Travel

The second Digital Citizen Indaba is in full swing at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. The conference was opened by Professor Banda who welcomed us to the DCI. Then Global Voices sub Saharan editor, Swahili blogosphere pioneer, Tanzanian blogosphere pioneer, and KBW member Ndesanjo Macha got things moving with his Keynote Address.

I spoke with on the Democratization of the Digital Citizen in the morning session on Fractured Identities. I shared the floor with my Tanzanian brother Ansbert Ngurumo. Our panel was chaired by Professor Guy Berger.

Check out the DCI wiki which is updated regularly throughout the day for a summary of all the talks, the DCI flickr stream for evidence that bloggers are the best looking people around!

digital citizen indaba

Assistant Director of Meteorological department Peter Ambenje said some areas will experience a decrease in temperatures which will drop as low as five degrees Celsius at night.

Ambenje said the cold spell would run from this month to August this year.

The Kenya Meteorological Department in its monthly report states;

The Highlands East of the Rift Valley (Nyeri, Muranga, Kiambu, Embu, Meru) and Nairobi area (Dagoretti, Wilson, Eastleigh) are expected to experience cool and cloudy conditions with occasional light rains / drizzle. A few days are expected to be characterized by persistent cloud cover (overcast skies) for long hours leading to extremely cold and chilly conditions with maximum (daytime) temperatures falling below 20°C and minimum (nighttime) temperatures falling below 10°C.

Bollocks to this, I’m off to England.

Any KBWers, bloggers, TEDsters, Skunkers, anyone at all, in my old stomping grounds of Maaaaanchesysta, Lahan’dan (innit),and Awwwwxfod who wouldn’t mind a good discussion over a couple of pineapple juices this week drop me a line.

10 days to go before TEDGlobal kicks off and the anticipation is building like crazy. I’ll say this about these TED guys, they look like they sure know how to organise a conference. Well that’s easy to say 10 days before everything begins but if their organisation on the day is as good as it has been thus far then things will be great.

This conference is unlike any I have ever been to before in that I have no idea, absolutely NO IDEA, what kind of conference to expect. There is a wealth of information on the conference but it just highlights that I should expect the unexpected.

One thing I do know for sure is that I will be rooming with one crazy dude called Hash a.k.a White African. Now really it does not get any crazier than that. I wonder what TEDGlobal Program Director Emeka Okafor will do once he realises that he has put two techie and blogging members of the Front Row Union in the same room. (Hash, I hope you play tight head because, bruv, I’m a loose head!) If we don’t blow up something while trying to plug in all our gear into the one wall socket in the room, we’ll probably be busy forcing encouraging all kind of interesting people to talk to us. I notice that Yvonne Chaka Chaka has stopped organising her calendar to take in my conference dates instead Youssou N’Dour will be doing his thing.

Other KBWers who are representing are:

• Afromusing
• Bankelele
• Kenyan Pundit
• Ndesanjo

Any others out there (I’m sure they’ll be a couple attending chini ya maji a.k.a undercover)

I’ll post some more details on the proposed Madaraka Day (June 1st) KBW, Tedsters, Skunkworkers, techies, wanainchi, anybody, everybody meet up over the weekend. Come one, come all.

(Isn’t it interesting how many of the people who branded us traitors/sell outs/neo-colonial appeasists for going to the Digital Indaba in South Africa in September last year because it was “white” are happily gobbling up all that TEDGlobal can throw at them with not even a little sense of irony? Hmm the contradictions, the contradictions )

Tags: TEDGlobal

Today is the National Day of Mourning for all those who lost their lives in Kenya Airways flight KQ507. There doesn’t seem to be much going on in the way of commemoration apart from flags flying at half mast.

National flags at half mast at Jomo Kenyatta’s mausoleum, Nairobi

National flag and Nairobi City Council flag at half mast outside City Hall, Nairobi

COMESA national flags at half mast, KICC, Nairobi

There is an inter-denominational prayer service at KICC led by President Kibaki although when we walked towards the door we were told by a policeman that it was a COMESA event so not to sure what is going on there.

Then there are those who think having a national day of mourning is a joke.

More and more sides of this story are coming out now, including the information that two other planes from Cameroon Airlines and Royal Air Maroc opted to wait for the storm to die down while the Kenya Airways crew decided it was safe enough to take off.

However we would all be wise to heed the words of Kenya Airways chief executive Titus Naikuni who said investigators would have to make the final assessment. The probe was likely to take months.

“We don’t want to start speculating here,” he said Friday in Kenya. “So whether the pilot did the wrong thing or the right thing, I cannot answer that.”

Investigators said they cannot yet discount other factors, including mechanical failure, pilot disorientation or even sabotage.

Please visit the KQ507 tribute site to leave a message of support and sympathy.
Please link the KQ507 tribute site from your blogs and websites.
Please spread the word about the KQ507 tribute site.

To truly appreciate the miracle of flight you need to fly a distance that you travel regularly by other means. Flying to the United Kingdom or the United States from Kenya, well, that’s the only way to get there so we can be excused in getting complacent! But flying from Nairobi to Kisumu, now that is an eye opening experience.

I have ranted before about driving to western Kenya. The roads are terrible, car breaking, and dangerous to drive on and that’s just the tarmac. The parts that are not tarmaced are not just car breaking but body breaking too. After that 8 hour drive you step out of the car and your spine feels like it is going to snap. (Spare a thought for the commercial vehicle and public transport drivers who do that route several times a week some even twice a day.)

And then there is flying. You get into your seat, you take off, and half an hour later you land in Kisumu! It still boggles my mind to this day at how simple and easy that trip is compared to the alternatives! Once when we called my brother who had dropped us at JKIA to tell them him we had landed in Kisumu safely we found that even had not even reached the Nyayo Stadium round about!

As soon as the plane touched down in Kisumu on Thursday I heard something I have not heard in a plane since the late 1980s. Applause. The whole cabin broke out in applause. KQ507 has re-awoken the appreciation, constantly taken for granted, for a safe trip.

A big thank you to everyone who has left a tribute, linked to, and help spread the word about the KQ507 tribute site. A big thank you to Fareed, Vincent and all guys and gals at the Capital FM Breakfast Crew for responding. Thanks to Ndesanjo and Global Voices for spreading the word. An extra big thank you to the family members and friends of the passengers and the crew who have left tributes, man, they are moving.

One thing this tragedy has brought home to me is just how connected we all are. I have had emails from Nigerian, Ethiopian, American, British and Indian friends all telling me how they have been personally affected by the flight. We live in a global village.

As a kid it really used to irritate me that the call signal for Kenya Airways was KQ and not KA as Dragon Air had got to it first. I used to feel we were dissed being sent all the way down to KQ what happened to KB KC KD etc I would ask. But now in my old age, KQ has a regal almost mystical tone to it. Kaaaay Kyooou. Nice!

In memory of the Kenya Airways Flight KQ507 that crashed in Douala, Cameroon on Saturday, KenyaUnlimited has set up a KQ507 tribute site where you can leave your message of support for the families and friends of all those affected by this tragedy. These messages will be printed and delivered to Kenya Airways at an appropriate time.

The page can be found here.

Please visit the KQ507 tribute site to leave a message of support and sympathy.
Please link the KQ507 tribute site from your blogs and websites.
Please spread the word about the KQ507 tribute site.

It would be brilliant if we could deliver a big bundle of messages full of heartfelt tributes.

If anyone out there can create a button we can put on our blogs to show support that would be brilliant too.

Our brothers and sisters from outside Kenya and Africa please feel free to leave a message as well.

Let us stand together, united, to honour those on Kenya Airways KQ507. Pamoja.

After the tragedy this morning with the loss of Kenya Airways flight KQ507 with 114 people on board I am more or less sure that a big debate will sprout up on how safe Africa’s skies are and on how safe African airlines are. This post aims to put some facts on the ground before hysteria takes over the debate.

The airline

IOSA is the global benchmark for airline safety management. It is designed to assess airline operational management and control systems based on internationally recognised standards. Any airline wishing to join IATA must be IOSA registered. By the end of 2007, all IATA members must successfully undergo the IOSA audit in order to retain IATA membership. Carriers must achieve registration by the end of 2008. IOSA is open to all airlines. Four African airlines already have IOSA registration; South African Airways, Kenya Airways, Comair, Royal Air Maroc and Egyptair. Kenya Airways is a safe airline.

The plane

The plane involved in the incident today was a brand new Boeing 737-800. The plane was collected from Boeing in October 2006 and went into service in November 2006. No ramshackle plane this. These Next-Generation 737 are the newest and most technologically advanced single-aisle airplane in the business today. It flies higher, faster and farther than previous models and competitors. In addition, its flight deck features the latest liquid-crystal flat-panel displays and is designed to accommodate new communications and flight-management capabilities.

Africa’s skies – the real story

Last year the IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani said, “Africa is our biggest concern. While the continent represents just 4 percent of total air traffic worldwide, it accounts for 25 percent of the accidents.” All this following a decision by the European Commission in March 2006 to publish a “blacklist” of 92 airlines, dominated by African airlines, that it banned from European skies because of poor safety records. The “blacklist” includes 50 airlines registered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 13 from Sierra Leone, 11 from Equatorial Guinea, 6 from Swaziland and 3 from Liberia. (Yes that was FIFTY from the DRC!)

As Christian Folly-Kossi, secretary general of the African Airlines Association, which is based in Nairobi, says in the same article, he was worried that shaming a handful of African countries would damage the reputation of all the region’s airlines, including those that have made significant strides toward improving their records … Folly-Kossi criticized the EU’s blacklist, calling it “inappropriate” because it names dozens of carriers that are not operating or do not fly internationally … “The reality is that, with this list, the public perceives all African carriers as potentially very risky,” he said. “I take it as a kind of unfair competition because the message implied is that you should fly on a European airline if you want to be safe.”

Africa is a big place. You lump all the countries into one category you are going to have problems no matter what you are talking about.

How does Africa compare globally?

Not very well to be honest. But the stories that Africa’s skies are the worst in the world by a mile are incorrect.

Image soucre: IATA Safety Report 2006

According to The (annual) IATA Safety Report’s Regional Results, Russia and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) had the highest accident rate of all the regions in 2006, with 8.6 Western-built hull losses per million flights—13 times the global average. IATA is actively working with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), States and operators to improve the situation.

In Africa, improvements have been made to enhance safety. However, the accident rate remains the second highest in the world at 4.31 accidents per million flights. IATA is working with relevant organisations to further reduce it with a focus on upgrading onboard systems and navigation databases.

Hopefully this post will inject some sense of perspective when we debate this issue.

Update 1:
Almost all the visits to this post are coming from people Googling “KQ507”. Please read my follow up post on Kenya Airways and safety in the African sky. You may also want to read a round up of what Kenyan bloggers have been saying about this tragedy and keep an eye on the KenyaUnlimited aggregator for the latest thoughts from Kenyan bloggers.

Following the disappearance of Kenyan Airways flight KQ507 that has gone missing after losing communication with the control tower shortly after takeoff on Friday night from Douala, Cameroon, Kenya Airways has set up crisis desks at the Panari Sky Center and at the Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi.

Kenya Airways have also set up the following emergency crisis number to their “emergency centre”: +27 11 20 71 100 (South African number).

Why don’t KQ set up a local number and route calls through to the South African centre? Making people in KENYA dial an international number to find out information about a missing KENYAN flight is just not on.

Why is the KQ “emergency centre” in South Africa anyway? The Pride of Africa has some work to do in handling situations such as these.

And why aren’t the people who answer the JKIA information lines (0722205061) ever polite, instead of transferring you mid sentence to another person?

This past weekend I had to make a quick trip to Kakamega and back to Nairobi, a round trip of 800 kilometres. Another way to think about it is 10 hours each way. That is a lot of time to sit and think. This is what kept me occupied:

1. Thank God 2007 is an election year. The amount of resentment there is at the comical state of the road network in the country is about to explode. Being an election year I hope it will explode at the ballot box driving people to vote. The road that leads from Nairobi through Naivasha, Nakuru, Kericho, Kisumu, Kakamega to the border with Uganda at Busia is a major and vital road to the country and to the economy. Some parts of that road are so bad that the local county councils employ road gangs to fill holes with sand to enable cars to pass. You drive your own car you will spend thousands servicing and repairing it. Meanwhile if you take a slight detour through Eldama Ravine going past the former president’s constituency you are treated to the luxury of well maintained roads. Like the political commenter/satirist/cartoonist Madd complained in his Madd Madd World last week, this government is mad in that it lets routes that are vital to the people and the economy such as the roads that lead to game reserves deteriorate so badly while it concentrates on building extensive networks to political chiefdoms. Meanwhile they use snails to repair the Nairobi – Nakuru highway. A friend and I did some calculations and concluded it would probably take around 200 months for the dual carriage to Nakuru to be finished at the current rate of progress. 200 months = over 16 years.
2. There is money to made creating an extensive clean public toilet system. People would be grateful and especially women. The stop EasyCoach use in Nakuru is used exclusively by that company yet the toilets are always messy, dirty and the women’s toilets always have long queues. If someone (heck maybe I’ll do it) formed a company that built public toilets around the country and charged maybe KSH 20.00 per usage people would pay. You could probably even push it up to KSH 40.00 before you started pushing people away. There is money to be made there. Not to mention all the advertising space you could sell. Bling bling. One of the best adverts I have ever encountered was for an insurance company that was selling family life insurance. It was placed over a urinal and read, “Your life is in your hands”.
3. Why the heck do Kenyans treat seatbelts the same way the treat taxes? That is to be avoided at all costs unless the authorities come looking. Many people do not put on their seat belts, which on these Kenyan roads is madness. But the minute you stop at a police check you hear all the seatbelts clipping as people slide them on afraid of the fine they will have to pay if the police catch them without a belt on. You are more worried about a police fine than your life? Madness.
4. There are business opportunities everywhere. Who would have known that popcorn would be popular with country bus travellers at 3am? The guy at the popcorn stand was the most popular vendor in the bus stop by far both times I passed through. Popcorn to bus travellers at 3am, I would have never thought of that.
5. WordPress are messing around with me on purpose. They release 2.0.6 saying it has a major security fix, I rush and upgrade about 10 blogs (which on these slow internet connections means sitting around going slowly mad) then a few days later they release 2.0.7 saying, yes you guessed it – it fixes a major security vulnerability in your blog, so I spend hours upgrading everything again. 7 DAYS later, yeah, WordPress 2.1 is released. “A major development”. Bollox. I am not upgrading again for a month. Especially since I hear 2.1.1 is en route.
6. Taking pictures of buses at night will earn you strange looks. Very strange and suspicious looks. Everyone thinks you are either a cop or a journalist. Or perhaps a terrorist.
7. The only times I think about Man Utd is to wonder how it is for their fans to feel constantly inferior to Liverpool fans. (At least Arsenal fans on the whole have no delusions of grandeur – celebrating a Carling Cup semi final spot like they’ve won the world knowing that that will be the highlight of their season). There was has only ever been one time when I got a little worried about Man Utd and that was around three years ago when they nearly bought Shevchenko. Shevchenko, The Tsar as they call him, was a ruthless goal machine and would have taken some much need quality to Old Trafford. However Man Utd, as usual, choked and ended up with Floran instead. Now Chelski went and bought The Tsar and Maureen has managed to turn a ruthless goal machine into a FA Cup and Carling Cup super sub. LOL. What a muppet that manager of Chelsea is. You get the best finisher in the game and just to piss off your boss you refuse to play him until you realise that all your other players are crap and to win games you actually need to score some goals. Someone should give him the Harambee Stars manager job, he seems at home in chaos and will relish have useless fights with KFF officials.

The Global Voices Summit is in full flow. You can participate remotely through listening to live audio stream or logging on the IRC chat channel. All the information is on the Global Voices website. Or if you are more of a voyeur the pictures may interest you. Congratulations to Nicolás Luco who managed to catch my question and link on the audio stream. I’ll say hi to Rosario when I see her!

The African contingent here is strong led by the brilliant Ndesanjo. Gaphiz and Inktus are also representing Tanzania and Uganda respectively.

As with every other blog conference there is a lot of controversy in the air. Why did they take so long? What were they thinking? What excuses would they give? Will he stay? Will he go? I am of course talking about Monty Panesar and the whole world – v – the England selectors. Monty finally got his chance to attack the Australian batsmen in the third test of the Ashes. The brilliant thing about being in a cricket mad country such as India at this time is that we can talk cricket all day and all night as there is so much cricket going on. We tut tut as the England bating line up collapses faster than Uchumi. We wonder whether reverse spin was just a myth, we wonder which India batsmen who are struggling in South Africa would make the English team and vice versa. Yesterday Rezwan, my cricket loving brother from cricket mad Bangladesh, and I had a long discussion on which countries should get test status, whether Kenya should replace Zimbabwe as a test nation, whether Kenya is still better than Bangladesh in the one day version of the game.

I threw down the challenge; Kenyan bloggers –v- Bangladesh bloggers in a 50 over one day game. KenyaCricket, we need you to whip us into shape bruv. (I’ll bat at number 5 or 6 and field at 2nd or 3rd slip – I’m a rugby forward don’t you dare put me on the boundary!) On the coach to the conference this morning, Georgia and I gave Ndesanjo a quick lesson in cricket. Georgia is from Trinidad and Tobago which is where I hear the Kenyan cricket team will be based in before going to St Lucia in next year’s cricket world cup. T&T has enjoyed a fantastic sporting year the highlight of which was the Soca Warriors playing at the football world cup.

A couple of things about these conferences; if you want to make friends fast carry a multi socket electric extension lead. That way when you commandeer a electricity outlet for you laptop you can share it with your grateful neighbors and look well organised. Secondly, if you aint got mac, you aint got game. Us PC users are hiding our laptops under the tables as the mac boys and mac girls strut their stuff with their apparently superior machines. Thirdly it’s all about the stickers baby. Stickers on laptops are back in. Not useless brand name stickers but cool obscure stickers. The best one I’ve been so far is has a black ground and in big white letters “will work for world peace” that’s currently flossing on Rebecca’s laptop (which is mac of course).

Technorati: gvdelhi2006

The ancient capital of the Mughal Empire. The capital of an independent kingdom by Tomars. The capital of The Raj. The current capital of a bustling India. The venue of the Global Voices Summit 2006. I’m en route to New Delhi, where the players play.

The Global Voices Summit is the main order of businesses, although one or two other exciting developments should take place.

I’m blogging this from Dubai Airport. The whole airport is one big fast wireless internet hotspot (although strangely the closer you get to MickyDs the worse the signal gets). This is the internet as it should be.

Technorati: gvdelhi2006

I’m blogging from Bologna, Italy (where the players play) and I can report that yes some national stereotypes are true.

1. Italians do drive fast, very very fast actually. I saw a sign asking drivers to slow down to 110 Kph. Although when the route from the airport takes you past Imola and you make Ducatis, Lamborghinis and Maseratis in your town you can’t really expect people to be happy plodding along at 50 kph.
2. Italians do eat big lunches. 5 course today and they were still going strong.

Bologna is famous for having the oldest university in Europe. I am more impressed by the fact that they invented the famous Bolognese sauce and fully intended to sample it. Not for me you understand but for you!

Buonasera nona and all that!

From next week I will be blogging from Grahamstown, South Africa. Monday to Wednesday I’ll be at the 10th Highway Africa Conference. Thursday and Friday I’ll be at the first ever Digital Citizens Indaba.

I’d like to thank the organizers of both events for granting me a scholarship to attend. I have never met any of the organizers, all I did was fill in the scholarship form and voila, I am on a plane later on today. Nothing nefarious there despite what you may have read elsewhere. Next year make sure you fill out the scholarship application form and you could be networking at the 2nd Digital Citizens Indaba!

You’ll be happy you hear that I am not the only Kenyan blogger flying to South Africa. There is a strong team of KBW members attending featuring (in dancehall style) none other than the one you know as Kenyan Pundit, man like Bankelele and the one and only Marazzmatazz. If there are any other Kenyan bloggers attending please email me and let me know.

It is hard to describe how excited I am about all this. Here we are taking our online world and creating opportunities where we can affect positive change in the “real” world. If nothing else ears and eyes will be open. Send me your thoughts on what I could do out there for the KBW family.

By the way if I bump into Desmond Tutu (yes I know he won’t be just walking around waiting to be bumped into by mentalacrobatics, work with me here) I would not know what to say. What do you say to a living legend?

My camera is loaded and the iRiver as well in case the podcast bug bites.

After my exploits with EaaaaaaasyCoach I decided to take this international. Let’s go to Kampala, where the players play!

Uganda and Kenya remind me of a typical African extended family. Visiting Kampala is like visiting an aunt’s house, some things are very familiar, and others seem very strange. Kenya and Uganda are like that. We are so different, yet almost completely alike. In fact the relationship between Kenya and Uganda is like that of two cousins. For one there is no other country that is closer to Kenya in any practical sense. Where else would you find one brother the vice president of one country, Kenya’s Moody Awori, and the other brother, Uganda’s Aggrey Awori, a Member of Parliament and former presidential candidate in another country? Enough of the geopolitics, let’s go to Kampala!

The first decision is easy. Nairobi to Entebbe is the most expensive air route per mile IN THE WORLD. I mean USD 400 to go next door? Not frigging likely. So like all sensible people I was on the bus, USD 50 return. And by bus I mean Akamba. Actually to be honest I was bling blinging. I was not on Akamba, I was on Akamba ROYAL.

Royal is a meant to be a different experience from your usual bus trip. There is a DVD player but only two screens in the bus and all the speakers are at the front. They showed Fantastic Four though which you do not really need sound to enjoy although they could have turned on subtitles. You also get a refreshment at the start of journey. In Kenya you get a tired looking bottle of battered water. In Uganda you get a samosa, a cup of juice AND a tired looking bottle of battered water, comme ca:

However the best thing about Royal is that there are fewer seats = more legroom = better journey. In reality it is still all about the seat lottery. You want to grab a seat towards the front of the coach but not right at the front, otherwise you feel every bump as we did on our way back to Nairobi.

I was not allowed to take pictures at the border but I wish I was. For starters all this talk about East African Community cross border cooperation has translated to nothing on the ground. Officially Kenyans need a passport to travel to Uganda and vice versa. Passport control on the Kenyan side is a joke. Imagine a kiosk window with a cranky owner. That’s passport control Kenyan style. Now imagine a small airport waiting room with a air conditioning. That’s passport control Uganda style. Although I did not need a visa the immigration officer informed me that I had three weeks in Uganda and then I’d have to bounce. What they are afraid I’d want to stay? Muppet!

Kampala has 24 hour traffic jam, like Nairobi. Dangerous, rude drivers, who seem to have a death wish, like Nairobi. Unlike Nairobi however in Kampala seems to be packing heat. (No that does not mean they are working in a factory filling boxes for a heater manufacture or a boiler maker. It means that they are Packing Heat! That is carrying guns.)

It is slighty amusing and a little bit scary when you walk into a hotel and they ask you if you have any weapons you’d like them to hold for safe keeping. In Kenya when you walk into a government building you hand over your National ID and collect when you leave. In Uganda you hand over your Uzi, AK, Glock etc. Everyone knew I was a tourist when I took a picture of this sign:

My Ugandan pal assures me that they are all and I quote “one pea shooters” that is although everyone has guns, no one has bullets. But hey are you willing to risk finding out? The number of guns in that country is crazy. I have never seen a female night time security guard in Kenya. In Kampala there are common. I guess they were right when they said a gun is the ultimate equalizer.

Well that’s part 1. Part 2 in the near future, if I feel like it that is.

As for now I am off to Grahamstown, South Africa where the players play.