east africa – Page 11

Trouvaille

The blogosphere, it seems, is a net of links that link to each other. Sometimes there isn’t much text to add to an existing entry, as it might have been mentioned elsewhere. My blog being an instrument of (for?) my thoughts is written in English and German – whereby I try to use the language according to my targeted audience. This being said, I have to tell you about this very exotic cigarette advertisement I’ve just come accross in a german blog. In fact, Riemer commented on my blog today and while going through his blog, I found this nini and another blog where he got it from…ayaaa! Confusing? Pole.

Now, this surely isn’t about promoting cigarettes and I guess we all know about their insalubrious (wth?) effect on health (and hey, I AM a smoker and currently trying to get rid of this nasty habit – having started with brands like Rooster (!), Sportsman and Embassy Mild ~15 years ago…). This short 4 MB mpg spot is about a man enjoying his sigara and beating up 3 Kîrîmus. It’s just plain fun and in great 1970’s Blaxploitation style.

If you like those Shaft movies, don’t miss out on this one. And, while writing these words, I just can’t hide my burning affection for THIS fantastic music compilation created by a man (of my age) called Duncan Brooker a few years ago. He literally went through ALL those little music shops in Nairobi & Mombasa (while working as a runner for Mohammed Amin back in those days) and collected thousands (!) of plates (=records) from the most forgotten musical history of East Africa. He even tracked down the then famous Steele Beauttah of MATATA (as pictured below on the cover)!

Ndiyo. Please correct me if I am wrong on this one, but I think Kenyans don’t really appreciate their cultural heritage (and yes, they have lots of memorable stuff, not only heroes like D.Kimathi or intellectual jewels like the late Wahome “Whispers” Mutahi) for they MIGHT (???) think it won’t get them anywhere. Also, you might call me an idealistic mzungu, but if I’d have enough pesa for just doing what I’d love to do, then I’d go and visit those KBC/VOK archives and try to preserve their old recordings (obtaining a LICENCE for doing so with some office desk employee at a Ministry first of all :-). Or, as Duncan Brooker put it: “If I didn’t save this music no one else would“.
(I got my copy of Afro Rock via Ebay as they didn’t have it on Amazon.de any longer, but over in the U.S. they still seem to have some copies in stock.)

p.s.: “The Legends of Afrobeat“… :-)

Googleardhi

I was really wondering about blogging this, but here ya go:
A good friend of mine, Lady Kikuyumbuzi, had this crazy idea of climbing Mt.Kenya. Having a great ability to assert herself, she quickly persuaded some other volunteers (read: unaware interns) to accompany her on this quest of climbing the highest mountain in Kenya.

I never had any doubts that she’d do that one day when she told me, but, to be honest, I never really expected her to do it this early. She dropped me a few lines from Nairobi on saturday and wrote: “yeah, and btw, I’ll be climbing Mt.Kenya on Monday…..and there’s this other appointment I’m having like at the end of the week”. Yeah….
CAN YOU IMAGINE why I adore her that much?!

Anyways.

So I am sitting here in my warm and comfy room in Germany and thinking to myself: Well, I can’t be in Kenya right now due to other obligations, but my thoughts (and prayers!) are with her anyways so maybe….maybe I’ll just start another Google Earth session and have a closer look at the slopes of Mount Kenya. Maybe somewhere between Bwana Whispers shambas I’ll find a little Mzungugoat holding up a sign that says: “Hello Bw Kikuyumoja, me I am here. Sound and safe”.

I think it started way back in 1982 (?) after the AirForce coup when the Moi-regime banned all detailed maps of Kenya. Before, I was told, you could get the most detailed maps of Kenya (YES, those ones with contour lines!) and after that ….well, we apparently all know what those city maps of Nairobi looked like during the 1990s. They were just cut down to a minimum and rendered useless for real Safari needs…

Now, imagine this lack of proper maps and try to think of it in GoogleEarth. And it doesn’t even matter if you’re in Kenya or Germany – small Kijijis like Naro Moru or Suderburg (which is where I study – boys, this place is SO lost!) are not indicated on the map. In fact, those ignorants over at GoogleEarth HQ (a.k.a. Keyhole.com) apparently lost the key to the room that contains all those juicy, detailed maps that would show us our beloved Nairobi in its full beauty.

The Internet community though, being as resourceful as a kenyan fundi, quickly came up with a working solution. Why wait for more zoomable maps at higher resolutions if you can have real pictures taken at ground level and overlayered into GoogleEarth’s maps?! This useful Flickr plug-in for instance, which shows the closests 50 images posted on Flickr (based on your current viewing area). Of course it’s just a few pictures now, but as communities grow, more and more images on Flickr & other web resources will hopefully become connected to placemarks on GoogleEarth. This GoogleEarth Bubudiu isn’t just a great toy – it’s a new way of marketing locations. And Kenya being a preferred tourist location, why not promoting it through Google Earth? (Which of course reminds me of EduVision’s eSlates project at this point and adding a tourist functionality to the programme where they give out PDAs to tourists (with some futuristic “GoogleEarth for PDA” installed) and clickable maps…”Oh, yes, we’ve already marked our route on the PDA”. Or somethin’…)

Yani, this all goes to show that I might not be able to actually put my feet on the slopes at this very moment, but at least I can have a closer look upon the route Lady Kikuyumbuzi is taking and….I guess upon reading this blog entry once she returns, she’ll probably never talk to me again. Why? Well…remember Whisper’s wife Thatcher? Haia….go figure…

The Modern Laibon?

Esuj erashe ng’ejuk emusana

I don’t know what’s the deal between the Maasai and the Swiss, but here’s an interesting ~~shoe~~ training tool from Switzerland called Masai Barfuss Technologie (MBT) by a company that goes by the name of Swiss Masai (as seen on polylux and other channels):

"Using a multi layered sole, MBT® transforms flat, hard, artificial surfaces into natural, uneven ground. Much like walking in sand, the unique uplifting lever spring action of the MBT® sole challenges the core strengthening muscles to be more active. This reactive, more supportive muscle action creates good posture and increases shock absorption for all the joints, significantly reducing muscular-skeletal compression."

Yaani, this modern flip-flop costs 179,- EURs (~ 215 US$)…

Aliyetota, hajui kutota.

>> I was chatting with a street kid in the Eastlands area of Nairobi when he asked me for money. He had asked me the day before, and I had bought him lunch. But on this day, I told him that I had no money. He took away the bottle of glue he was holding in his mouth and looked at me for a moment. Then he gave me 40 shillings, shouted "Jah Rastafari," and walked off. <<
National Geographic‘s author Binyavanga Wainaina on his best Nairobi experience.
And he continues: >> In order to negotiate our complex lives, Nairobi people have learned to have dual personalities. We move from one language to another, from one identity to another, navigating different worlds, some of which never meet. << Ich finde dieser Satz hat etwas.

Now, where’s tearoom? :-)

ati?! part 3

Remember my inquiry about this huge nini east of Nairobi way back in July?

Well, Google has come up with an update for Google Earth, this time apparently focusing on "The Illuminated Continent: African imagery and articles from National Geographic". Haia!
Of course I immediately had to start this addictive GoogleEarth-nini and check about my favourite and still unknown spot east of Nairobi.

OMG!

I should have known better. Being a student of water & soil management and having spent half a year in 2004 on Bremen’s sewage treatment plant (cleaning all machines of used condoms, tons of hair, q-tips and other hygenical stuff I won’t mention in detail now), this huge nini eventually turns out to be the "Dandora Waste Stabilisation Pond System which treats the industrial and domestic sewage from the City of Nairobi, Kenya and is the largest pond system in Africa".

Kûrita nî kûru. (= Is is bad to be a fool.)

Simuzungu

(click to enlarge)

Lady Kikuyumbuzi has sent me this peculiar Safaricom ad (thx!!) which was published in the Daily Nation a few days ago…obviously, the man on the phone is actually tracking down some elephants. Sindiyo?

Maasaizungu

An dieser Stelle brauche ich eigentlich gar nicht weiter auf den heute in den Kinos anlaufenden Film "Die weisse Massai" nach dem Buch von Corinne Hofmann eingehen, sondern kann elegant auf einen guten Blogeintrag eines Maasais in der Schweiz verweisen, der sich vor einigen Tagen schon recht informativ dazu geäußert hat.

Ich denke wenn der Film wie "Nirgendwo in Afrika" die Touristen nach Ostafrika lockt und das Land in seiner Schönheit beim Publikum ankommt, ist das irgendwie sinnvoller als die story an sich…

tusker.info & Co.

Maybe we actually don’t have the time nowadays for creating altruistic tribute websites or other passionate stuff, LAKINI – since I received an email late last night from Hash from whiteafrican.com, who’s been answering upon a comment I’ve put in his blog before, and wapi he came up with this idea of using my term "Gadgetimoja" for "a website for all gadgets African-related", I thought about a relaunch of tusker.info as a start (tusker.info & tusker.de are currently on hold // offline // on sale at www.sedo.de but still registered on my name).

I don’t know about you guys, but I think there are a few Wazungus* out there who still have a vivid interest in Kenya/East Africa and would like these things to be online. I am talking about Mzeecedric or Bwana 58 (who’s currently working on an alumni page for the German School Nairobi @ xnbo.de along with Bwana Hamisi) or anyone else interested in contributing to such a website. Ndiyo, Hash or bART :-)

Which things? Ahh…yes: tusker.info, gadgetimoja.com or or or….you name it. Anything that we would like to work on. Maybe even this gadgetimoja.com nini in form of a blog so everyone can contribute. However, since all this is just a spontaneous idea, please feel free to comment on it and maybe soon we’ll be able to come up with another interesting website. Even if it’s just another, however maybe bigger tribute website for the Tusker beer….

*Wazungu: as in the traditional meaning of "zungu" = strange. NOT as it is used nowayads for Europeans or even "white persons".