It is Sunday... Time to Relax a Bit

The cell phone charles gave us worked quite well last night. Despite having no credit or ability to call out, we were able to receive a call with no problem. You only pay on your outgoing calls here in Kenya. Celtel is the originating company that began offering cell service here in Kenya and Safaricom is providing competition now, apparently just recently approved as a public IPO deal. (see this blogger's comments and here is another article about safaricom)

Tomorrow we head off on a dream, once in a lifetime safari with Kicheche. We will be staying at the Mara camp if you wish to get a feel for our locale and it supposedly 'the great migration' time - wildebeast migration! We leave in the morning to take a small airplane to the Masai Mara reserve where we will be transported to our tent facilities and go on our first exploration. We will take our cell phone and hear that we should have service of some type. Blogging will probably be minimal, however, as we won't have the modem with us that we have been using here at the farm. We stay for 3 nights and return to the farm on thursday.

Yesterday was an extreme polarity reverse from visiting Eastleigh and Mathare valley on Friday. After making some excellent progress in getting two distant centers to 'talk' to each other, we went to town with the Coulston's. Darlene kept assuring us that the 'shortcut' we were taking (i don't know how it can be called a road) in their Toyota Land Cruiser (80's model) was ONLY a kilometer and a half and was very well worth it. Needless to say, we soon found ourselves driving on well paved roads, passing extrodinarily extravagant embassy housing and pulling into the 'Java House', a coffee/internet/restaurant. While the internet was actually slower than the farm when we were there, we enjoyed wonderful food, great coffee and some traditional chai tea. Following the Java House, we visited a lavish market center with a WalMart'esque store called Nakumat. We bought groceries, Darlene picked out some paint for the new house and we roused Charles about his recent application for medicare. :)

The gap between where we were in the slums the day before and what we experienced yesterday is too big to describe, but amazingly enough, Eastleigh was simply just down the hill from the main embassy road - literally less than a kilometer away.

Cell Phone Service in Nairobi and Kenya: Traveling and Tourist Advice

Ok, my original plan turns out to be quite good. Charles had a spare phone so we didn't need to buy one, but you can buy a phone for around $30. Pre pay service is the standard, you pay by the second, and you do not pay to receive calls.

This means it is easier for people in the states to get calling cards and call your temporary cell phone number. $100kshil (kenyan shillings -about $1.50 US) got me a little over a minute of talk time from here to the US. I'm out of credit and waiting to see if I can receive a call (which I am told I will be able to)

We'll buy some more credit before going on safari Monday, but are stuck with none for the evening. Our number until we leave Kenya is: 011-254738423834 (the 011 is the country code)

We will have this cell phone on us until then. We did find out that some calling cards do not list Kenya on them so you would want to be sure to get cards in the US that allow calling to Kenya.

Hope this helps out some future travellers!!

We are here!

Just a quick note for now - we'll try to get some pictures up tonight...

We made it - withOUT our luggage - but I fortunately have enough clothes for Darren, Emily AND myself for now. ;)

I ran 5 kilometers with a group of 12 boys today (AT 1700meters!!!... huff, huff, huff), played soccer, recorded 30 minutes of High Def audio at a morning church service, started building relationships with the kids, etc, etc. Every hour feels like a days worth of experience that is crammed into my mind. What a WONDERFUL place to be.

We have a laptop in our room with a cellular internet connection now, so we'll hopefully be able to get going with our postings. It is still very slow... (Sam, the Eee PC won't accept ANY peripherial connections except for the webcam... no go so far and I'm going to have to try to reinstall XP as it looks like an install issue - the modem is USB and won't install!!)

We're going back down to the boys living area right now to continue some fellowship. We have 4 iPods going and two splitters and they are having a hay day listening to music and watching videos. Just like kids in Irving, they pic up on the technology really, really fast.

More later...

What Will We Be Doing, You Ask?

Um... Well... We THINK that one thing we will have the opportunity to do will be to work with both kids and faculty on how to teach using their computer facilities. Just like we try to model here in Irving ISD, we've thought about how to walk through some sample lessons that encourage kids to think and that empower them through the use of technology. So, one hope is to use the digital cameras that we're taking to teach a PhotoStory lesson. Something like this:

Thinkfinity PhotoStory Lesson

Overview
Students are introduced to concepts of social justice, such as diversity, tolerance, equity, and equality, through a literary text, class discussions, and guided research. Students plan a service-learning project, then work in small groups using Photo Story software to produce a multimedia presentation designed to foster community support for the project. Students also use the ReadWriteThink.org Printing Press to create informational flyers about the project. The lesson concludes—and the service-learning project begins—with a showing of the Photo Story productions for parents and other community members.

Instructional Plan
Preparation

1. Download Photo Story 3. Familiarize yourself with the Instructions: Using Photo Story 3 to Create Persuasive Slide Shows handout, and practice the steps involved so you can demonstrate the process to students. You may also wish to refer to Create Your First Photo Story. Make a copy of these instructions for students.


2. Bookmark the Persuasion Map and the ReadWriteThink Printing Press on your classroom or lab computers. Familiarize yourself with these tools and be prepared to assist students, particularly if the class has not used them previously.


3. Decide how you will gather images for the Photo Story slide shows and make the necessary arrangements for these activities [e.g., an Internet search for appropriate images (Session 5) or a field trip to take original photos (Session 6)]. If you plan to have students conduct an Internet search, bookmark any search engines and Web directories you would like them to use on your classroom or lab computers (see Search Engines and Web Directories in the Resources section).

... The lesson goes on and on (you can see it on the main page) and it will require some quite obvious modifications. I chuckle thinking about showing these kids a video from street kids in San Diego - considering that they come from the streets of Nairobi. Maybe we could help them make their own video of themselves/their lives?

At any rate, this is really doable with what we'll have access to. I'm curious to see what they will come up with.

Figuring Out Communications

So, one of the things that I have been trying to 'research' is how to best communicate while in Kenya for almost a month. There isn't a whole lot that I've found, so I'll be sure to post exactly how we go about it when we get there.

The above statement assumes internet connection and it looks like internet cafe's are running about $1 and hour. The unknown is in the connection speed, if we'll be able to connect our Eee PC to wireless and use it (to upload photos and use the webcam) or if we'll be able to use the assumed dial-up connection at the facility. We'll find all that out in just a few days...

Here is our plan for now:

* Take a low-profile, flash drive based computer with Windows XP and 802.11x wireless capabilities. If we can get online with this device (wireless hotspots) we will be able to IM, use the webcam and post entries to the blog. The plan is to use MSN messenger and SKYPE to communicate with folks back home as much as possible.

* Purchase a CelTel cell phone when we get to Nairobi and put some prepaid minute on it (probably $60 worth). I expect the phone to cost about $30 and $60 worth of minutes (with an international calling card) should give us enough for emergency purposes. CelTel has the best coverage in Kenya. I'll also locate a number for the police in Nairobi to have on hand. Having a cell phone will additionally give folks back home a way to call us directly in case of any emergencies.

* Our last means of communication will be through the MITS facility. Located outside of Nairobi, we should have phone access and possible low-speed internet. While we may not be able to post as many pictures as we would like, we should at the very least be able to write.