Back again! For the very first time

Back to blogging! ( full sized almigni that is, i have been tweeting for a bit too long now ). Anyway I an thinking of disciplining myself and making it a once weekly thing to sit down and blog my heart out!

The May 15th Society Salutes

Sometime last year fellow May “Fifteenther” Ibra called me up on a rather slow day while I was in the CBD of my somewhat outlandish and nondescript college town. He had great news: he had made it into the university Celtel Africa Challenge team. Now all that remained was for him and his teammates to go through the in country qualifiers against some 20 odd universities before they could go to the Anglo speaking Africa Inter-university quiz like you don’t know jack game show hosted in its first season by a certain John Sibi Okumu a Kenyan actor (really?), talk show host, game show host and sometime social butterfly.

About 3 weeks later another call came through from Ibra. He and his three team mates had beaten the wide competition and had made it to the next round, the Celtel Africa Challenge. The challenge would be bringing together unis from Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia. The finals were scheduled to be shot at Nairobi's Safari Pak Hotel.

I happened to be in Nairobi visiting Ibra a couple of weeks later when word came through that they were to be picked up from Nairobi to go to the Uni to start practicing. Spontaneity demanded that I join them on them on the trip and spontaneity won. On the trip to the Uni I got to meet the rest of the team. There was; affable and statesman-like Henry, who was the team captain, the beautiful and charming, Christine and the somewhat strongly opinionated Az. Jolly and intelligent fellas all.

On the trip they treated me to a rigorous debate on the crisis and madness that had gripped the country. Christine had brought a camera along and web recorded much of the intriguing debate only for some fool to relieve us of that highly valuable footage but I jump ahead of myself.

I spent a day or two at the University with the team, during which time I met their coaches’ one of them a Bulgarian Literature (yes there are Bulgarians in Kenya), had some really fine food and was viciously attacked by monster safari ants.

A couple of weeks hence as the rest of the country was playing Samurai an giving new meaning to the expression ”On Fire”, Ibra and team mates left for Kampala where the event had been transferred to, due the prevailing insecurity and uncertainty in Kenya.

The rest is very recent history. Ibra and team mates beat opponent after opponent to emerge victors but not without a somewhat tense final.

On their way to the finals Ibra & Co. produced a rather impressive list of Universities that are collectively dumber than the four of them: Kenyatta, Strathmore, Malawi, Zambia and Nkumba.

The society congratulates our resident genius Ibra and his team mates for doing us proud.

how easy is it to get internet in Kenya?

Don't get mad, I would have said the entire third world but I do not know that much about other third world countries internet infrastructure, I could always assume that they are equivalent( give or take a few factors ) to ours but then again, ASS-U-ME, makes an ass out of you and me. enough of that.

Internet access around here has always been a bit of a dream, and lately a mirage, as it has been promised to us repeatedly but it never gets to us.

Never been that good with statistics and as such can' quite tell you what the 'official' internet penetration is but I promise to have some figures ready for you.

Anyway, from my experience, internet has been something that you cannot easily get a hold of, I live within the capital Nairobi, and as such have access to several cyber cafes at a pretty reasonable 1Shs per minute,( about 2 US cents, or more precisely, 1$ per hour ). now that rate is not all that unreasonable but for a country where most people live n less than a dollar a day, how the hell can we expect people to blow 1 days entire living expenditure on 1 hrs internet? yeah you now get my dilemma.

Anyway there are several options on how to connect to the internet but for this blog I will concentrate on the one which I found most suitable for me and also which, with a bit of tweaking I think can be applied to the majority of people within this great country of ours and by extension most of the third world. EDGE.

EDGE? yeah EDGE, that extension of GSM/GPRS technology but just before you get to 3G. Why EDGE, well because it is cheap(er) than most of what the other have to offer and it allow for several flexible options of use and payment, but best of all, Both of our mobile telephony providers here in Kenya( Safaricom and Celtel ) offer it across their entire networks. Oh did I forget to mention, Since the service is based on mobile phones, it is mobile, it does not need me to be tied down to a fixed infrastructure.

Anyway fast-forwarding to the present, I have been lucky enough to try both their offerings( and even more but thats a post for another day )

Safaricom have an offering Known as the BambaNet, consisting of a GPRS/EDGE modem and a service plan for the internet service( sic? ). ( The Celtel offering on the other hand doesnt seem to have a name ).

Price :
Safaricom : 12500/- ( inclusive of a 750MB bundle )
Celtel : 6000/- ( just the data card, and SIM card )

Pay As You Go Rate:
Safaricom : 12/60
Celtel : 10/-