[Imc-africa] More update from Nairobi

Thu Dec 21 12:27:59 PST 2006

hi john, hannah at prometheus here.  i just wanted to thank you for this 
incredible logistical update.  i am so excited to learn more from all of 
you in nairobi and in kisumu.

i wanted to ask if people were still interested in talking over IRC
and/or skype tomorrow.  you bring up a number of questions here about 
the budgets for housing and food that we might be able to resolve in 
conversation.  

are people interested in an IRC chat?  folks from prometheus can be on.  
here is a proposed schedule and IRC usage information:

proposed time:
10am eastern daylight
10am in new york city
9am in Minneapolis
5pm in Nairobi
4pm in berlin, germany,
3pm in london, england,
3pm in kano, nigeria.

chat website: http://chat.indymedia.org/
click on "nickname" and type in your name.
Then click "chat".

Note :
Some advice to avoid technical problems if you are using the public
computer or connecting from an internet café, also select software as
"HTML interface-cgiirc"  before clicking chat.

Then type "/join #africa"
Then press Enter
And you'll be in,

Then you can introduce yourself by typing the country and town you 
are logged in from.

thanks very much john, i have a few more thoughts listed below.

hannah s.
prometheusradioproject

On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 05:29:09AM -0800, John Bwakali wrote:
> Dear Comrades,
>
>   I just came back from a 64 hour trip to Kakuma Refugee Camp which is
>   in Turkana in Northern Kenya near the Sudanese border. I could not
>   access internet here and my phone was also off so I was unable to
>   keep in touch from there. Anyway, find below update about this trip
>   and other WSF/Indymedia related issues, both substantive and
>   logistical:
>    
>   Indymedia Kenya Team: As you are all aware, Oloo, Grace and myself
>   are the ones who are known to you at this time. We are however
>   working with a core team that includes Judith and Felix from Maseno
>   university. There are also a number of lecturers, students and
>   community members from Maseno unviersity who will be joining us in
>   Nairobi and will probably end up playing a key role in IMC Kenya. In
>   addition, there is Ann Njoki, the Media Working Group coordinator of
>   Youth Environment Network in Kenya, Brenda and Waeni. These three
>   are volunteers who will work closely with us and assist in
>   logistical issues. I have copied them all on this mail.

it might be good to start to build a contact-info page on the wiki, so 
we can all be closely in touch over the next weeks.  

>   Effective Indymedia in Africa: The report from my trip to Northern
>   Kenya will provide further perspctives on this. Apart from this, IMC
>   Kenya will post more input about this to the wiki.

>  Kakuma Refugee Camp and Turkana community open forums: On 19
>  December, I held informal and small open forums with different groups
>  of refugees from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya. I also held
>  similar meeting with the local Turkana community. This community is
>  mainly pastoralist. The main theme of these meetings was 'information
>  sharing to and from the truly marginalized African communities'
>  Refugees and Pastoralists are without doubt some of the most
>  marginalised communities in Africa and the world. Alternative media
>  can play a key role in ensuring information sharing with these
>  communities. Some of the media through which this can be done is
>  community radio, theatre, newsletters, music and wireless internet.
>  One of the things that we can do when you will all be in Nairobi will
>  be to pay the UN High Commission of Refugees a visit and hold
>  preliminary discussions about the possibility of building a community
>  radio in Kakuma and other refugee camps in Africa. Such a radio
>  station would also serve the Turkana community that hosts the
>  refugees, UNHCR and developmental implementing partners.

i am looking forward to learning more about this!  i wonder if any 
members of the communities that you met with are interested in attending 
workshops at the convergence space in nairobi.

>   Meeting with Kipp: Last week I held a meeting with Kipp, the leader
>  of the tech issues at Kasarani, the venue of the WSF. Some of you had
>  already held online meetings with him and are thus familiar with what
>  they are doing. As Sphinx shared earlier, Kipp and his team are
>  setting up (5 MB) wireless internet at the venue. He talked about a
>  three kilometres radius for the internet and I am still not sure if
>  our guesthouse is covered. But even if it is, the internet will only
>  be available during the WSF and we need to have Internet from early
>  January. Apart from WSF, we also discussed on the possibility of
>  setting up wireless internet in the marginalised parts of Kenya, like
>  Northern Kenya so that communities here can then be a part of the ICT
>  centred Global Village. I will be meeting with Kipp either tomorrow
>  or this weekend to discuss this issue further. We would just like to
>  have a clearer idea of the possibilities and cost implication to
>  facilitate mid and long term planning for IMC Kenya in relation to
>  internet accessibility in rural and semi-arid parts of Kenya. 

is anyone on this list interested in facilitating a discussion/workshop 
at the IMC convergence on community and municipal wireless projects in 
africa?

>   Accomodation and transport: Just to put things in perspective, the
>   cheapest we would be able to get if we didn't have a guesthouse is
>   10 dollars per day per person. Considering that we will be at least
>   40 pple, many of whom will stay for about 20 days, we would then end
>   up spending about 8000 USD on accomodation alone. I think our
>   guesthouse owner has done this mathematics and suddenly become very
>   insistent and hiked his rent to 2500USD including internet. I was
>   not in agreement with this increment and on investigating further, I
>   discovered that he had received offers from other hotels to host
>   their extra visitors. In light of this, I now suggest the following:
>   - let us rent an ordinary house preferrably at Garden estate or any
>   of the two other estates that are near Kasarani sports complex. With
>   the 1300 USD, we should still be able to get a 5 bedroom house with
>   its own compund. Since one bedroom will be taken up with the radio
>   construction, only 4 bedrooms will be available. 30 - 35 pple can
>   sleep in these bedrooms and even living room, with the remaining 10
>   sleeping in tents outside. We had an almost similar arrangement in
>   Dakar and it worked just fine. - in case it will prove tricky or
>   quite expensive to get a house in the Kasarani region, we could also
>   look for a house away from this region. For transportation, we can
>   get some three 12 seaters to transport people to the WSF venue.
>   Before then, we wouldn't need them as we will hold the workshops in
>   the house. Matatus (public mini-buses) can be used by anyone before
>   the WSF. They cost about one dollar to and from the city centre from
>   almost any location that is within a 20 kilometres radius of the
>   city centre. Whichever other house we get will definitely be in this
>   radius.
>    
>   I am therefore working with the volunteers to see if we can get a
>   furnished house near Kasarani so that we can work within the budget
>   of 1300 USD. At the same time, we are looking for houses away from
>   Kasarani so that we can have at least 4 options by saturday evening.
>   We will then share these options with you so that you can make a
>   decision before 27 December. The goal should be to pay for whichever
>   house we settle on before 31 December. There will be receipts from
>   the Landlord for any payments made. I will also avail my car for use
>   through out January. 
>    
>   Food: A cabbage that can feed five people costs about half a dollar
>   (35 Kenya shillings). A loaf of bread costs 30 Kenya shillings, a
>   half a litre packet of milk costs 30 Kenya shillings, one kilo of
>   beef costs 2 USD, one kilo of rice costs 1 USD.... Maybe we should
>   make a draft budget of the food? I just want you to get a picture of
>   this. Ann, one of the volunteers is assisting in this. I will meet
>   with Grace and her later on to work on this further.
>    
>   Hardware purchases to be made in Nairobi: We would now like to get
>   for you quotations for computers, cables and any equipment to be
>   purchased in Nairobi. It will help a lot if someone can get a list
>   of all such equipment. Once we get the list, we will get a volunteer
>   to get different quotations. 
>    
>   List of persons who are coming: It will also be great if someone can
>   prepare this list so that we can plan accordingly about issues like
>   airport pick-ups...
>    
>   I think I will stop there for now. I would like to assure you that
>   all of us here in Kenya are now treating these issues as a priority
>   and you can contact us at any time. My cell phone is +254-792390. My
>   house phone is 254-20-607806. I have asked all the volunteers to
>   also send you their full contact details.
>    
>   Cheers,
>   John Bwak
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
-----

hannah sassaman
prometheusradioproject

building radio stations = awesome
http://www.prometheusradio.org
215-727-9620