urn:mashada-com:feeds:atom Mashada Blogs » June 29, 2009 2009-11-21T06:00:22-05:00 http://lovelymoney.blogspot.com/2009/06/netbook-is-new-laptop.html 2009-06-29T23:08:00-04:00 2009-06-29T23:08:00-04:00 http://momaalim.blogspot.com/2009/06/embarrassment-is.html 2009-06-29T17:15:00-04:00 2009-06-29T17:15:00-04:00 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/Kumekucha/~3/swLf3lul4f8/muthaura-health-key-to-kenyas-progress.html Taabu 2009-06-29T16:00:00-04:00 2009-06-29T16:00:00-04:00
Head of Civil Service and Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Muthaura has been admitted a door away from ICU. It wouldn’t have come at a worse time when Kenya is in dire traits and chronic need of Muthaura’s able hands. Almost 70 years old and close to five decades in government, very few Kenyans can match ambassador Muthaura's experience.

The need for REFORMS can only be shepherded by Muthaura’s tried hands. He knows the government inside out. What is more, he has the boss’ ears. Many neophytes in the GCG may hate him for his fidelity to protocol. But serikali is no civil society and none of these activists can hold a candle to the veteran ambassador.

Our sensational newspapers must spare PS Muthaura more headache. Whether he was hospitalized last month or yesterday morning is immaterial. These alarmist reporters fail to understand the enormity of the national burden Muthaura shoulders on our behalf. They even shamelessly fail to glimpse the gravity of the mater when police boss spends five hours at the hospital hosting Muthaura.

10 years work, no leave
You see Major Ali needs alloyed guidance to stop thugs in Juja from petrol-bombing houses when owners refuse to open their doors to allow unhindered looting. Add that to the explosive Mungiki-vigilante executions and you have to sympathize with Muthaura's predicament in this sick status.

The press must learn to respect top government officials who discharge their duties under great pressure. You fail to understand why they doubt Dr Mutua’’s official statement that Muthaura BOOKED himself in hospital on Sunday. He must know better.

What more can unforgiving and unappreciative populace ask for besides a 70-year old working for more than 10 years without leave. After offloading our collective national stress on Mzee Muthaura he is now smarting from chemical imbalance in his body. True, rewards from an ungrateful donkey are fatal kicks.Kumekucha

]]> http://thegaykenyan.blogspot.com/2009/06/weekend-goss.html 2009-06-29T14:03:00-04:00 2009-06-29T14:03:00-04:00 cock infamy) just rang to tell me about her weekend. She had a date with this new guy and they were having drinks canoodling at a popular hideaway near Athi River early Saturday evening. A small world away everything was going well, the mano was giving her the look that means today is today not tomorrow and making her feel all tingly from the back of her knees to her ears. Sue knew the deal was signed, sealed, delivered she was his but the spell was broken when a scraggy woman claiming to be wifey showed up in a gaggle of 3 other angrier females. Sue describes the wife as looking like a little rat with a tattered sack for a weave.

Anyway seems the guy didn’t have the balls to go with the promised cock he was meekly dragged away by the wife however not before downing his three-quarter Pilsner which Sue ended up paying for; in consolation at least she got a refund for the room. There was no biting or scratching or even spitting just some bone-breaking name-calling and credit to baba-watoto (baby-father) he managed to mouth ‘I’ll call you’ to a mortified Sue. All very civilised. Sad bit is that when shocked Sue went home to her flat, the electricity was out so she had a cold bath, brushed her teeth and lay alone in her darkened bedroom shivering in bed feeling humiliated and sorry for herself.

After all that her date called the next day to ask Sue if she was free and could he come over. His story is the other woman was an ex who’s a bit demented. Yeah right and they are all innocent in prison, la la la la la I’m not listening to you. Sue just said better you stay with your crazy ex if you come near me again I’ll cut your balls off.

Aaargh men! ]]> http://bankelele.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-get-m-pesa-refund.html 2009-06-29T10:31:00-04:00 2009-06-29T10:31:00-04:00 and other Safaricom tales

M-Pesa mistake: I interacted with two products over the weekend from Safaricom: One is of course MPesa from Safaricom (Kenya’s largest mobile company), the money transfer system that has been the talk of the remittance and mobile banking world; but what should be a Kenyan success story, is a Vodafone (UK ) tested, developed, and rolled out here as a Safaricom licensee. There was quite a bit of discussion of that at the mobile for change summit on Saturday in Nairobi, but that’s for another day.

My M-Pesa tale is one that many of the 6 million registered users have probably experienced. You go to a pharmacy/cyber café/supermarket and pay a Safaricom agent your money to load you phone up with funds (up to Kshs. 35,000 or ~$450) and zap it off to pay for anything – grandma’s medicine, farm inputs, auto spare parts, satellite TV, etc. the list of MPesa uses is growing

You then wait for a few seconds and get a confirmation message of the transfer, only to discover that you have sent the money to the wrong recipient! Somewhere in Kenya, there was a lady with an unexpected month-end bonus from an anonymous donor. Common rare courtesy calls for one to refund the money, but #$%* did not answer my calls.

It appeared that I would not be able to persuade her to refund my money and so I wrote it off as money lost. I went back to the same agent, and paid money again and sent it off to my aunt, this time with the correct number.

I was till mad and went on to @Twitter ranting and raving that I had sent the wrong person my money and that #$%* had probably gone on a celebration spree as some idiot had sent her a weekend bonus. But on twitter my prayers were answered - by @69MB (who’s traveling in Tanzania) and @Ngeny who sent tweets back, that I could halt that transfer unless #$%* had already withdrawn the money.

Next, I rushed and called the dreaded (always busy) customer service line at Safaricom (#100) to try and get my money back. After a dozen attempts I got through and was asked to call another line at Safaricom (#234). This one was even busier, but I eventually got through to a gentleman, and I explained the error I made. He asked several questions - my name, intended recipients number, amount sent, number wrongly sent to, my birth date etc. I had all the answers and was every relieved when he said that my money would be refunded within 72 hours. EDIT (uhusiano add that there is an Mpesa Customer Care dedicated line 0722002200)

Oh and about a ½ hour after I finished with Safaricom #$%* tried to call me, perhaps she had raced to agent to withdraw her booty only to be told that the transfer had been held up. I was courteous enough not to answer her call and yell at her

So I now have my money back (still in my phone) and I’ve learnt, thanks to Twitter, and Safaricom, that it’s possible to get an M-Pesa refund

EDIT official advice from Safaricom

If you send money to the wrong number:
- Call Line 234 immediately and provide them with the number that has erroneously received the cash.
- Funds sent to a wrong number will be reversed only if still available in the wrong recipients account.
- If successful, you will receive an SMS indicating that a reversal has been done

Micro air-time loan : The other Safaricom product I tried to use was Okoa Jahazi (rescue a sailor in Swahili? – someone correct me) (Okoa Jahazi literary means save/rescue a ship/boat/dhow in Swahili) which works on the premise that you may be stranded somewhere and need to maker an emergency call but don’t have money or are not in a place where you can buy an airtime voucher to complete the call.

Okoa Jahazi is a 50 shilling ($0.65) airtime voucher, almost a micro-loan, which you can request from Safaricom by typing a simple code. It’s not free and will be deducted the next time you purchase a similar voucher. It also attracts a 10% levy, so you get just 45 shillings.

I requested the voucher, as an experiment and made some calls. I then bought a replacement 50 shilling voucher which paid off the micro-loan from Safaricom. But I had a bit of difficulty after that; I could not call a rival network (Zain, Orange) or browse the internet, using the borrowed airtime – it was strictly for making calls to other Safaricom users. So I had to buy another voucher, to get my credit up and out of my micro-debt. This comes when you don’t read the fine print. Anyway it’s a useful service, but one that should only be used for emergencies.

Summary: So we have two products form Safaricom. One I have used several times, and will probably use again, one that I hope I will not have to use again (emergency only). The rules are quite clear, but few read the fine print of the offers made by service companies. It makes sense that the micro-loan is restricted to minimal emergency functions, but it would also be nice of Safaricom to inform their (6 million) MPesa users that it is possible to get refunds from M-pesa. If I was not on @Twitter I’d have lost a lot of money ]]> http://kenyacricket.blogspot.com/2009/06/open-letter-to-icc-regarding-kenyas.html 2009-06-29T09:45:00-04:00 2009-06-29T09:45:00-04:00
I write regarding the recent decision to strip Kenya of hosting rights for the 2010 Under 19 World Cup.

Please can the report/reports given to the ICC regarding this decision be made public. Mention was made in the ICC press release concerning this that "regular reports to the ICC Board" were made. If this is correct, why was the issue not raised publicly in time for Kenya to bring preparations into line with ICC expectations? Please also release these documents for public scrutiny.

What were the specifics of Kenya being deemed unable to host the event? If there are genuine concerns, the ICC should be able to produce a list so that the Cricket Kenya has a chance to publicly address each concern. If the concerns cannot be addressed, this decision might at least be understood of not liked. If they can be addressed then there must be the basis for an investigation as to why this decision was reached.

Was it due to pitch quality? - last we were informed on this (May 11th) was that much progress had been made since the previous inspection in April and there were no undue worries. Given the time between now and the tournament plus the growing conditions in Kenya, there would be ample time for pitches to be brought up to top quality.Several of the pitches to be used already hold ODI status, and given that none of these have had their status revoked, the ICC must still be happy with their quality.
For things to have turned around so drastically in the short space of time since seems very peculiar as does the claim that there is not enough time to rectify the situation.

Is it infrastructure of buildings at the venues or roads etc? Once again, 8 months is a very long time in terms of preparing these and should there have been warning before this decision, it is likely that the Kenya government would have been able to intervene to ensure deadlines are met. Almost all the venues to be used already have existing facilities which could be brought up to scratch well inside the 8 months remaining.

When did New Zealand "offer to host the tournament"? It seems highly coincidental that they just happened to be ready with their offer as Kenya were stripped of hosting rights.

Why has Kenya not been given an ultimatum to reach a particular state of readiness by a certain date rather than suddenly losing the hosting rights without warning? If this did happen, why was it not made public?

What were the affiliations of the persons involved in presenting the report to the ICC?

In summary. the reason given in last week's press release for the stripping of the Under 19 world Cup from Kenya does not stand up. Eight months is ample of time for preparations to be completed and for Kenya to put on a fantastic event. I daresay that given the opportunity, they could certainly at least match the debacle that was the senior World Cup last held in the West Indies.

The ICC has made much of its supposed support for growing the game of cricket outside of the Old Boys Club that is Test cricket. How does it justify that aim in light of this recent decision that has cost one of the strongest Associates upwards of $150 000 - a huge amount of money in terms of an Associate nation's budget, not to mention revenue lost from no longer hosting the event and the incalculable loss that comes from losing an amazing opportunity to promote the game to the Kenyan public.

Kenyan cricket fans have had to put up with much over the last few years, the least they are owed by the ICC is an open and detailed explanation as to why this event that would have done so much good for the growth of cricket in the country has been snatched away from them. We look forward to an honest and transparent explanation.

copied to local and online mediaBecome a fan of Kenya Cricket.com on facebook: [www.facebook.com] ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KenyaImagine/~3/XxuLotVgm4Y/somalia-for-and-against.html 2009-06-29T09:31:00-04:00 2009-06-29T09:31:00-04:00 view is that there's no reason to intervene in Somalia: Al-Shabaab is a Somalian matter - an internal armed insurrection which is no concern of ours - which Kenya lacks the mandate to handle. Henry Gekonde thinks there are strong pragmatic reasons to intervene, that an intervention would have public support, and that the mandate is available if the action is an African Union matter. ]]> http://rugbykenya.blogspot.com/2009/06/kenya-cup-week-3-and-league-standings.html 2009-06-29T08:26:00-04:00 2009-06-29T08:26:00-04:00 http://storymojaafrica.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/long-live-the-king-michaels-lesson-for-the-artist/ Storymoja Africa 2009-06-29T08:19:15-04:00 2009-06-29T08:19:15-04:00 ]]> http://www.stonecoldhaven.com/2009/06/god-was-kind-to-michael-jackson/ Darius Stone 2009-06-29T07:02:39-04:00 2009-06-29T07:02:39-04:00