Nairobbery

(a long post, accumulation of a couple days)
I was in Bangkok a few weeks ago, and I got to meet up with my friend Ivan. When I told him I was headed to Kenya, he clued me in on the nickname for the capitol. So I dutifully packed one of those under-the-clothes money belts and suited up during my stopover in Amsterdam. (mid-journey routine: wash face, have double cafe creme, find wifi, take malaria meds, pick up miscellaneous tech gadgets at Schipol duty free). It turns out that the fashion thing about low fitting jeans doesn't work out so well when you've got a money belt strapped around your waist. Think of the Monica thong issue and you'll get the picture.

It was an easy trip overall -- empty seats next to me on both planes (hallelujah!), and a really smooth visa-on-arrival and ride actually waiting at the airport. A really nice woman named Elizabeth and a guy whose name I never learned drove me into town, and I got some quick Swahili lessons -- all of which I'm sure my jetlagged brain will forget overnight. As we rode into town I saw stars in the sky. I don't know why I was so startled by that (too much travel to megalopolises maybe). Nairobi is high up, about 5000 feet, and the air is cool. I had dinner outside, some local beer, and read some of Jeff Sachs' book. There's wifi in a relatively grim hotel room, so I'm not sure whether or not to complain. I may have to post a pic of the bathroom, though.

Oh, why am I here? Primarily to attend a workshop on ICTs and humanitarian relief. With a side visit to a place called Sauri.

Today I spent sometime in downtown Nairobi with Ouko, a former MIT colleague of my friend Mike's. I wanted to get a blitz introduction to public ICT usage in Nairobi, so we visited a bunch of Internet cafes. I learned a new noun: “cybers” they are called here. We started at a highbrow center in the basement of a banking high rise catering to businesspeople – well, they used to get a lot of students, but when they started blocking P2P sites, the students evaporated. Then we went to a place a few blocks away in another highrise, walking up four floors, past the soaring chorus of lunchtime religious celebrants, to a crowded, cluttered place full of loiterers, emailers, and people in pursuit of online dating. In the hallway of the building outside was a guy who’d started a VoIP calling business, and we chatted a bit about his clients and business model, and the varying costs of calling different countries. Canada is the cheapest, he said, at about 2 shillings per minute. I asked which country was the most expensive, and was told it was Somalia, a country that actually shares a border with Kenya. It’s about 65 shillings per minute to call the country next door.