonging to a KC & Evanson’s humble but still very comfy (rural!) home) and trying to get them into one big picture.
Again, it’s Binyavanga Wainaina’s comment of saying (that) “Nairobi people have learned to have dual personalities”…
At least.
(EDIT: I blogged this on Sunday evening and mysteriously hit the “private” post status button…)
balcony with a view…
That’s for you, ndugu Mzeecedric :-)
Safaricom muuyuuuuuuuuru
Earlier this week, I tried to connect my Nokia 6230 mobile phone to a friend’s notebook computer via Bluetooth and dialed 951 – which is the official dial-up number for Safaricom’s Online Network.
Well, I don’t know what they’ve done to the mobile phone / gsm network here in Kenya (half rate instead of enhanced full rate?), but it actually works. You just connect your phone via cabooool, InfraRed (IR) or Bluetooth to your computer and that’s it, no further adjustments required.The downside of course is that the connection is very slow and consequently only suffices for googleing things. Opening any bigger page/site sucks big times and drains your account of Kshs. 10/= (~ 0,12 EUR)/ minute.
I spent about 300 bob on Safaricom’s service until I realized that I’m even better of paying an exorbitant rate of 3 to 4/= /minute @EasySurf where I actually GET my data instead of just paying for being “online”.
The other thing I hate about many webmail services is that they come with this huge “click-through-rate”: in order to read your email, you are forced to click through the various menu systems of your fav webmail service. And Gmail happens to miss out on POP3-collecting service – which is bad if you have more than one address.
I even tried to access my mail via telnet, but the recipient? refused the connection and a further traceroute command resulted in a timeout etc etc
==> Safaricom online = good for small things.
This morning I went to Java House and tried to access their WLAN.
Cool.
BUT!, either I am too stupid or that notebook has a seriaaaaas mmmbrobrrem – it just didn’t work. Connecting to the hotspot worked, even the allocation through the DHCP server – couldn’t receive any packets though, nothing, 0 resutls. And netstumbler delivered two working networks. Aterere…
The coffee was delicious, though. :-)
AOB: I tried Mbuzi Choma @ Miggles in Gigiri. Oh….I smelled like a goat until next morning. Hehe…MbuziChoma with Tusker and a waiter with these typicoooool plastic bowles to wash your hands before the meal. That’s 1/2kg of Mbuzi for 190 /= – which buys you a coffee @ Java’s….Nairobi worlds…