Category: whatever

nur so

visual roundup

A collection of scenes I’ve caught during the week. Because life is about seeing and sharing. Here you go:

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Some dude presenting puppet theatre aka The Muppet Show on Mama Ngina Street in Embu earlier this week. The puppets looked really really strange. Nice!

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Isn’t this beautiful? That’s my way to work every morning.

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Back in Nbo for an extended weekend, and a quick visit to Nakumatt Village once again shows the huge difference between all these small worlds embedded in this country. There were some news on the Garissa floods again, and they actually showed the very same places I’d been to before one week ago. Strange. You’re standing there in this oversized supermarket and see these places that are in Kenya, but still seem to be worlds away. And there’s a lot one could argue about in terms of deforastation + too much agriculture on the river beds which leads to soil erosion etc etc but then….compare Garissa to Mwingi and you’ll start wondering why money hasn’t solved any problems in one of these two places in the past. And “disaster management” isn’t something one can buy for money only.

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“Horny Goat Weed”. Well, DON’T, just don’t even think about asking me how I came across this peculiar trouvaille. The name is quite catchy though. Hehehe…

What’s it with Goats (wabuzi) in this country anyways?? Oh my…

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Looks like POLO, by Ralph Lauren. Smells like POLO, by Ralph Lauren.

I had to buy this one, sorry. A price of Ksh 129 /= (compared to ~ Ksh 4.000 /= for the original) is something where my metrosexuality comes out…

yes, custoomaaaaa!

Anyone remembers this mid-1990s commercial for UNGA where a women enters a shop and asks for flour?
The sales guy comes up with a bunch of flowers and a spoon because “next time, just ask for UNGA”.

I SOOO wish I knew the brand name for something we technicoool piipool call a BATTERY HOLDER. Or as we pronounce it in Central Kenya: Battely Holdaa.

Something like this, actually:

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A small plastic box where you put batteries and then attach it to e.g. a radio or anything like that. Something very simple, something you can get in any place in Nairobi for something around Ksh 35/=.

But not so in Embu! To make matters worse, I also added the words “for batteries SIZE D”. Size D = those ones you put in a torch. The big, fat Eveready batteries that any duka sells.

So the shop dude & his dudette comes up with a battery clip. Another one comes with a bulb holder. HELLO? DID I SAY CLIP? DID I SAY ANYTHING ABOUT A BULB???

WTF?!?! Is it me? Is it my healthy mixture of gamaan-kikuyu-kenyan inglish that doesn’t get the message across?

So I checked about 12 electlicool shops in Embu and only ONE shop was actually operated by a real technician. A jamaa who really understood what I was talking about. Unfortunately, he didn’t have it. And of course, we make these things out of a piece of paper and some rubber band. There’s no need for a battery holder in your radio if there’s a jua kali solution available. Yani, I need this holder for the refurbishment of a scientific machine, so a jua kali solution won’t be allowed.

Which gets us to the core problem: most shopmen are just too dumb. These guys are actually selling SOLAR PANELS and MOBILE PHONES (which are quite complicated to some extend), but don’t have the slightest clue of what they are actually selling. Dito my mobile phone holder story earlier this year, which left me building my own because these girls @ Moi Avenue selling mobile phones only know Nokia, Samsung, Motorola phones and batteries, car chargers and other “fast selling” items.

You know, I am a bit mean from time to time. Earlier last week, I asked my dear Embu folks for a COAXIAL CABLE with 50 Ohms impedance instead of the usual 75 Ohm cable which is used for TV antennas. The one with 50 Ohms is used for radio communication equipment. Go figure what kind of hassle that was…

The reason for blogging this is that it clearly shows the difference between rural areas and urban areas. Same applies for the food available in hotels/restaurants countrywide. Only the usual stable food like Githerii, Mathaahaaaaaaaa, Ugali and maybe some greens (vegetabools) as well as snacks such as samosas or mandazi are available.
I actually prefer the rural, natural life to the hectic world in Nairobi, lakini – I grew up in big cities, and there are these small things I would like to be adopted by rural shop owners. How about a nice steak restaurant in Embu? How about a Java House in Nyeri, Embu, Meru, Nakuru to name a few? Is the idea so far fetched? There’s a market for that, ppl DO have the money. Just a nice place that offers more comfort than the usual Nyama Choma Tusker joints with the ordinary food anyone cooks at home anyways. Or am I just spoiled by city life? Sijui…

Nairobi…

A relatively short visit @ nyumbani over the weekend proved once again how much this “City in the Sun” differs from shaggz, which I’ve btw already started to appreciate. After all, there are some things you’ll never find in Embu:

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1. City Council thugs that hide behind other cars and wait just until you’ve left your car. This happened to a friends car on Sato asubuhi in downtown – we had just left the place for 2 minutes and the front wheel was already clamped. And there was no one in sight to whom we could pay the 70 bob parking fee.
Fortunately, it just took a little bit of the “JKE-going-really-mad”-show (aka kelele mingi) to persuade these yellow folks to promptly unclamp the car. He even didn’t want to be paid: “No, it is ok, me I don’t even have a receipt book”. But clamping is ok or what? What a ******* *********.

@CityCouncil: IMAGINE I COULD BE A TOURIST VISITING NAIROBI AND I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS PROCEEEEDJAAAH. How do I know what to do next? To whom do I have to speak to? Where is the office(r) that takes responsibility for such actions? Who will pay me for the time I’ve lost to clear this problem? ==> Customer Service??

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2. The Tree Planting & Beautification Programme, if I may remind you. I really like this word…“Beautification”.
I saw an older woman planting little seedlings next to the young trees on Moi Avenue and congratulated her on her important work. I really appreciate what these people are doing for the city. For us. ASANTE SANA!
(And you might well imagine what kind of job groups they are having….A?, B?)

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3. Oh boy, we were SOOOOO hungry today. And besides, I really wanted to eat a real + a really gooood steak – just as pictured on this typically oversized billboard.

Nairobi is the only city, I guess, where they don’t feel irritated by putting such mouth-watering advertisments next to low income areas. I feel a bit irritated by this add.

(btw, anyone knows a good place in Embu where I’ll get a medium done steak which chips and salads that doesn’t feel like eating old rubber and tastes like Omo? thx!)

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(@CG: kuja, bwana, your car is already here! :-)

4. Bwana Harrycane and I went to see Mzeecedric‘s parents in Mbagathi to show them GPRS via Safaricom – and we even managed to chat with Mzeecedric in Europe via Skype (VoIP!).
Sitting on the veranda, watching over Nairobi National Park and being able to actually chat with someone who is ~ 6600kms away over a wireless gprs + voip telephone connection still fascinates me. This GPRS thing really is a step forward from the awful 951 dial-in procedure, and I am very curious to see how reliable and fast UMTS (WCDMA) will be once it is fully deloyed nationwide.

Still, the best place to surf the net for free is JavaHouse. Yani, the one at Junction didn’t have Inet as “we switch it off during peak-hours (= till 8 pm)”. Why?? The one at Adams “Oh, it just doesn’t work…but only today…”. Yeah, right.
Gigiri was open though, and next to downloading some software for the office, I even chatted for a short moment with our sista Kui in Abuja. Nice!

Nairobi really is this city of different worlds.

And now from all this luxury back to the rural comfort…aterere..

How to…make a saltshaker….

..out of an old bottle (when there’s a power failure and only candles to illuminate the room):

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1. take a used bottle & cut it into three pieces. throw away the middle part.

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2. drill some holes into the lid with the knife of your choice

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3. fill it up with some salt…

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4. add rice to avoid moisture within the salt…

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5. close the shaker by fixing the bottom piece of the bottle

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6. ready! (you may want to add some adhesive tape to enhance stability)

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Just around 8 p.m. on this Furahiday evening the whole of Embu experienced a power failure – and I was blessed with a wonderful new experience: a silent town.

The music @ the Night Club next door stopped playing, everything dark and I just reached out for my candoooools which I had bought the other day for exactly such situations.

Unfortunately, the electricity came back before I could fall asleep…electricity = 24h of music music music…soukous, benga, hiphop…and some Michael Bolton, Dolly Parton & other tortures. Well…if you can’t beat them, join them.

Cheers!

beef kebap & co

Everyone, THX for the comments! Just accessed my mails via Celtel & Safaricom dial-up. In fact, I bought a Celtel SIM card today to check out their GPRS for prepaid customers (first card I had bought was expired so I had to return it – imagine that!) but whatever I try – it just doesn’t work. Will I have to wait until I am back in Nai @ SaritCentre to eventually understand the settings needed for GPRS + my computer? Or…Mental, saidia mimi tafadhali: how did you set it up on your 6230(i)? I understand that GPRS is much better. I do have a notebook + bluetooth connection + Nokia 6230i + Nokia PC Suite 6.81. (rel 13) but just can’t get it going with GPRS. Dial-up works fine though, although @ 9.600…

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So I tried this “Ndugekire maguta mengi irio-ri” thing on the mpichi that cooks @ the snack bar downstairs – I wrote it down so that he would understand it. As a result of that, the whole kitchen staff explained to me the difference between “beef smokies” and “beef sausages” (they still look the same to me, but so what) and I ended up being served with something called “Beef kebap” for 30 /=.

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Delicious!

The knife is “Made in Germany” – and while pointing this out to one of the waiters (“Hey, the knife is from my country..” ), he imediately named almost all players and trainers of the German National (soccer) team. Now THAT’s Kenya :-)

On my way to work, I came across these dead Land Rovers that had been parked on a government plot.

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……………

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Embu doesn’t seem to be too hectic. These birds (in the middle of the picture) awaited the first flying ants that came out of a hole in the ground and caught them “in action”. It really rained buckets last night, but just about lunch time, Embu again looked like a dry city in the sun…I guess it’s the light and the Jacaranda trees that make this town so charming.

twin luck??!

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“TWIN LUCK” insecticide chalk…..this stuff actually WORKS!

I was cleaning the bathroom when a really huge cockroach climbed my leg in panic. I think it didn’t like the DETTOL I poured on its homebase. Well, bad luck, Mr Cockroach.

After the water dried up, I applied this chalk and just after a few minutes, I saw a middle-sized cockroach running through the drawn chalk lines and instantly falling on its back and dying. An amazingly effective poison.

(Insects kama ants are ok for me, lakini these cockroaches come from the sewage tank and THEN walk over my food & dishes. Not nice…).