This Sunday afternoon I'm waiting away here in Nairobi. We should be heading off to our project site up-country either this afternoon or tomorrow (or Tuesday). It's as usual tough to confirm details like this. Someone who's involved has always got a last minute wedding or a brother from somewhere up-country to attend to....

So I've had an interesting (at least to me) thought here. The big frustration we so-called Occidentals complain about on trying to work here is the casual and sometimes ridiculous way "business" happens here. You set an appointment with someone and he doesn't show for hours. You call and he has left the house (a good sign), alas not for our meeting but for someother elaborately planned operation. Finally frustrated and annoyed after waiting, you head off and find yourself delayed by a traffic back up or some such. Or maybe you struggle to break through this traffic on the way to an appointment. After some noble effort you break through, finding no sign of your contact. After wading through the backup once again, you find him waiting on the original side, where he's been for hours... Anyhow, we all get frustrated about this aspect of life and business on the continent. The oppposite side, though, is the baggage we bring with us. Most of us Occys are very private/proper and that seems to foster mistrust. Also, we have weird habits and that seems to get in the way of clear communications. So, my local friends go to great lengths to accomadate my strange ways and appear to be accepting if skeptical. So I guess theres some kind of quid pro quo of our baggage. (although mine seems to bring less on the open market due to its general smelliness...)

Here's an interesting geo-political update from the only African country in which the US embassy closed due to action in Iraq (not including those who don't have US embassies). The Nation, and also the East African, the two more reputable papers in Kenya, are carrying all sorts of stories about opposition to the war and the newly elected President Kibaki strongly condemns this action of the coalition. Still, every where on the streets and from every African with whom I've talked there is incredible support of the campaign and real hatred of Hussein. (not counting the fact that many folks think I'm US DOD)

The other side of that coin, though, is the Chinese influence. The several Chinese to whom I've talked seem to dislike the use of force as a tool of political change and are openly hostile towards GW. Still they are very excited to meet an American and they go to great lengths to prepare exotic, outlandish stir-fries for what they are convinced is a US Marine...

I'm still hunting for a Synagogue. I did slip up and inquire, while enroute London-Bahrain on GulfAir, if they by chance had any spare kosher meals. Luckily, the attendent was Indian and didn't understand what I asked for... There is a beautiful Mosque here, sprawling and very clean. The muezzin is very quiet and I can't hear him from where I stay on the other side of town. Ironically, the mosque is right next to another large, beautiful building with two NYC-style lions on its front steps - the American McMillan library. There's actually an American university here like the one in Beiruit, although they're currently on break.

So I'm actually staying at a YMCA hostel. It's clean and they offer boiled water service to their guests. Works out that I get a 20 Ksh /day discount (about 30 cents) owing to my special status in the YMCA organization. Still, I don't want to hear anything about the Village People song.  With the addition of the 45 Kg punching bag I made yesterday, it's become a very manly place, oo-rah!

So now for the obligatory language exchange:

Habari ya (si mbaya)/jioni?                  How is (the morning)/the evening?

(Nzuri...)/Pole pole...                          (It's good...)/It's OK. 

Check your letters from 1998, folks.  The Luganda phrase mpola n'pola means "slowly by slowly" or "so-so."  So you can see some of the similarities between Swahili and  Luganda, both Bantu-language based.

Asanti!                                                    Thanks!

Karimbu...                                               You're welcome (also, you're welcome here)

More to come just as soon as I can learn it...

OK.  I hope everybody's well and enjoying the spring. 

Take it easy from Nairobi (for now)
Nick Berg

Prometheus Towers

---

1646

5 April 2003

Lazards @ Simmers

Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi

 

Howdy folks.  I hope this message find you all enjoying the spring if and when it shows its face.  I’m so used to being constantly bombarded (literally, for those AM customers out there) with “hour’s  latest, most up-to-date, weather and traffic reports” that I am a bit shocked to not even know what the weather is like in my beloved Delaware Valley.  At least I have been bombarded with the latest, most popular song around Nairobi sufficiently – “Bomba Train” – on average once every fifteen minutes or so while working on local radio station towers.  For the time I’ve spent on local TV station towers I think I have the “CNN” logo permanently branded on my leg, right along-side the Uchumi slogan (recall from last week’s letter about the East African Wal-Mart) and perhaps the occasional “Yeh Ssebo” beer bottle (Uganda horse-swill roughly translated as “yes sir!”  Anyhow, I hope everybody’s doing well.  For those on this list who are at NAB in Las Vegas I hope you give all of your money to the casino swine and come back with little more than a sun-burn and more confusion about Ibiquity and Digital AM.  Las Vegas in April…  (Sorry, inside broadcast engineer’s joke…)

 

So the last week I’ve been pretty involved with business for Prometheus Towers, quickly becoming the largest and most popular revenue-free tower service company in all of East Africa.  We’ve been to see the Managing Directors, Technical Directors and even some Charimen of just about all of the Kenyan broadcast organizations.  Some of these are multi-country companies, too, so we’ve touched on the Kampala (Uganda) market and even the Dar es Saalam (Tanzania) market.  Mostly I’ve run into considerable interest about upcoming expansions and new stations to be built.  With the departure of what’s-his-name Arap Moi, Kenya’s 25-year popularly selected president, the airwaves have opened considerably and now look more to me like the wild-west days of the early 1900’s in the USA.  It was only in 1997 and 1998 that the first two private radio stations were allowed licenses – until then and even now KBC was the sole (legal) voice and picture of the country.  Now, there are about 10 commercial radio around Nairobi and something like 5-6 commercial TV.  There are also several non-profit type or religious stations which broadcast locally.  Still, the up-county market is still largely dominated by KBC and so this is where most of the large media companies are focusing – we have requests-for-proposals to build at least ten new stations or repeater stations in areas ranging from Kisumu to Mombasa .  Some of these RFQs are to be taken lightly as the request comes from an organization which probably can’t support the expansion, but I’m very confident that four of these ten requests are genuine and will result in actual projects.  That said, there are other competing companies who attempt to do tower work and there are also two reasonably established engineering outfits who do a good job of the transmitter/antenna design and sub-contract the tower work.  It’s probably a 50-50 chance that we’ll land at least one of these projects.  I’ve seen my rates to be competitive for engineering and even for tower work but not, obviously, for mobilization and logistics.

 

There’s no question that we’re one of only two quality tower service outfits in town (excepting the ex-pat firms which are brought in from time to time by the mobile phone market, something we aren’t really exploring.)   There is one local company called Webb Industries which is a very competent, capable design-purchase-build firm that handles a good majority of the mobile business.  Still, they don’t really specialize in broadcast and I think our experience and knowledge about broadcast leaves us on the same footing.  So we’ll see…

 

Interestingly, we just missed a good opportunity to dive right into the shit and build a small tower in Mogadishu for a Voice of America affiliate.  Because this project was for an affiliate and thus not an IBB-run outfit, we did not have an opportunity to bid this through normal US government means.  I met the regional operator for VOA and it seems they have a few projects like this in the works – a stand alone FM in Kampala and one in Addis Ababa, Eithiopia.  I think he’s a good guy to know because he is friendly with and helps wherever possible all of the VOA affiliates in East-Central Africa just like the good folks at ESPN Sports or PA Radio Network help (usually) their local affiliates…

 

Anyhow, that’s business.  We’ve done a few complementary inspections and perhaps two revenue inspection/repair jobs this coming week (in all reality probably not so likely).  We’re also heading to Mombasa on Tuesday to inspect a large array operated by the Department of Meteorology who has regional responsibility to provide weather information broadcasts to the entire Central African, Indian Ocean coast region.  As of right now they maintain sizable SW, HF and some VHF and point-to-point services.  Like everyone else they are attempting to mechanize and transition to satellite, but meanwhile they still have hundreds of towers in the air and a burning stick to their butt owing to the recent collapse of a few…

 

Otherwise, things here are cool.  We went to Meshanani again this last Tuesday for a full day – it’s about a 3.5 hour drive each way but we saved the expenses of hiring a tent and all that.  We got in a good six hours on-site and accomplished quite a lot towards revising the well project.  It’s looking like our best option is going to be using a hand-powered drilling machine rather than attempting to dig a large-diameter hole by hand.  This will substantially reduce the time needed to hit the basement and hopefully still train local folks sufficiently to repeat the process without outside influence.

 

We (me and three of the guys from MERC) also met Anya Guyer, the program officer for AJWS, on Friday afternoon.  She happens to be in Nairobi for some work with other NGO’s with which AJWS is involved.  It was strange but very pleasant to meet someone with such similar ideas after weeks of “Mzungu buy me bread” and of my Maasai friends shaking their heads humorously as I mangled their language.  Mahta enya maali…

 

So last night was the first Friday in months when I was actually in-town (i.e. not on a job-site) and new where the synagogue was.  There is a beautiful Orthodox synagogue in Nairobi, apparently built or at least sanctioned by one of the Governors of the East African Protectorate in something like 1912 (read off one of the cornerstones).  It’s a good size building in a well-fenced compound which serves a small (50 permanent) Jewish population in Kenya.  It’s also orthodox meaning I was totally clueless without the grammatical transliteration I use at “cheater” services for us who can’t read Hebrew.  It was still extremely nice to visit and I met some very interesting people.  I was actually the (unexpected) tenth adult male when I showed up and so, I guess, the only reason the heart of the service could proceed.  I felt kind of phony though, because I was greeted with a sort of relieved “finally/let’s get on with it/soups on” handshake as my jean-clad figure crossed the Mezuzah (sp?)…

 

Otherwise we’re planning to go to Mombasa Tuesday and Wednesday to do some inspection repairs and we’ll probably swing by Meshanani one more time if my new toy arrives.  I have this strong desire to visit this new station in Mogadishu and am very tempted since the bus ride only costs about US$25 each way and there isn’t, needless to say, a very strong visa-contigent at the Somali border right now.  We’ll see.  It’s apparently very stable right now and the VOA guy I met had just returned when I saw him with all ten fingers.  I may leave my kippah behind…

 

Here’s a brief list of mixed Kiswahili and Maa phrases:

 

Kiswahili:

 

Hapanafanya                               It’s not working

Haifanyi                                       Don’t do it Ibiniyini                                       What’s this?

Anti?                                           Pardon? (same in Luganda)

Aya…                                          Yes, uh-huh

Akuna matata                             There’s no problem.

Tulia…                                       Keep it cool, calm down

Ny yako?                                     and you?

 

Haraka                                       Quickly

Twa zienda                                 We are going (in Nairobi slang, dancing)

Kupewa tunapewa                    We have been given

 

(These last three taken from the smash hit Bomba Train, a dance song mostly in Kiswahili.  There’s even some rapping in Kiswahili. Alas, the author died two weeks ago in a car accident, another one-hit-wonder.)

 

Tafjadhali piga maji baada ya haja ndogo aukubwa. 

I’m not so sure about this one, but based on context I think it’s roughly equivalent to “If you sprinkle when you tinkle be a sweety and wipe the seaty…)

 

 

Maa:

 

Mahta enya maali                         there’s no problem Kakuyia sopa                               Formal respectful greeting to a real elder (i.e. older          than everybody else) Eiro sopa                                     There’s no consensus on this one.  Jacque, Motto Tours secretary and my most reliable source for spelling and pronunciation says it’s a general hello to someone in your age group but not in your village.  The idea is that you are gently putting them down by acting as if you are not sure they’ve been circumcised  (i.e. passed through the warrior ceremony) and therefore they’re something like a grown child.  I think.  Other people tell me it’s just if you truly don’t know and only for folks younger than you or your own age.  Whatever – it’s definitely not appropriate for someone older than you.        

 

OK, I’ve got to vacate this computer and head back out onto the Saturday streets.  The favorite past-time of many of the market hawkers has been to figure out my occupation.  They started as “hey John” assuming I was USMC.  Then one day they saw me in my lifting boots still slathered with paint from WMAL and they moved to “hey John, you are a painter, sawo, you paint very well, sawo.”  Today I only had my green notebook and I think they took me for a student.  It’s a shame that my Kiswahili is not up to conveying sarcasm just yet.  It’s not really beyond a “Hi, goodbye, where’s the toilet, let’s go (home, not let’s go to the toilet) “ level.  I have secured a short book of Maa proverbs (some hauntingly familiar to certain Yiddish expressions I can remember reading) and am going to concentrate my language learning efforts on Maa when I return.

 

Best wishes and  howdy from Nairobi.  See everybody soon…

Nick Berg

Prometheus Towers

---

Back to Nick Berg

Man is more than fire tamed...