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Blantyre photos

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Busy roads

I started off in snowy Zurich with some delay. There was a long and slow queue of aircrafts waiting for de-icing. The transparent and open explanations by the Lufthansa captain, at the beginning and throughout the delay, were great – a lesson in communications. In Munich the entire airport was in quiet mode due to Christmas Eve celebrations. After another de-icing session, the plane took off for Joburg. I sat next to a young South African student who is studying medicine in Warsaw. Made for an interesting conversation. After a smooth flight, I learned that my flight to Blantyre was already boarding. No time to stock up on books and magazines at my favourite airport book store. I was the second last person to board the plane. And the first to go through customs at Chileka airport, cos my bag was the first on the conveyor belt.

Driving towards Blantyre on Chileka Road, my eyes rested on the familiar mountain outlines of Ndirande and Michiru. It has been raining regularly and everything is green.

In the afternoon on Christmas Day, I took part in a Christmas carol service at Chombo Children’s Home in Chirimba. Afterwards my mom presented gifts to the 47 children that live at Chombo. This year all children received a school bag filled with books and sweets.

BTW, I have become the unofficial official photographer of Chombo. Snapshots from my previous visits are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/chombo-mission/sets/.
I spent the next couple of weeks shopping for Chombo, driving sick children to hospital, helping out with simple admin tasks.

I persuaded my mom to try a TNM USB mobile internet modem, since her current email via telephone dial-up is unreliable and slow. Downloading 451 kB takes over 8 minutes:

waiting for 451 KB to download…

And many of her European and American and South African contacts don’t reduce the size of their attachments, sending their photos in original size. Because we have fast flat rates. Internet is ubiquitous.

Please consider my previous blog post on re-sizing images. Many people in Malawi pay lots of US$ for every kilobyte and megabyte they receive. Many connect to the Internet via their smartphone.

Or don’t have any connection for days.

By chance I read Vincent Kumwenda’s “Letter to the Editor” in The Nation:

I wonder how much the re-branding from Celtel to Zain to Airtel has cost / will cost.

I managed to read three novels. And I enjoyed listening to BBC radio. One particular interview with the actor Michael Caine impressed me. Caine described how many fellow actors tried to discourage him, how he was physically sick before going out on stage, and how he met his wife. He referred to a Winston Churchhill quote:

If you are going through hell, keep going.

I need to add BBC to my podcast lists.

My dad has two young mischief puppy dogs that love to play and chew and jump.

The flight back was uneventful. I sat next to a lady from Oslo that had visited Plan projects in Zimbabwe. She was quite impressed and thinks Zimbabwe will mend fast.

My contributions to the Chichewa group on Flickr.

My contributions to the Malawi group on Flickr.

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Back from Blantyre

Before long I was explaining how I was fascinated by the power of blogs and Twitter and the possibility they offer to bypass the gatekeepers who decide which media content you are supposed to consume. In my casem blogs and Twitter help me circumvent traditional Western euro-centric media with their pre-set opinions on Africa to learn about news in Blantyre.

The story of Nchenga at Chiperoni.ch is hidden in this blog:

My initial idea when I set out was to help cross the digital divide and point to content about my home country, Malawi.

Example of the power of blogging: During the last General Elections in Malawi, Alex at the Polytechnic helped to keep us informed by posting regular information and allowing Malawians to comment. In general, blogging has increased the amount of direct infos available on Malawi in the Internet.

Why use the nom de web Nchenga and why is my blog called Chiperoni?

No real reason except that I set up this blog shortly after a visit to Blantyre:

Chiperoni is a kind of drizzle rain in the Shire Highlands. Nchenga or mchenga means “sand” in Chichewa. Shortly before I set up my new blog, I heard a TV talk show in Blantyre, where people were complaining about bad TV reception. One lady called the show to say “All I can see is nchenga nchenga”. i.e. it means something like “blurry image”…

Somehow I felt “blurry image” describes my blogging adventure and cos it also means “sand” I was happy.

I am enthused by the sound of words.

Chiperoni describes the weather here in Europe. And it sounds like home.

Did you know? I am one of the admins of the largest Malawi photography group ever. And I maintain a list of Malawians on Twitter.

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Nom de web: Nchenga

Try entering Mchenga.

Select Chichewa/Chinyanja to English

Click Translate

mchenga 1.sand; maziko ena onse npamchenga = all other foundations are on sand (see: hymn 362, Nyimbo za Mulungu); expression: walemba pamchenga (lit.: you have written in the sand) = you’ve wasted your time; expression: kugwetserana mu mchenga (lit.: throwing one another on the sand) = reconciliation;

Read more at Clement Nyirenda’s blog

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Online dictionary for Chichewa

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HHI school hall

We need to stop underestimating people. Don’t expect Africans to be content with boring old SMS and voice for long. Smartphones, droids and even iphones are much higher up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than we realize, especially if nobody around owns a computers, your schools suck, and the government controls the radio and newspaper. Africans have leapfrogged over landlines. They are now leaping over laptops.

(Desperate housewives, lonely on their isolated farms, also surprised the world by being the early adopters of the strange world of cranks and dials and operators that made up the original telephones of the 19th century)

@bikobiko posted a series of cell phone photos used by Community Health Workers in Malawi. One guy paid 8 bags of rice.

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Technology Leapfrogs

In search of the best Internet connection in Blantyre
To connect with my MBA study group, I needed an internet connection. Here are some of my findings and observations regarding Internet for private use.

Internet service providers in Blantyre include:

• Skyband – the pricing is on the high end; suitable for corporate customers.
• MTL
• Globe
• SDNP

Mobile phone networks offer data services as well:

• Zain – a friend connects to the mobile Internet on his iPhone using Zain.
• TNM

First, I tried TNM, but unfortunately they did not have any USB dongles in stock at the Chichiri sales office.

Next I tried Globe’s MAX 4G service. This promised the best connection speeds, but unfortunately the reception in my part of Blantyre was less than optimal. Instead of 4 LEDs lighting up, I only got between 2 and 3. And even then, the router showed a high fluctuation in signals. I kept losing my Skype audio connection when the signal dropped. When I got a strong signal it was speedy. But – due to my geographic position – the signal strength was unpredictable. I contacted Globe support and they wanted to update the firmware of the router and stated that they were some problems with Skype, which they had resolved.
If you don’t need audio or video streaming and if coverage in your area is good, then Globe MAX 4G is a good and viable option. But check the signal strength beforehand. Following the signal fluctuations, I started speculating about the quality of the provided Globe router, the influence of the weather, etc. When I returned the router, Globe suggested installing an external antenna to boost the wifi signal. At the end of the day, I think your geographic position and proximity to the signal decides whether this solution will work for you or not.

MTL (Malawi Telecommunications Limited) offers a wireless broadband product called MTL Liberty. A friend in Namiwawa strongly recommended it. The company is also advertising a new fibre optic cable connection in all major newspapers. I walked into an MTL shop near FMB in Blantyre to find out more about the fibre optic cable connection. The MTL sales person said that this will indeed connect Malawi to the Seacom cable and improve the Internet backbone, but it was not yet connected. He advised me to go to the MTL headquarters for more information. I didn’t have time to follow up on this.

I went back to TNM; this time to the head office in Livingstone Towers. The sales consultant was very savvy and explained the various data bundling options very well. I found out that if I have a postpaid TNM sim card, I can easily add mobile data services. The consultant advised me to wait another week and buy a 3G USB dongle. He said the 3G USB modem will go on sale on 30th December 2009. TNM is currently testing 3G in parts of Blantyre.

Automatic software downloads
Coming from Switzerland and a flat rate setup where I don’t care how many MBs are downloaded in the background, to a price plan where every MB counts, I realized how dependent software has become on a high speed internet connection. I was unable to download the latest Symantec Norton anti-virus update on my mom’s laptop via Globe Wifi at Chichiri because Norton timed out after 6 MB. I tried 3 times before I gave up. Unfortunately iGetter didn’t help cos Norton connects directly from the app. All kinds of software from Adobe Reader to Mozilla Firefox want to connect and download updates at regular intervals. It’s OK if you’re using a flat rate but if every kB costs extra time and money…

Software companies should consider alternative options for developing countries. Cloud computing is not yet available everywhere.

My mom had to go to SDNP to get her legally purchased version of MS Office registered *online*. What a hassle.

Flat rates connections are not yet very widespread in Malawi and usually only corporate customers can afford them. Most of my friends have Internet at their workplace or on their mobile handset only.

Opera 10
I strongly recommend getting Opera. Opera Turbo loads web pages much faster and compresses images. Thank you to Appfrica for their excellent article pointing to resources and tools.

Web design
Pages optimized for mobile internet and simple HTML load much faster than CMS-based web pages.

I was able to access the mobile version of chiperoni.ch at an acceptable speed. While other sites failed to display.

If you are targeting developing countries, please consider this in your web design.

Resize photos for lower bandwidth
Same for emails. My mom still connects using dial-up. Downloading 1.2 MB takes 20 to 30 minutes and many times the connection breaks. And she pays for the length of the dial-up connection. But, so many people from Europe forget to resize their photos for lower bandwidth. Please resize your photos before sending!

In Picasa 3 it’s really easy. Go to Tools > Options > Email and select a new size such as 640 pixel:

You can then email a photo from the Picasa interface.

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Connecting to the Internet from Blantyre

Vincent Kumwenda – currently at Muloza border, Mulanje; topics include Malawi news, world news, interesting Malawi web pages, and soccer. He also writes a blog.

Fred Bvalani – in Blantyre; tweets about mobile applications and phones, Oracle training in freezing cold Cape Town, Manchester United, movies, church, Escom power cuts, and Malawi news and websites. Check out his blog.

Dannie Grant Phiri – first started twittering during the recent Malawi elections; writes about Malawi and soccer in his blog at http://daniso.weebly.com/.

Soyapi Mumba – well-known Malawi blogger and twitterer, software developer, volunteer developer at Ushahidi, lives in Lilongwe. He writes about software development, interesting mobile and web applications, Malawi news. He is the programmer behind Owinna – a web app on Malawi football league fixtures and results, as well as the Premier league and other international championships. You can access this information through the website or SMS by texting FOLLOW owinna to +447624801423 or on Twitter.

Clement Nyirenda – blogs and twitters from Tokyo, where he is doing a PhD in computer science. He covers many IT and development topics related to Malawi. A good resource to learn about projects such as Seacom. He discusses entrepreneurial ventures and their effect on Malawi. Read his blog post on Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter stunt to raise awareness about malaria.

There are many more, which I might mention in a second blog post.

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Malawi Twitterers

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Coverage