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20:52
From: Kenyanentrepreneur.com
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From the Standard:
“Instead of humiliating me like this, why not just tell me I have been sacked, or why not just arrest me and take me to court,” said an exasperated Ngilu who was blocked from leaving Criminal Investigations headquarters for five hours”.
Why doesn’t she just resign?
It’s obvious Kibaki and his geriatric co-horts don’t have [...]
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15:32
From: Rants, Raves & Reviews
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So Kenya wants to be a prime candidate for the BPO industry... Well, a lot needs to be done and only a concerted effort by the private sector aided by the public sector will do... Other Bangalore Wannabes (from Business Week) Mauritius has a leg up on Kenya with better communications, bilingual population, tie with Indian firms (Infosys has already set up in the country) & enlightened leadership. Other Anglophone countries that are in the market for additional business are Sri Lanka & Pakistan. In addition, the proximity to India (#1 BPO centre) makes the transition easier. The Philippines is another country with a substantial BPO sector. All the countries above also have a decent base to recruit IT graduates. Senegal restructured its telecom network to tap into the Francophone BPO sector.
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15:32
From: Rants, Raves & Reviews
Read This Entry & More At Rants, Raves & Reviews
So Kenya wants to be a prime candidate for the BPO industry... Well, a lot needs to be done and only a concerted effort by the private sector aided by the public sector will do... Other Bangalore Wannabes (from Business Week)
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13:13
From: You Missed This
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Despite the fact that Health Minister Charity Ngilu has spent the better part of today in police custody at CID headquarters as well as yesterday afternoon, police commissioner Major General Ali had a clarification for the press today during a heated press conference session. The Minister is not under arrest and neither is she being detained by the police, he said. She is simply assisting the police in investigations. This is a new revelation by the police commissioner which means that next time the men in blue pick you up at the local kiosk with sukuma wiki bread and milk in your hands and ask you to accompany them to the police station (so that you can bribe them for your freedom) and you are as principled as Kumekucha is and spend the night in the cooler, don't tell people you were arrested by police. Tell them you were assisting the police with investigations. So why has Ngilu been "assisting the police with investigations" for the whole long day? There are different stories the police are giving. One says that... Read moreNew SMS campaign technique for Parliamentary and presidential elections in KenyaWindow film in Kenya Llumar Can Save Your Life
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13:10
From: You Missed This
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archiveIn my informed view Kamukunji Police Station cells are a much more friendlier place than the usually badly stinking brutal Central Police station cells. The Police cells and Kenyan prisons contrary to what many naïve Kenyans think, is not filled with rapists and murders and carjackers. NO. They are full of innocent Kenyans whose only crime is that they did not have the money to "buy their freedom." Many others are people merely "assisting the police with investigations" for a very long time. In 1986 something happened to me in the hands of the police that changed my life forever and in fact almost killed me. I was newly married and still in the "honeymoon mode" trying to work very hard to provide for my newly established family. I was a journalist but I carefully avoided controversial stories that could get me into trouble. I would not write a political story even if you paid me a million bob (and believe me a million bob was a lot of money in those heady days when a loaf bread cost less than Kshs 4/-). I worked for a mzungu publication based in Westlands (that was the first of its' kind in Kenya) and had recently received a tip off about a story that involved a traffic policeman who had been deliberately ran over by a matatu driver. I was doing this reluctantly because even such a story was too controversial for me. One afternoon I walked back into the office in Waumini House Annexe, Westlands to be told that there were some plain clothes policemen looking for me. I assumed that it was about the story I was chasing. I really wasn't frightened of policemen as I had grown up seeing them and interacting with them because my father was very senior police officer and still was at that time. To cut a long story short I was arrested and driven all over Nairobi by police officers from the then dreaded Special branch... Read moreLaptop problems in KenyaNew SMS campaign technique for Parliamentary and presidential elections in Kenya
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13:07
From: You Missed This
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archiveYes, the media bill will soon be law. It has been passed in parliament and awaits the president's signature to become law. These are some of the laws that make the Kenyan justice system a joke. Laws passed, not for posterity but for the convenience of a few powerful people who have broken the law and want to use the same law to protect themselves. You can debate this issue until the cows come home but the fact of the matter is... Read moreNew SMS campaign technique for Parliamentary and presidential elections in Kenya Original branded used computers
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7:48
From: REBECCA WANJIKU'S BLOG
Read This Entry & More At REBECCA WANJIKU'S BLOG
| by Rebecca Wanjiku |
| | var sburl6730 = window.location.href; var sbtitle6730 = document.title;var sbtitle6730=encodeURIComponent("CDMA- the future of communication"); var sburl6730=decodeURI("http://www.kenyaimagine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=671"); sburl6730=sburl6730.replace(/amp;/g, "");sburl6730=encodeURIComponent(sburl6730);Considering just how good the news seems, it is astounding just how poorly the messengers are telling it. The drastic discounts and improved product that Telkom Kenya has put on the market may well represent a revolution. If this was Celtel or Telkom's prettier cousin Safaricom, Nairobi and the countryside would have been swooning in a deluge of colours and a cacophony of promotions, but this is Telkom Kenya even in 2007. 
| The most noise we have heard about the new service has been from the company's competitors, and specifically Celtel who are feeling increasingly like the third wheel in the love fest that is Kenya's mobile phone industry. With a market estimated at 9 million subscribers, 2.2 million of whose are Celtel's, the colossal profits should be a sufficient palliative even as Celtel await the adjudication of the Communications Commission (CCK). Celtel's complaint has been that the national fixed line operator does not have the unified licence that would allow it to operate both fixed lines and mobile networks. It also complains about Telkom's exemption from the 10% excise duty and the fact that it did not suffer the Ksh. 55 million that Celtel did on entry into the market. Telkom counters that it does indeed have such licences, being as it was in the market long before the invention of Celtel and Safaricom, but also that its service is not mobile but merely a fixed service with portable handsets. As the CCK mulls over the issue, Director Waweru has in the past made statements that would seem to confirm Telkom's self-assessment, Celtel - who are bringing their world headquarters to Nairobi from the Netherlands and Safaricom- East Africa's fattest fat cat, would do well to consider just how lucky they are that Telkom Kenya are such poor marketers.  Telkom's CDMA technology ,which allows its subscribers to make landline calls as though they were cell phone calls, gets as cheap as 5/- a minute for inter-network calls) on some tarrifs, a world of difference from the 8/- which is Safaricom's cheapest per minute rate. This 5/- rate is for preferrred numbers, with other calls from a Telkom wireless number to another going at 5/50 a minute. SMS is dispensed at 2/50 again a big difference from the 3/50 t0 5/- range that dominates the market. For those with eager thumbs, this is a godsend as the 2/50 is only available in Safaricom's Saasa tarrif at off-peak hours. Telkom even have a tarrif, the aptly named Furaha that allows you to call any network, anytime, at a flat rate of 14/-. In addition, and this is perhaps what is fuelling the rage at the mobile phone operators, the Telkom charges do not depend on geographical proximity as is the case with ordinary landlines. Whether a call is connected between Mandera and Isebania, or Lodwar and Vanga the charges remain constant. The new Telkom service, built on CDMA technology is key to a future where fixed line companies will see their copper-networks rendered obsolete by advances in technology. Further, the CDMA technologies are vital to a future where consumers will use their phones for more than just phone calls and text messages. In this exciting new world, with intensive internet browsing, games, music and movie downloads, streaming and other bandwidth hungry services in high demand, CDMA will finally triumph over the GSM technology that both Celtel and Safaricom are built on. So it is not just It is not just low prices that come with Telkom. The CDMA network is superior for data transfer with nominal maximum download speeds of about 2 MB. The normal speeds are somewhere in the region of 700 Kbps which is still much higher than you can hope to achieve on a GSM phone. CDMA consistently provides better capacity for voice and data communications than other commercial mobile technologies, allowing more subscribers to connect at any given time, and it is the common platform on which 3G technologies - which allow the use of data, video and voice at the same time-are built. The technology which is the basis of the networks in South Korea and Japan's advanced status, is described as a "spread spectrum" technology, allowing many users to occupy the same time and frequency allocations in a given band/space. It assigns unique codes to each communication to differentiate it from others in the same spectrum, or as a smart one on Wikipedia put it | As a trivial comparison imagine a cocktail party, where couples are talking to each other in a single room. The room represents the available bandwidth. In GSM, a speaker takes turns talking to a listener. The speaker talks for a short time and then stops to let another pair talk. There is never more than one speaker talking in the room, no one has to worry about two conversations mixing. In CDMA, any speaker can talk at any time; however each uses a different language. Each listener can only understand the language of their partner. As more and more couples talk, the background noise (representing the noise floor) gets louder, but because of the difference in languages, conversations do not mix. | The future then is bright for the Kenyan consumer. In the ensuing price wars, we cn fantasise about improved services and maybe even free talktime, free sms and other such services. The religious can also seek intercessionary aid on the matter of cell phone prices. The CDMA handsets are currently retailing for as little as Ksh 4,000 although these are really rudimentary, lacking many of the little conveniences that GSM phones had made us accsutomed to. As regards tarrifs, already, if you are brave enough, Celtel's Mambo 6 service allows you to speak for as little as 6/- between 11.00pm and 5.00am. On its Uhuru Umoja tarrif, you can go for a 16/- flat rate. On Safaricom's Super Taifa, after an initial two minutes charged at 20/- each, one can enjoy a pleasing 10/- per minute flat rateBoth mobile phone providers are also keen to boost up their GSM, and have launched EDGE services especially with a view to boosting GPRS speeds. Outside Kenya? You can now get far more minutes on your calls home if the other end is a Telkom wireless one. The minutes on your calling card will double or even triple, and you needn't wait for the evening to call the house anymore.
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7:24
From: My Africa Today
Read This Entry & More At My Africa Today
The short answer is: Yes! A closer look, especially after some experience and time in Accra, the nation's capital, clearly reveals the fact that not all citizens of Ghana are bad people. In fact, it's largely the contrary. Where poverty runs deep, as it does in Ghana and Nigeria, however, the attraction to easy money has caught the attention of many, and scam operations are growing faster and more out of control than any time in history.  Are there any beautiful, white and English speaking women in Ghana? The answer to this question is: Not many. Scammers in Ghana have learned from their neighbors in Nigeria, the founder of the imfamous 419 scam. These days, scammers are increasing their level of sophistication and it no longer takes a "fool" to be a victim of scam. Ghana fraud rings invest careful time with their victims, setting up a relationship of trust, confidence and if possible, love. Once the romance is established, the scammer makes his move. This is typically in the form of an emergency, help with a visa, a large inheritance and legal problem, etc.
Is it possible to have a real, honest and lasting relationship with someone in Ghana? Yes, it is possible. Are there foreigners living and working in Ghana who speak English? Yes, of course. Does the level of fraud and professional scams being operated from that country warrant the need for a background check to verify any relationship in Ghana? Yes, absolutely! It's the only way. The moral of the story is, no matter what the circumstances, no matter where the person was met, either on the Internet or in person, if the individual is from or currently living in Ghana, due to the extreme level of scam activity in that country, we strongly advise a background check, of which Wymoo offers the most comprehensive services for the West Africa region. And lastly, never send money to any individual overseas who is not known in person or who has not been verified via a professional. Be safe and best of luck, Customize your mobile with your Complimentary Ringtone!
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6:00
From: Black Looks
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The masquerade is central to Kalabari culture, dance and music. The masquerade transforms man into a spirit being born from the water that surrounds our land - the ocean, rivers, creeks and swamps - the water spirits are every where and their origins are the stories of dusk like the one below. [...]
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5:25
From: Black Looks
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Damien Ugwu of the Nigerian Civil Liberties talks to me about about endemic police torture in the Nigerian justice system. CLO estimate that five people a day are being extra-judicially killed by the police. Most vulnerable are unemployed youths accused of armed robbery. Damien Ugwu explores the reasons why torture and murder are common place [...]
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5:14
From: Mount Kirima
Read This Entry & More At Mount Kirima
After much thought I have finally decided to finally open up my Wordpress Blog page. I have had this page for a while but have been too busy to attempt the migration but cos of the problems I have been having with Blogger lately at my other blog I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and migrate. So Friends welcome to the new mountain top.
Enjoy
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3:46
From: Cock And Bull
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People lose loved ones when they are not quite ready to let them go. This becomes especially difficult when through death, a person loses a loved one who cannot be replaced at all, say like in the case of a parent, or an only child. And even long after that person has been laid to rest and their memories fade in the minds of most people, still one cannot let go. It almost seems like life became stuck at the point where that loved person left.
The ones who are close to such people may often be at a loss of what to say or do. The reason is because when pain is so personal, the hurting person sometimes does not want to be comforted by a person who might not even know what that kind of loss feels like. On the other hand, that same person often wants to be listened to and even comforted with words and actions. And so, one can only be there for such a person, feeling their pain and often wishing they knew how to soothe it away.
Between feelings of blame for the departed; imagining that there was something they could have done or anyone else could have done for them to stay longer, and feelings of guilt; imagining that there was something one could have done to make the loved one stay longer, the hurting person feels an obligation to hold on to the last memories. Unfortunately, those memories are often devastating because they are a replay of the day of departure, and once indulged, linger long enough to wipe out all the other happy memories. The reason is that death never being a pretty affair, it still pervades finality, gore and indignity no matter how cleverly it is dressed up.
Last year, my grandmother shared with me about how she managed to let go of her husband of 45 years, when he died in 1983. She was so distraught that people were afraid that she would hurt herself. One day, she locked herself in her bedroom and stayed there for a long time. In that time, she decided that she had to go on for the sake of her grown up children and her grandchildren. And so on that day, she talked to God and made a deal with Him. She told me that she spoke with a loud voice to God and said, “God, my husband is gone. Each night I locked my bedroom, I would lock him inside this room with me. That will never happen again. From today onwards, God, you are going to take the place of my husband. Each night I lock this door, I will be locking you inside with me.” With that, she went to the door and banged it with all her strength. She then told me that after that, she went out of her room and started mingling with other people and getting her life back together.
My grandmother rarely talks about her husband. The reason is not because she has forgotten him, or has stopped loving him. The reason is because on that day, she decided to lay him to rest. She also took her deal with God so seriously that up to this day, she leaves a portion for Him in every decision that she makes in her life and even in decisions within the family.
Laying a loved one to rest in order to move on might feel un-loyal, even un-faithful. And yet, if that person were to be asked, I suppose he or she would want the person to go ahead and find happiness without memories of death and guilt crowding every single occasion that ought to be joyful. Death is a natural occurrence that catches up with everyone at some point in their lives. Would you want your son or daughter, or brother or sister, or husband or wife, or mother or father, to spend the rest of their lives mourning you? Or feeling guilty that there was something they could have done to make you live?
I know that these kind of things are easily said, and that I might not even know an inch of any of it. So right now, I pray that God gives you each and every kind of comfort that you need, and ask that He keeps you well today and all the days of your life. And may you allow God to become the replacement of that whom you miss the most. Amen!
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3:40
From: Cock And Bull
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I just caught an interview of Catherine Ndereba on CNN Sports. The female Kenyan athlete who has come to be fondly known as “Catherine the Great” by her international fans is a multi-time International circuit Marathon winner and Olympic medalist. She is also legendary for her kindness and big heart. Catherine is currently in New York preparing for the Big Apple’s marathon scheduled to take place in a few days.
It is always gratifying to see a compatriot being interviewed on CNN, especially one as accomplished as Catherine. Kenya being a spawning ground for long distance runners, it is common to see our athletes being interviewed on international TV. It is also not unusual for a Kenya like me to be hit by consternation while listening to the poor English rolling off the tongues of some of our athletes. And like so many other Kenyans, I might not be able to satisfactorily explain why we are so badly embarrassed by bad English or our local accents. And yet, English is a learned foreign language!
Anyway, Catherine spoke in good English, and was a delight to listen to. Incidentally, the athletes with the bad English never seem ashamed at all, and so that is why perhaps we feel the need to do it on their behalf? Do people from other countries get embarrassed by bad English or accents?
Despite her good English, Catherine made me apprehensive all the same. The reason is because throughout the interview, she kept speaking about God, Jesus Christ and even quoted the Bible on several occasions. Each time she would start the answer to a question with, “My Bible tells me….”, or “According to the Book of….” I would find myself cringing inside and thinking, “Oh God! Doesn’t she know that people don’t talk about such things on CNN?”
Surprisingly, if the interview was on local TV, I wouldn’t give it much thought since it is common for many people to introduce themselves by stating their stand as far as Jesus Christ is concerned. For example, if I were to introduce myself, I would say, “My name is Ken Njuguna, and Jesus Christ is my personal savior since (give time, date, and year)…”
While Catherine was quoting the Bible, and talking about God on CNN, I would hold my breath, expecting the Sports Anchor to cut her off, but that did not happen. On about 2 occasions, she went on and on about how to her, success on the race track is a matter of glorifying God rather than personal achievement and I was sure that she would be rudely cut off. But she wasn’t.
Let me say that I was surprised by her audacity since I have never heard anyone talk about Jesus Christ so boldly on CNN – not even the Pope. Despite writing all these things about God here, I think I would feel ashamed to speak about Him on CNN. And right now, that makes me ashamed of myself. Despite many people praying to God in secret, not many want to openly acknowledge Him in public. I suppose to understand how someone as close as Peter denied Jesus 3 times before the cock crowed on the day of crucifixion, one just needs to put themselves in front of CNN cameras after some massive personal achievement and picture themselves quoting some verses from the Bible.
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3:24
From: My Life is...Mochalicious!
Read This Entry & More At My Life is...Mochalicious!
What the heck…..the weekend is with us. So here goes mine…..
Where is your cell phone….. in my racksack (weekend away from home)
Relationship….. with who exactly?
Your hair….messy dreads that need urgent attention
Work….. slow
Your sisters…. does Farmgal count? Ok….got none!
Your favorite things…. my iMac, decks, iPod, Skecher collection and HiFi
Your dream last night….. I don’t even remember, but I [...]
Read the complete article at
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