WordPress.com blocked in Kenya?

Update: Ah ha! Maitha has some inside information and an explanation. Click on the link and scroll down to the comments.

I have been trying to help some friends start blogs on WordPress.com for the last few days but the site, WordPress.com, is inaccessible. In addition I have not been able to view any blogs hosted on WordPress.com including, ironically, the KenyaUnlimited Status blog. The strange thing about all this is that there is no chat about it, nothing on Google, on the WordPress support forums. It is like this problem does not exist. As I had attempted to view WordPress.com from many networks around Nairobi I just assumed that nothing underhand could be going on.

But then after reading the comments on this post I thought to myself, what if someone was blocking access to WordPress.com making it impossible for anyone on a Kenyan IP address to view the site? Luckily there are quick ways of checking this.

When I surf to WordPress.com directly by entering http://wordpress.com/ into my browser I get various unavailable errors.

When I surf to WordPress.com using one of the many services that hides IP addresses, such as Anonymous, voila, I can view the site. Anonymous hides your IP address and makes it look like you are surfing from a German IP address.

If you are within Kenya try it for yourself.

Enter this url into your browser which should take you to WordPress.com: http://wordpress.com/

If you can not view the site enter this url which navigates to the same site through anonymous: http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://wordpress.com/

It looks like something somewhere is blocking access from Kenyan IP addresses to WordPress.com. It is too early to point fingers and there may be nothing malicious going on but something is wrong somewhere.