Friday, January 10, 2014

Safaricom Revisited

Sometimes blogs come in handy for the blogger.  A Friend, Marianne Baker, advised us in an email that we need not have gone through the trauma we went through purchasing and registering new SIM cards as I described in an earlier post.  She told us that we can reactivate the old expired cards simply by adding some air time.  Live and learn.

The Second Worst Bus Ride in the World – Kakamega Here We Came

The Kenyan government has banned all night travel by busses and certain other public service vehicles.  This along the opening of schools this week has magnified the congestion in the morning at the bus terminals.  The government also instituted rigorous monitoring of arrival times at various points along the cross-country bus routes.  If a bus gets to a way-point or final destination too early, this is taken as de facto evidence that the driver was speeding.  To get around this, the busses don’t seem to travel slower but they just leave the starting point later.  Our bus, which was scheduled to leave at 9:00 AM and normally leaves sometime before 9:30 left the terminal at 10:35.  This delay apparently gave the driver license to go over the bone and kidney jarring roads as fast and aggressively as possible.  We have never completed the 250 mile trip from Nairobi to Kakamega in less than 9 hours.  Yesterday it took 8.  And this is over the same cratered and sometimes unrecognizable “roads” as before.  It makes me consider flying.

I Had a Dream

Those of you who know me well know that I am a practical no mumbo jumbo person.  So the sad dream I had last night surprised me.  I dreamed, I really did, that there is a card about the size of a credit card that allows you to make anything you want for free just by holding it next to a companion card and thinking of what you want.  You can’t make living things but you can make a truck, a meal, money, anything inanimate, including more cards with the same powers.  The catch is, if you lose your card everything you made, including the other “magic” cards you made disappear and are lost forever.

The first such card and its companion card were given to a man about 50 years ago.  He immediately made everything he wanted or needed.  He also made additional cards that he gave to some of his friends.  They made all they wanted including additional cards that they gave to their friends, and so on.  Eventually, nobody in his village had to work for anything.  Everybody had the cards and was happy.  Everything came from the cards.

You guessed it.  Just a couple of years ago the man lost his card even though he had been very careful never to do so.  Everything he had made with it was lost immediately.  Of course, this included all the cards he had given to friends and all the cards they had given to their friends, and so on.  Everybody lost everything they had made with the cards – which was everything!

That’s not even the sad part.  Everybody had become so dependent on the cards that they were unable to make anything themselves and they all died.

Friendly Water for the World

We met with Eric Lijodi from Friendly for the World today (Friday) at the Golf Hotel. We listened to his evaluation of our program for supplying BioSand water filters for the widows and some schools.  Specific successes (the majority) and problems were discussed.  Overall program has been a success but there are still 10 widows or so who need further encouragement and instruction.   David Ashmosi was also at our meeting and will help Eric by mobilizing his youth group to help those widows who require remediation.   The program moves forward.

Went Shopping Today

We bought tea, sugar, salt, laundry soap, Tip Top, peanut butter, cooking fat, matches, matches, and biscuits to give to each lady at our annual celebration.  We’ve a small shoulder bag and a pair of shoes for each lady too plus reading glasses for those need them.  However, we must always be careful not to supply magic cards.