Hujambo! | Page 29 | Living and Working in Nairobi, Kenya

Kenya, Rants

Kenyan Cops Getting Busted

I’m not entirely sure whether this is hilarious, sad, or just ironic: last week a few cops got caught taking bribes from matatus by the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission (KACC). It was apparently a sting operation, complete with fake notes, undercover operatives, cameras, etc. For better or worse, the ordeal was caught on tape:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8GA4flVoqU

The news report said they were busted at a road block along “Nairobi–Nakuru” highway. We have two such road blocks near Uthiru (where I work), one of which is the one in the video, and the other being kwa roundabout, hapo madukani (at the roundabout, over by the shops). I’ve seen those road blocks nearly every day for the past one year I’ve been working at ILRI. Everyone has.

Miscellaneous, Rants

Unlock Your Huawei E160

Safaricom's Huawei E160 USB modem — Safaricom’s Huawei E160 USB modem

I use a Safaricom-branded Huawei E160 USB modem to connect to the Internet over 3G from my apartment in Westlands. It works great but Safaricom has locked the device so it only works on their network—an anti-consumer move they probably learned from the likes of AT&T. We have four different mobile providers in Kenya, each one of which sells their own custom-branded Huawei modems. The other providers are small fries compared to Safaricom, but they love to play catch up so they’ve locked their modems too. Wanna browse on Zain? Buy a Zain modem! Thanks for nothing…

Kenya, Teaching

Hacking on Bioruby

Last week the Regional Student Group of Eastern Africa brought fifteen biologists, bioinformaticians, and computer scientists to ILRI for a three-day hackathon. Students and professionals from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda worked in teams to augment Bioruby (a bioinformatics library for the Ruby programming language) with a wrapper for BepiPred, a tool which predicts the location of linear B-cell epitopes.