Phone Banking in Kenya ... I'm converted!!

Phone banking in Kenya

So finally I have joined the ranks of Kenyan phone bankers – world leaders in this new technology. I’m feeling really quite thrilled about it - though frankly, the road to phone-to-phone banking has not been smooth (surprise, surprise) however, now I’ve done it, there’s no looking back.

For ages I agonised about how best to transfer money. Bank account-to-bank account? Would Zap be the only option for my Airtel phone provider? I finally decided to resurrect an old Safaricom phone since M-Pesa seemed the more widely used option. It’s not hard to set up, just a little time consuming, though for me there were a few reasons to finally getting on with it:

1. I felt like a total idiot and the last person in Kenya who was not only not using M-Pesa but also not fully comprehending how it worked.

2. I discovered that my bank has an arrangement with M-Pesa which means that I can transfer money from my own bank account to M-Pesa by using my mobile phone, then allocate money to pay salaries and bills via my phone too – all from the comfort of my living room (in theory).

Normally with M-Pesa you take cash to an agent who then loads your phone. In my case the plan was to take a two pronged approach: Registering for phone banking at my branch and registering for M-Pesa to avoid physically handling cash at all.

3. The amount of money for combined salaries that I now need to withdraw from the bank each month has become large and too much to do in more than one ATM withdrawal from my own bank. Honestly I felt nervous about carrying that much cash and going into the each bank was a bind. Then there’s the issue of finding the right change, buying small envelopes....

4. There have been accusations of stealing flying around our compound. Not nice. Usually our team at home work so well together but it seems that the fact that times have suddenly got very hard here since fuel and food prices skyrocketed over the past two months has had an impact.

I responded to rising costs by bumping up salaries recently but this seems to do little to alleviate the general stress. One lady lost 9,000/- from her locked room on our compound (I replaced it), another said that somebody had been in her quarters rootling about but had had nothing stolen....yet. Even the askari wants the supplies of tea and sugar I give him under lock and key. I figured the solution was for nobody to carry cash around anymore – and certainly not on this compound. That way our combined risk is reduced – I am no longer involved when money goes missing.

5. I discovered that there are loads of other bills you can pay via M-Pesa, it seemed nuts not to sign up.

6. Our neighbour who is in her sixties has been using M-Pesa for ages. If she could do it what the H*** was my excuse?!



So what happened?

The staff at our house initially resisted the M-Pesa method of receiving their salaries because they complained about being charged a lot for withdrawals. I bumped up salaries again to compensate and asked them to register for M-Pesa. Funnily enough, they were all already registered – been using the system for ages!! Duh!

First I dug out the old Safaricom phone that we had relied on when our land phone line was not working (for a year or so). Since the landline got fixed, this old Motorola has been sitting, gathering dust.

Registering your Safaricom phone for M-Pesa

First I had to check that the sim card in the old Motorola had not expired. I went to an M-Pesa/phone shop. Phew, it hadn’t. Then I bought a new, fairly basic replacement phone. Next I had to register this Safaricom number for M-Pesa. You need ID for this, either passport or an Alien card would do (thank goodness because I had the Alien card in my wallet – never carry my passport!!). The process of registering the phone was okay, the lady in the shop was very helpful. I did have to pop upstairs to do some photocopying for her and the whole process of purchasing a new phone and registering it took a good 40 minutes. Thank goodness it was on a day that there was no queue in the shop.

Registering with your bank for M-Pesa banking

I needed to fill out forms in order to be able to transfer funds to M-Pesa automatically and get my husband to sign them in duplicate (we have a joint account). Then I had to think up a password. Once I had got the forms back to the bank, it took a good week for them to get back to me to say the new system should be in place and to send me a pin.

Problem?

Well first I needed to figure out how the new phone worked, though this was not difficult. The problem was that as soon as I walked into the house with a new mobile phone, my ten year old daughter pounced.

‘Can I have it?’ she asked.

‘No.’

Now, to give you a bit of background, my daughter has been nagging for a phone of her own for at least six months now. She’s doing half hearted chores around the house in the hopes of getting paid and tells me she’s saving for a ‘touch screen’. Callous mother that I am, I know that all the chores in China will not gather enough change for a touch screen – so I was biding my time. Having said this, the nagging had reached a crescendo.

‘Please can you take your plate out.’ (me).

‘Will you give me some money if I take it out and count it as a chore.’ (her)

‘NO!’ (me)

So, when the new phone was hanging about the house and her face was as long as next week, I softened.

‘You can borrow this phone sometimes.’ I said.

She immediately shrieked in delight, attached a Winnie the Pooh phone charm and keyed all her friends’ numbers into the phone.

‘Where is this all going?’ I hear you ask.

Well, a couple of days later when the bank sent me an sms with my private pin number in order to operate my phone banking, and the sms read ‘delete after reading’ – my daughter picked up the message – and deleted it!!

‘There was a message for you’ she said casually. ‘From the bank or something.’

‘What!!’

‘It said delete after reading so I deleted it.’

‘What did it say the pin number was?!” I shrieked, red faced...

‘Something like 5333...but I’m not sure.’

Any-hoo – Quite a huge family argument later, when I was trying to process end of month salaries at the weekend, 5333 turned out to be the wrong pin number. I’ve now applied for a new one now (it is taking time). So, instead of my new fully phone automated system, this month I had to go to the bank (traffic on Saturday was terrible) draw money then deposit it with an M-Pesa agent. The first agent said ‘we don’t have enough float to take this’. Fortunately the one in Nakumatt was happy to take my cash. Then I went home and press, press, tap, tap, all salaries dispatched. Phew.


* there is an M-Pesa scam that my friend told me about.  You recieve a text message saying 'I mistakenly sent you 7,500/- (or whatever), please M-Pesa it back to me!'  Then you receive begging phone calls.  The friend in question was not even registered for M-Pesa so she questioned this, as you can imagine!  She went to an M-Pesa agent who told her that this was known a scam.  Only text messages with M-Pesa written at the top are bona fide - otherwise ignore sms messages like this.

Wintery Nairobi

Nairobi on a grey day

What is with this winter weather in Nairobi?- It feels like July or August at the moment rather than May, with overcast morrnings, drizzle, cold nights with only an hour or two of sunshine at around midday - if we are lucky.

I met someone from the States who came to live in Nairobi for a couple of years to do some voluntary work. 'They lie in all the guide books' she said, '....they said Kenya was hot.'
The lady in question had only packed t-shirts and shorts for her visit.  Time for an emergency trip to the second hand clothes markets to find some fleece jumpers and jeans.

In fact, it's true, Nairobi can be cold.  While anyone who has experienced a dry season here is extremely happy to see that the rain is falling, for foreigners arriving from colder climes, this kind of Nairobi weather can be depressing. 

It's a terrible thing to say but when Kenya is in the midst of the worst kind of drought, conditions are ideal for the tourist who revels in the dust and baking sun - it is Africa afterall.

Because the seasons in Nairobi don't change all that dramatically, we wear the same clothes all year round.   Variations might be 'add a cardigan' or 'exchange shorts/skirt for jeans'. 

The temptation is to wear clothes until they literally fall off our back - I've had numerous 'jeans splitting across the butt' moments.  In England we might put away winter things at this time of year (I have to say, it really is heaven not to have to own an overcoat or thick wool jumpers any more), then I would pull out Spring/summer clothes. 

This seasonal 'clothes exchange' was heathy process because anything that looked too washed out, ripped or damaged would then get binned - resulting gaps in the wardrobe would then provide a great excuse for a 'new season' shopping spree. 

Now I am more lazy.  Here in Kenya, all my clothes are jumbled together in a year round mess.  I find it agony to throw anything away.  I've even repaired the split jeans in the past rather than throw them out!  Do I ever actually ever wear them again with the giant patch? No.

One year my Mum visited.
'That linen skirt is so thin that I can literally see your whole bottom through it.' 
I was gutted. I have to admit that the skirt was bought in the second hand mitumba market - but I loved it, it was a wardrobe staple (I often tied a cardigan or long sleeve t-shirt round my waist to hide the bum) and still I could hardly bare to part with it.  It eventually got re-used for fancy dress when I tacked a union jack over the 'skeleton' skirt fabric - still haven't thrown it away!!

The problem translates to uniform for the lovely ladies who work in our house.  Their flowery skirts and white shirts had to be literally falling apart before they quietly and tactfully mentioned that the uniforms might need replacement (one lady's gathered skirt ripped, almost top to bottom, while she was playing hide and seek with our five year old).  After purchasing more fabric, when I visited the tailor's shop (this place will run up new shirts and skirts for a very reasonable 500/- each), she looked back in her book and confirmed that the last lot were made in 2005!  That's terrible!

A week or so ago, I noticed that my middle daughter's duvet had worn very thin....not surprising after eight years of continuous use.

'Are you cold at night?'  I asked her.
'Not really,' she said.
I added an extra stretchy fleece throw to her bed then forgot about it. 

(I should really invest in proper blankets - oh, for the stylish White Company to open up a branch here rather than be left fending for ourselves, choosing from Nakumatt's finest.)

I let the subject drop for a couple of weeks.  It was my daughter who brought it up again when she said,

'You know that feeling when your feet are cold when you get in bed and then they don't really warm up again all night?'

Gasp.  I was so mortified that we raced straight to Mr Price home, do not stop, do not pass go.   There were 3 types of duvet on offer, I was leaning toward choosing the middle priced product, when my daughter said, 'I really like this one.' pointing at the most expensive.

Of course I bought it - pure guilt. 

My daughter was so pathetically grateful and excited about her new duvet that it nearly brought tears to my eyes.  (Add to this that she was off school because of an ear infection - probably brought about by extreme cold!  She is not on anti-biotics.)

Kenya might be located on the equator so you would expect plenty of sun and for the most part, it is pretty warm here, but don't forget that Nairobi is at an altitude of 1,759m above sea level.  There are cold nights and when the rain falls, unless you are well prepared, the damp (and inescapable mud) creeps everywhere, into your bones almost. 

So when you visit Nairobi any time between May and August, then pack jeans/trousers, socks, closed shoes and a few cotton jumpers/cardigans & scarves (maybe one fleece) - along with your suncream.  There's no need for winter coats, jackets or woollens but wellington boots (available locally) can be a godsend!  By the same token, be prepared to throw off your layers when the sun comes out!

Famous, Rich and in the Slums

Famous, Rich and in the slums

So, I finally watched the above Comic Relief - a two part series filmed in Kibera slum (illegal download - shush..).  It made thought provoking and moving viewing.  I needed a couple of days after watching to let it sink in - and any comment here will sound horribly belated - however:

I thought the four UK celebrities were fantastic.

The premise for the show was that the celebs' belongings were handed over, they were given a bin bag of mitumba clothes and 200 shillings each.  They were separated and spent the first three nights in random locations in Kibera, renting their own rooms.  They had to earn money in order to buy food ie to survive.  The remainder of the week was spent sharing accommodation with one of four Kibera families; orphans, a prostitute, an HIV positive mother of 6 and a recent arrival to Kibera.

Interestingly the one who coped least well was Lenny Henry who is the personality most experienced in fund raising/raising awareness for Comic Relief - but he had the most extreme emotional reaction.  Samantha Womack (Easteenders actress, Ronnie) coped brilliantly with her cockroach incident etc and even managed to make her randomly allocated selection of mitumba clothes look glamorous (how did she wash her hair and is that collagen in her top lip?) - Angela Rippon was marvellously tough and 'can do' about all the challenges thrown at her.  She was determinedly cheerful throughout - even though her hair got so progressively dirty and greasy as the week went on that the camera man tactfully tried to film from her eyebrows down.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8355348/Angela-Rippon-Viewers-dont-care-about-a-presenters-age-or-sex.html  Reggie Yates was incredible.  He blew his first 200 shillings on watching a footie match in a communal bar then bought chips on the way home.  After two hours sleep he found himself doing a stint valiently emptying overflowing latrine pits throughout his first night - and he kept smiling.  He earned 700 bob and said 'this is tons of money!'  Talk about culture shock!

The whole project was organised by a mzungu NGO worker and a 3rd generation Kiberan.  The latter acted as long suffering counsellor to the 4 celebs.  Suffice to say, there were a lot of tears (but well done - no tantrums) all connected with the dilemma of celebs being thrown into an extreme environment by the BBC.  I had to wonder, what were the celebs eating (we saw them with the odd bag of tomatoes and bananas - they also managed to blag a few free meals from the families they met) and what were they drinking?  Did the 200/- really run to mineral water every day?

I think that anyone coming from England would find Kibera or any slum a huge shock to the system, let alone celebrities.  Friends in England said they cried watching the footage.  I've been to Kibera a handful of times and while I don't claim to be any sort of an expert (am sure that I couldn't survive in the slum for a week by any means as well as the celebrities did), the funny thing is (and a point made in the film) is that you od quite quickly get hardened to the dirt, squalor, the smell etc.

On the first visit it is all surprising - you are shocked and swear you will do anything in your power to 'help' or make it go away, but by the second visit you accept a lot more - that this is a buzzing community.  Accompanying first time visitors (Kenyan, Asian or European), you watch their horrified reaction and find yourself thinking, 'oh just shut up and get on with it.' 

What came through strongly in the film was the nobility of the people who live in Kibera.  They are dealing with an utterly hand-to-mouth existence on a daily basis, incredible odds stacked against them - (most notably the lack of any welfare system) -  and yet many still have hope that things will get better by some miracle - however remote.   A funny bit was when the samosa seller told the camera that he felt sorry for Lenny Henry when he spotted the outsider the day before buying bits of food.  Also there were lots of Kenyan style honest commentary about how Lenny was fat.  An orphan found it hard to imagine that Lenny would be able to ride a horse. 

Today, times must be deteriorating even more rapidly in the slum since food and fuel prices have rocketed in past weeks.  On the news today there was announcement saying that it's not even possible to buy maize flour because of a current shortage - another badly handled government planning issue.


On the upside:

I was impressed to see that most people had bed/mosquito nets.

I wasn't shocked by the mitumba clothes and didn't see that wearing second hand was any kind of hardship - after all, I and many others routinely shop there too.

HIV positive people do have access to ARVs

There are various health clinics and NGOs operating in the slum

On the downside - things that angered me:

Primary school aged children are required to pay school fees in spite of the much publicised free primary education.

The pit latrines were beyond horrific and the general lack of infrastructure (a workable sewage system) and utilities (at the very least, clean water) unforgivable.

I felt seriously angry that the 16 year old orphan who lost his father to 2007 post election violence (his mother had died earlier) - still has not had issues addressed by Kenyan politicians who continue to try and sweep the whole horrific period of political unrest under the carpet and are probably never going to be answerable for their crimes.

The improved (as in; away from an overflowing pit latrine that they were formerly living next door to) 3 room accommodation that Lenny Henry generously bought for the orphan family still cost 800 UK pounds for not much more than an informal mud and sticks, a structure on illegal land, paid to goodness knows who.  I assumed that with any luck the eldest boy would immediately rent out two of the rooms and thus build some revenue for himself so that he (and his siblings) could pursue his goal and get to school regularly.

In spite of the huge hype that surrounds Kibera (as opposed to any other of Nairobi's slums) and the huge fund raising that goes on - inexplicably, life for the Kiberan never, but never seems to change.

Sadly, I guess this program will never be aired on Kenya TV

There has been some local newspaper coverage on the program.  Nation columnist Rasna Warah makes a point about 'slum tourism' being on the rise, how she is angered by this new trend of foreigners rubber necking poverty - but I think that in the article she misses the point - I don't think she watched the show.

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Poverty+as+entertainment/-/440808/1129596/-/item/0/-/8tesv8/-/index.html

'Poverty as entertainment: Please put to an end Kibera slum tours'


'For many Kenyans, the film is the worst form of slum tourism because it turns poverty into entertainment in the name of charity.


Kennedy Odede, a former Kibera resident who is currently a student at Wesleyan University in the United States, says that while he understands the need among foreigners to witness poverty, he believes that slum tourism is largely a one-way street: “They get the photos; we lose a piece of our dignity”.'


I actually think that everyone should watch this program - above all (wealthier) voting Kenyans who should be outraged by the poor performance of their government.  Contrary to what foreign press reports would have you believe - not everyone in Kenya is poor.  Victorian London had slums during the industrial revolution, remember this problem was tackled by the government implementing reform, using tax payers money - not handouts. 

So the Kenyan government has failed but, let's remember that there is more than enough foreign aid money flowing into this country to more than adequately address slum issues in Kenya.  Fixing Kibera should certainly not be the concern of the UK tax payer who is being guilted into texting 5 pounds to the Comic Relief fund (enough UK taxpayers money is already going to Africa - sent by the Government in the form of overseas aid). 

May I venture to suggest that all overseas aid consultants based in Kenya should also spend a week living in a slum (with no more than 200 shillings in their pocket) as a sort of 'rite of passage' or initiation into their aid giving jobs.   What do you think?  This might focus the mind better than the trend for ten day 'alleviating poverty - focussing on those who survive on less than a dollar-a-day' workshops held at all inclusive Mombasa beach hotels?  How many are employed at the UN/UNEP Nairobi these days, was it 6,000 or 9,000?

Age appropriate dressing.....

Nigella Lawson in her burkini, Bondai Beach, Australia

Everything tells me that I should abhor the following list which gives the cut-off age for wearing various revealing items of clothing - but, especially since it targets my age group exactly, I actually find it hysterical. 

Interestingly the list was compiled as a result of a UK Diet Chef survey who interviewed 2000 women (not men, as you might assume!)   It must be something to do with British reserve.  Evidently we women are very definitely supposed to grow old gracefully and not embarrass ourselves in the process. 

According to this list, for me, mini-skirts are out, so are boob tubes, leather trousers and belly button piercings.  I must admit, the last 3 are no great loss but I am a bit sore about the mini-skirts - not that I wear them often - but I think that with tights we might be able to extend the deadline to at least 43 don't you?   I did worry about having to cut my long hair at 40, but it seems I now have a reprieve until 53 (as long as I don't tie it into a ponytail after 51). Phew!

The list gets horribly restrictive once you've hit 40 though - and that age is creeping up only too fast for me...  Women - you are harsh!

The age women believe you should stop wearing....

• Bikini, 47

• Miniskirt, 35

• Boob Tube, 33

• Stilettos, 51

• Belly button piercing, 35

• Knee high boots, 47

• Trainers, 44

• Leather trousers, 34

• Leggings, 45

• Ugg boots, 45

• Swimsuit, 61

• Tight vest, 44

• See-through chiffon blouse, 40

• Long hair, 53

• Ponytail, 51

In East Africa conservative dressing is still very much the norm.  Ladies still where petticoats here - very definitely no minis.  Most people would chose oversize clothes rather than tight.  (There are no public displays of affection either - very socially non-u). 

I laughed last night while watching an episode of Silent Witness that was filmed in Zambia - in the story, villagers assumed Emilia Fox in her role as Nicky - was a prostitute because she was wearing jeans...  This might put a whole new complexion on the list!

The Kenya Power and Lighting Company 'Kabila'



KPLC

I used to quite like KPLC. Well ‘like’ might be a little strong but the fact that there is a telephone number you can call when problems arise with your electricity at all hours of the day or night is a good thing.  KPLC give you a reference number and then, by some slim chance, they sometimes tell you why your power is down (for days sometimes). I have always found this reassuring. Okay, so sometimes the lady at the other end puts the phone down on you and that’s when you’ve just managed to get through after the fifty-third attempt, then you get angry...but you know what I mean. The overriding benefit of an emergency number means that there’s a possibility you will get helpful information to ease personal frustration when there's no power or low voltage (ie all your electrical appliances/water heaters are getting burnt out); You might be told; ‘our technicians are working on the line,’ ‘the transformer has been vandalised’ ‘routine maintenance work being carried out’ ‘your power should be restored by this evening’.

Occasionally gangs of electricians turn up in emergency situations and actually fix the problem in a timely fashion.  Heck, I made tea for them when our neighbours felled a tree onto our power lines.

Anyway, this amicable relationship has been tarnished for me permanently since we attempted to take our relationship with KPLC to 'the next level'.  Rather ambitiously, we wanted our power lines re-routed and this time, underground. This was not decided simply on a whim; the fact is that our electricity cables currently run almost over our new swimming pool. Visions of the overhead cable snapping while innocent swimmers get zapped in a pool of death beneath, was my latest recurring nightmare (the nightmare that followed on from the previous 'rotten tree falls on house' nightmare that I used to have - see previous tree cutting post).

The problem is, since starting our 'new' relationship with KPLC, I feel I have been taken for a fool, ‘played’, given the run around. let's be honest - ripped off.

First we needed a quotation to move the power lines. A lone man visited three or four times (usually at odd times at the weekend) and with a wink kept asking, ‘would you like your quotation hand written or typed?’ Guessing that he was hinting at some sort of unofficial/under the table job following the unwritten quotation route and endless repercussions thereafter when things inevitably go wrong, we obviously said ‘typed’ please.  (Obviously we would never entertain the idea of following the corruption route - shudder the thought.  Though it turns out, what mugs we were trying to play it straight!)

Getting the ‘typed’ quotation took around six to eight weeks. When it came the estimated bill for re-routing and submerging our cables almost touched 100,000/- (85,000 plus labour and VAT). Naively we assumed that for this vast price, KPLC would be providing superior armoured cable, possibly upgrading us to 3 phase electricity (from single phase) – so we paid, like fools.

More months ensued. Nothing. I stopped worrying about electricity cables falling into the pool, I almost got used to them as an unsightly backdrop to our new pool area. Life is short.  Then, over Easter weekend, a gang arrived at our house to finally do the re-routing job. They called my husband's mobile, we said we were away (in Meru) so please could they come back when we were home. Next a gang of ten men arrive at the house on the following May bank holiday. They wanted to erect a new pole apparently. There were more discussions over the best route for the new cable. The first plan was for it to traverse the garden but again, I had visions of a gardener some time in the future digging down too deep and hitting a live wire (I know, I know, the cable should be armoured and we would put 'hatari' tiles, but still - it worried me).

Am I boring you yet? Sorry.

So the ten men put in a new pole – this job took about ten minutes. Having wondered why we needed so many to do this simple job, I later found out that ten men turning up on a bank holiday means that they can all put in for overtime. The head KPLC man told us to be ready on Tuesday morning ‘early’ to do the re-routing – or else!  He's a slippery one.

I asked our friendly electrician Jeff (I call Jeff 'Run DMC', when he came over he was wearing a fab Just Cavalli white jacket and matching baseball cap) to come and fix up the conduit for the new cable. As it turned out, this was an enlightening visit. When I complained about how much KPLC had charged us for this relatively simple exercise, Jeff told me a few home truths;

‘In the first place, you should have ‘spoken’ to the KPLC man who does the quoting when he did his initial site visit – if you had given him ‘something’ (not much, even just 500 shillings) he would have provided a far more reasonable quote. This is the way the system works.’

Oh great.

‘But, to make you feel better, that price you paid could be justified, as long as they bring you the proper armoured, underground cable which is expensive. But be warned, their latest trick is to put cheap overhead cables underground.’

Double great.
SO – a week later, last Sunday, at around 1pm the KPLC ‘gang’ arrive unannounced again – this time with cable – cheap, overhead cable. After some frantic phone calls to Jeff and a fairly hostile stand-off, we turn them away without doing the job. The slippery KPLC chap swears blind that this is the right (single core) cable – and it’s the only one they have anyway so it's put up or shut up as far as we are concerned.  Monday morning, we visit KPLC’s Dagoretti branch – they say the same thing – it’s that cable or nothing.

Jeff says, ‘they are crooks – this is what KPLC do to people, they are thieves and cheats’ – he was sweetly getting hot under the collar on our behalf. Our gardener says that KPLC is a very big ‘kabila’ or tribe.

So, after setting out on this exercise 6 months ago, we are 100,000/- worse off and have achieved precisely nothing – except we now have a redundant telegraph pole in our garden. Jeff the electrician suggests we try to get a‘re-quote’ from someone else in KPLC rather than accept a rubbish cable will probably go wrong and be more difficult to fix when it is installed underground. At least – if we have to accept the rubbish cable, we might end up with a re-fund that can be offset against our bills. We need to investigate if this is a possibility.

I’m exhausted.... (as I am sure you are too after reading this...)

Cinderella

Honeymooners

So poor Kate, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge - after her UK mini-moon, she must go back to mopping her own floors in Anglesey after all the excitement of the Royal wedding.  A slight anti-climax perhaps?

One question, what on earth were the ugly sisters doing at the wedding?

ugly sisters

Watching the royal wedding at the high commission was great fun, loved every minute - except for when the forbidding British security man strolled over then asked me BY NAME to look after my handbag (I guess he found my bag in a corner where I thought I'd deposited it safely, then went through the ink stained mess to identify the owner - the shame!), he then later tapped me on the shoulder once AGAIN when the party was winding down expressly to say, 'excuse me, you have to go now, the high commissioner has another engagement to attend'.  

Woe is me.  Will my epitaph actually read; 'always last to leave a party (especially when there's free booze) - sad cow!'

The Disney version

Don't you just love it!!

Kenya's economic roller coaster ride

So, picture the scene, on Tuesday morning (yesterday) in Nairobi; it's been raining heavily, state schools have just reopened, it's the beginning of the month (ie take the car to work as there's a little money in your pocket) and there's a city-wide fuel shortage.  My husband describes this as 'the perfect storm' traffic-wise - ie. more chaos than normal, gridlock on the streets of Nairobi.

We are relieved about the rain since they are late, so we were almost convinced they would not come.  But the fuel shortage is not good.  For the past two days, cars have been queuing up outside any petrol station that has fuel (others are turning customers away) - motorists are queuing for up to an hour to buy petrol, snaking back onto main roads, causing disruption all over town.  Cars have even been left abandoned on the roadside as they grind to a fuel starved halt, adding to the traffic problem. 

One of the reasons that a short lived fuel shortage has such a profound effect is the fact that so many drivers will customarily be putting very small amounts of fuel in their tanks at a time (a couple of hundred shillings or the equivalent of a few English pounds at a time), which I guess might explain why there's a petrol station every hundred metres in Nairobi - drivers must be lurching from one to the next.  This was also true in Tanzania.  I remember getting taxis to and from work; our first stop would always be the petrol station where I would pay an 'advance' or part of the taxi fare direct to the pump attendant, in order for the driver to buy enough fuel to get me a couple of kilometres down the road.  This is how it is in Africa.

Government explanations have been slow or unforthcoming on the current crisis - today they say there's tons of fuel at the main depot but they claim marketeers failed to get organised around the holiday weekend to ensure an uninterrupted supply to the marketplace.  Local news reports that there's no fuel in Eldoret town - chaos there too.  Housewives like me on school runs have been speculating wildly; shortage due to middle east crisis, down to local marketeers holding out for higher prices (fuel prices have rocketed from 70/ per litre to 112/- over a matter of weeks), fuel crisis due to Bin Laden's assassination?!

In fact, the fuel shortage will probably be a storm in a teacup.  No doubt fuel supplies will be back to normal by the end of the week (I hope so, I'm down within my last quarter of a tank) - but what won't change is that the higher price of fuel and as a direct consequence - the cost of basic foods rising, is causing a real hike in the cost of living for Kenyans generally.  This was highlighted in Labour/Workers Day discussions at the weekend.  Teachers are demanding a 200% pay rise in order to make ends meet.  Non tax paying MPs in a bloated cabinet double the size that it should be and corruption filtering down to all levels of society is both galling to ordinary citizens and not a help.  Will society be disgruntled enough to act?  Civil society groups have already staged some demonstrations and more are planned.

Since the government acts with impunity on corruption, it seems that all sorts of other characters are jumping on the bandwagon.  I've heard a rash of stories from friends concerning petty crime recently.  Cheques being tampered with, one audaciously changed words and numbers from 50,000 to 500,000 and the bank actually allowed it through! (I guess they were acting quickly before bank rules officially change on altered cheques being disallowed from 13th June).  There have been building contractors going AWOL with money. 
There was also the story of a bank issuing fake foreign currency/dollar notes stashed within a bundle of real ones, house staff stealing cash from handbags and also even stealing food and cleaning products from store cupboards then reselling them on the street.  Saloon cars with blacked out windows cruising about, following residents through their gates then once inside the plot accessing houses to stealing phones, computers, TVs, cash at gun point. 

While the government promises to enact measures to shield the poor from rising prices (presumably by taxing middle class workers and businesses more), it seems inevitable that, following the lead of the developed world, times are set to get trickier in Kenya for a while.  At least, unlike the West, the growth in the Kenya economy keeps on rising - just hold onto your wallets and watch you back as you enjoy the ride!