The vast majority of anyone reading this has either tried out or downright downloaded torrent files to get music or movies. Hell, it's one of the only ways to get your hands on a lot of things in Africa as actually buying CDs or going to movie theaters can be pretty difficult in many parts of the continent. Then of course there is the free factor which is appealing to pretty much every cross-section of society.
Naturally, there comes a time when you realize though that when it comes to music, you'll listen to a good chunk of an album and think, "Man, this isn't some O-zone, Dragostea tin dei one-hit wonder garbage, this is a real album!" Such was the case with Just-a-Band.
This Kenyan trio has done what few are doing these days in that they've produced an entire album of worthy songs. They're also known for having started the Makmende meme that ran the internetz for awhile.
But seriously, I'm of the opinion that some of the only good music (and consequently albums) are coming out of Africa these days. While the Zouglou style of pop causes me convulsions due to everyone in a group playing the melody and the beat the exact freakin' same for every song, there are the groups and artists like Just-a-Band, Nneka, and K'naan making some very, very nice recordings that I'm happy to pay for. I recognize that there was some craft that went in to them and I feel like I'm getting my money's worth.
So, here's to Just-a-Band and what I've started deeming, "purchase worthy". A new dawn has arrived for me in the realm of digital music.
I have yet to work out the math on it just yet, but I've found that there is some kind of correlation between the amount of coding in a location and the amount of pizza present. I mean, say what you want about fine French (or any other) cuisine, when it comes down to it, pizza has become our base food of choice in the world, especially for coders and especially especially for expats... It's probably one of the reasons that so much code is generated in San Francisco, although it would fail to explain why there isn't as much in New York or Chicago. Like I said, the math isn't quite there on this yet, but it is a fact that Debonairs does exist across the street from the iHub. Coincidence? Possibly, but definitely a delicious coincidence nonetheless even though Debonairs is the African equivalent of the US's Pizza Hut.
This brings us to the question of pizza in Abidjan. It's lacking; a lot. In turn, I think it's part of the reason why the technology scene hasn't developed so much (yeah, okay a recent civil war doesn't help either.) Most people I know swear by a place called Sorrento's which is down in Zone Quatre, although I find that they enjoy the atmosphere a great deal more than the actual quality of the pizza as I was not terribly impressed on my one visit there.
For my money, this place which is essentially a slightly enclosed maquis owned by a Lebanese fellow named Elio called Copa d'Elio has the best pizza in Abidjan. The best pizza in Côte d'Ivoire was actually in Yamoussoukro at a place called Brennus, but that's a bit far to run for a good pie. Needless to say, anyone looking to establish some kind of innovation/coding/incubation hub in Abidjan should look around this spot here, just off Rue du Canal and next door to the cool-looking, yet abysmal Ché Café in Zone Quatre. I would be curious to see if my pizza = code theory plays out.
Africa is entirely peopled by wild animals, or so the travel guides would have you believe seeing as how any guide to Africa always has a lion or cheetah or something else with four legs on the cover. Of course, if one were to follow this rational, then in Paris only exists the Eiffel Tower. I guess books are just meant to be marketed and judged by their covers.
But getting around that whole "book thing", Offbeat Guides is doing something interesting in that they custom make guides for you on order. It's an interesting concept given how electronic all the information for travelers is these days. Curious as to how it worked, I shelled out $10 USD to get the guide for Nairobi in PDF format, although you can also order a printed version if you really want to, but it takes longer and costs a lot more.
Once compiled, I downloaded the guide and after perusing it, I have to say that it's a lump of rancid ugali. Essentially it consists of all the information from the Wikipedia article as well as the Wikitravel article. Tossed in are a couple of references to Wikipedia articles on two of the large parks as well as some culled data from weather websites and a screenshot of Google Maps.
For $10, I have to say that this is pretty weak, especially considering that Nairobi is a major tourist destination and you can buy Lonely Planet's electronic guide for $4.62. Of course you can also just open up the various wiki pages and save them to your computer locally to avoid spending anything.
I suppose that Offbeat's attitude towards Africa is to be expected to some extent given that they're based in San Francisco and well... I was going to say that it's not Paris, but again, it's a major destination and for $26 you can get a whole, proper paper guide from Rough Guides just to name one of many who publish on Kenya. I'm actually curious as to the whole legality of this since their citation page at the back looks like this:
Wikipedia, Nairobi — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NairobiWikitravel, Nairobi — http://wikitravel.org/en/Nairobi
Wikipedia, Nairobi National Park — http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Nairobi_National_Park
Wikipedia, Lake naivasha — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Lake_naivasha
Eventful — http://eventful.com
Zvents — http://zvents.com
Upcoming — http://upcoming.yahoo.com
Accuweather — http://www.accuweather.com/
Yahoo Finance — http://fnance.yahoo.com
Google Maps — http://maps.google.com
Yelp — http://yelp.com
They're not specifically citing what text and photos come from where as is mandated by Creative Commons. Also, they are trying to put out the guide under a 1.0 agreement when the source material came from a 3.0 page. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm assuming you can't just change the agreement on something that's been released under one specific agreement.
Also, in terms of Google Maps, can you sell off their map images like that? I would venture a guess as to no since this is a commercial venture. Just my two cents on all this as I feel like I've had my $10 ripped off for stuff that not only I can get for free, but also shouldn't have been bought in the first place. And given that they feel like they can so freely use the CC license with abandon, if anyone wants this crappy guide PDF, I'll happily email it to you, although prepare to be let down.
At the other end of the floor in the same building as the iHub sits the nascent naiLab (nee iLab.) What appears to be an exact mirror in terms of size from the iHub is a rather different entity. At first, this may not seem obvious and truth be told, I thought that iLab was simply a secondary project of the iHub that was still in development. Turns out I was wrong, but the confusion was warranted as I wasn't the only one and this has let to them changing from their original name of iLab to naiLab (for Nairobi naturally.)
On the surface, these two spaces seem to be doing nearly the same thing in that they're working to be centers for technology innovation and incubation in Nairobi. The big difference from what I understand is that iHub is working more towards being a place to hatch ideas with a space for coworking. naiLab on the other hand is working to be much more of an incubation space where those building projects can work on a longer term basis. I have to admit that to me, even with this clarification, I feel that there is still a lot of overlap, but it's probably the kind of overlap that will see a lot of folks moving from one space to the other for a hopeful cross-pollination of ideas. I would nearly pity the offices between these two spaces if I didn't think that these two bookend spaces were so needed.
If you look at the picture above, compared to the iHub, naiLab is pretty barren with just an internet connection and a couple of desks. To me, this is all you pretty much need, but I cut my teeth on web development working in converted warehouse spaces in San Francisco. Their reason for this is that they're planning to launch much more formally in 2011 with a complete build out of the space. The opportunity arose to grab this space and they took it with Outbox Ltd. sponsoring it for the rest of 2010. Next year, a number different entities will sponsor it including the Dutch government (who seem to sponsor half the Africa projects in existence) as well as Oxfam (who seem to sponsor the other half.)
Once open, Tonee Ndugu let me know that the 250 square meters that they appear to have will house 30 people on a constant basis with a second floor in the center for servers and the permanent admin staff. This center portion will actually be able to be removed when they hold events, which seems a bit zany to me, but at the same time, if they can pull it off, it will allow for a very welcoming, large space that a projector can work in well.
Naturally, I'll have to pay another visit to Nairobi in the future to check out what they've done and how many practical jokes iHub has play on naiLab and vice versa, such as a friendly game of Capture-the-Wifi-Router.
My stay in Nairobi was pretty brief overall. I mainly got a taste of the tech scene, rain, traffic, and of course, the iHub. Going in, I knew it was under construction, but upon showing up, I didn't realize how much work was going on, although it makes a good deal of sense given their grand plans for the space.
The cool thing is that despite the fact that the few people there have to work in one of the reclining floor chairs or at the central table, a solid group of followers has already started growing around the hub, which naturally was the point in creating it. Having a central space for the internet innovators in a city is quite crucial and while it digs in to the local internet café market, it gives back a great deal more to the community.
Let me emphasize that the iHub is still most definitely closed during the construction. I was just able to get a peek at it due to my short visit in town and also wanting to meet the couple of folks who are dancing around construction while working on iHub-related projects there. To be honest, I liked the rough and tumble aspect to it, but that's just the startup nerd in me. I thought it would stay like this for a very, very long time, but in the short views of the space that I saw, things went from scattered pieces of construction material to quickly taking shape. Naturally, they've also posted an update as well given that you can see tangible progress in the space.
I'm sure it's going to be quite huge when it's done, but at 250 square meters in the interior, space will definitely be limited given how vibrant the tech crowd is in Nairobi. Obviously it would be a real "shame" if someday they would have the need to expand...
On a tech note, I found out something interest though with the internet connection. I was having a Skype chat with Jeremy Brown at Limbe Labs over yonder in Cameroon and we were curious to see how the latency of the connection stacked up. The iHub happens to have one of the fastest connections currently available in Kenya and indeed, it works quite well. Unfortunately, there appeared to be a good deal more latency pinging Google than with Jeremy's connection for Limbe from Cameroon on the SAT-3. This was weird given the overall speed of the new fiber that I was using. Doing a traceroute, I found that while Jeremy's pings were indeed going down the fastest possible route, mine were being routed back to Mountain View in California! My guess on this is one of two things. First, I was doing something wrong or it was just a temporary glitch. Second is that the IP address I was on was so newly in use that Google hadn't yet indexed which is not allowing it to bounce off a server closer to Kenya and thus incurring an added layer of latency. However it shakes down, hopefully it will get sorted out soon so that they can make use of all that bandwidth that they have.
It's no secret that I'm a pretty big dork about tea and am especially in to brewing up loose leaf tea as opposed to bags. It's also no secret that tea from the Assam region in India is one of the most sought after types due to it being absolutely delicious, but there are very strange discrepancies in the fact that there is more Assam sold than the region can actually produce. What this means is that the tea from other regions is regularly blended with Assam a bit under the table.
One of the teas often used for blending is from the fields that grow in Kenya.
There are those who gripe about how they can't really ever get in to Kenyan tea and how it just doesn't taste like an English Breakfast tea. I happen to absolutely love straight Kenyan tea as it has a deep, dark, earthy quality to it that is excellent when sipped slowly. To those who easily dismiss Kenya tea, ironically there is most likely a good deal of Kenyan leaves in whatever cup you're drinking. They grow and export a lot of it and that being the case, I was lucky enough to have Becky take me on a trip up to the tea growing fields where she originally grew up some distance outside of Nairobi.
If you've never seen tea fields before, they're really wonderful to look at. The tea spreads out in these verdant low-lying bushes from which the leaves are picked. As you can see above, it may look like fun for an aromatic romp through lush emerald fields, but there are two interesting things about tea fields. First, tea plants are incredibly scrubby and unfriendly. Walking through a field of them will really scratch you up. Secondly, despite the lovely smells that tea can produce when you open a fresh back of loose leaf to steep; the fields are almost completely without any smell whatsoever. If it's raining, you'll just smell wet earth. It seems almost impossible, but all the qualities loved about tea come in from the aging process which produces the white, green, oolong, or black variants.
Due to Nairobi Rain Traffic (yes, it deserves capitalization), it wasn't a long visit up there and much like wine vines, once you've seen one tea field, you've kinda seen them all, even though there are a great many coffee fields mixed in. I did manage to pick up 1kg of tea for 500 Shillings or about $7 USD. That's a pretty impressive deal and if I didn't have 15kg of wine from Cape Town in my suitcase already, I would have gotten more. As to the flavor? It's everything I expect in a Kenyan tea and I'm loving it as well as having gained a great new appreciation for how much hand work goes in to eat cup of tea I drink in the morning.
It's been raining the whole time in Nairobi, which definitely put a damper on my sightseeing and means that there will need to be a visit in the future under sunnier terms--damn.
The shot above was a brief crack in the clouds that I ran out on the balcony of the iHub to take in between tweeting and catching up on email. It made for a decent photo but was definitely even more impressive in person as the iHub view is quite fantastic.
It's been awhile since I've pulled together a round up of interesting articles that have passed my way, so I'll take a breather from lobbing complaints about Gaddafi and talking about Mali to point out what some other people are saying.
Basically the antithesis to the scare article that came out a few days ago. The article points to the fact that with four undersea cables touching down by the end of the year in Kenya, it will go from a country of minimal bandwidth, to a major player in the internet markets.
Pretty cool silos designed to irrigate Sudan. Much better than just having a tank with a pump sitting somewhere. They also portend a future design focus on renewable energy platforms as public art, much like how the parabolic trough became mainstream through using it as a set piece in the film, Gattaca. HT A Bombastic Element
The good news is that PayPal has launched in South Africa. The bad news is that like most companies doing business in Africa (even South Africa), there is a great deal of trepidation to the venture and it isn't nearly as good a setup as in North America or Europe. And then they'll claim that it was a failure due to the African market being untenable because you know, they tried. Go figure.
Coffee drinkers the world over are well-known for needing their coffee fix wherever they might be. This can lead to rather burdensome life requirements of course as was shown by a friend of a friend who took an entire espresso machine with him when he went to DR Congo. He was Italian of course, so I have a great deal of respect for the attention to detail.
I never really got in to coffee. It's not to say that I don't like it, as I do enjoy a dark, straight cup as they make it in Spain, Bosnia, or Turkey, but at the same time, I just really don't need it. And I really don't need that whipped cream, cinnamon sprinkled joke they pass off as coffee at places like Starbucks.
Snicker as you may (or if British, nod in approval) but I happen to be much more of a tea fan. This is fine when in Eastern Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, or a number of other African countries that have vast, wonderful tea fields, but when traveling at large, you often have to BYOT (Bring Your Own Tea.) For instance, when in Ghana, I found that there was indeed Lipton and it was better than the bagged version you get in the US, but it still just wasn't quite "there". If you lob the phrase "tea snob" at me, I probably won't duck it at this point as I've just had so many crappy cups of tea while traveling that I generally pass if it doesn't seem up to snuff. I'll try not to sneer if in your company, but I make no promises.
The travel woes changed a great deal with the discovery of this bad boy, which is a very portable tea leaf infuser that's rather affordable. It's large enough to let the tea steep properly, unlike the ball, but small enough to fit anywhere. Naturally one might be looking at this and thinking, "Um, buddy, why don't you just travel bag-enabled?" I did this for awhile, but I have to be honest with you in that once you go loose, you can't go bag; thank you very much, Fortnum & Mason Assam. I assume it's something along the same lines as grinding your own coffee beans prior to brewing.
But that's about it. I can take this little fellow with me anywhere and it will span just about any cup. I can bring my own leaves or just try what is locally grown. Boil up some water, send it my way, and you've got a happy tea drinker. Bill, I'm hoping to get over your way soon to try some Cameroonian tea as well and I will be there, infuser in hand.
I have to admit that this was all inspired by this article on Twiga which shows that you absolutely don't need to go the fancy infuser route and may very easily find a local metal smith that can construct one out of recycled materials. But, just a bit of travel tea-lore for some of my fellow drinkers out there who might be staying in the shadows because it seems that few folks write about tea and travel as if one excludes the other, to which I say, "Hardly!"
One of my main hobbies is maps. Not really making them so much, but more seeing them and staring at them. That's why these couple of maps I found quite cool.
Yeah, I know that a lot of people think that malaria is a "mostly-African" problem. Truth is, it existed a great many places in the world in addition to Africa. This map from 1870 in the US shows that it was indeed a rather massive problem there as well. It can definitely be eradicated with time, but it's tough when "winters" are like the really fantastic 25C days I experienced in Ghana.
The description breaks it down a lot better than I could ever hope to summarize. It's been around for some time, but I still find it really cool. See if you can figure out which parts are most likely the African networks.
Iris Amuto: The African Paradox
Video of a young Kenyan speaking about perception in regards to Africa. She has some really great points, one of my favorite being, "The word depression does not exist in most African languages." I've found out in further talks with some people that where it does seem to exist, it's really a loan word from a European language. That has to be one of the most telling sentences about what the real Africa is like.
