GhanaBlogging.com » February 21, 2010

Nana Kofi Acquah - Ghana Photographer: Dion plays Mrs. Ali

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:51:00 -0500

Young Mrs Ali is in love totally
With a guy she met at an NDC rally.

She sneaks out the door to call him up
She whispers on the phone so Alhaji wont wake up.

my funny little frog: Yngvild leker grafisk designer

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:31:32 -0500

Leker mæ litt med Picasa, vil ha en ny header, men det her ser jo ikke helt bra ut. Noen som har noen tips om kordan å få headern æ har nu litt mer midtstilt...?

Ramblings of a Procrastinator in Accra: A Nation under Fire: Moving Beyond 'Happenstance', 'Past coincidence' to 'Enemy Action'???

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:30:00 -0500

"Once is 'happenstance'. Twice is 'coincidence'. Three times is 'enemy action' "-Mr Auric Goldfinger, from the film Goldfinger Goldfinger about to experience his first encounter with 007 via earpiece. At this point he was far from suspecting 'enemy action'

If you happen to be in the Beacon of African Democracy (Ghana) then you know that aside from the usual politricks, poor utility service delivery and sweltering heat, our nation is being plagued by mysterious fire outbreaks:

21 October 2009: Fire at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Last year, the 10 storey Ministry of Foreign Affairs was transformed into a towering inferno by a blaze that completely razed the entire building and all its contents. Aside from extensive damage costing millions of dollars, documents dating back to independence we turned into ash.

19 January 2010: Tema Oil Refinery Fire
A fire outbreak at the nation's premier oil refinery saw the main loading dock up in flames. The fire was eventually contained but still resulted in the tragic deaths of two people.

14 February 2010: Fire at the Rawlingses' Residence On Valentine's day, the nation was aghast to hear that the official residence of Ex-President Rawlings was completely gutted by a fire that started in the early hours of the morning. The fire destroyed their possessions as years of memories were lost forever.

Late last week, the tragedy of this event was eclipsed by a curious incident involving a young man named Nana Darkwa Baafi and the spokesman of the Ex-President, Kofi Adams. Overnight, Mr. Baafi went from zero to hero while Mr. Adams went from zero to *erm* zero. The incident also managed to throw the spotlight on questions surrounding freedom of speech in Ghana. 17 February 2010: Fire at the Ministry of Information A fire started at the Ministry of Information but was luckily put out by vigilant staff. Speaking of the Ministry of Information, are they still running their Facebook interactive sessions or did these (excuse the pun) go up in smoke?
21 February 2010: Fire at Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC)A fire believed to be the result of a power surge problem was contained by the Ghana Fire service preventing what could have been a major outbreak at our nation's national broadcaster.

So are all these fires simply a result of archaic electrical wiring combined with frequent power outages and surges? Are we past 'coincidence' and now in 'enemy action' territory?

Interestingly, the outgoing Minister for Information Mrs. Zita Okaikoi has her own take on the matter which she expressed on the popular Accra radio station Citi FM last week:

“I strongly suspect foul play. It is no longer an accident or a coincidence. It can no longer be a coincidence that almost everyday there is one fire or the other, I am ruling out coincidence at this stage because it is no longer a coincidence that we are having these fire outbreaks”

Clearly, Mrs. Okaikoi has ruled out 'coincidence'. Could this be the work of a fire-starter? A (really) twisted fire-starter?

Could there be an instigator out there?!

tHe fLiRt FiLeS: Playing Hard to Get (The Same Old Song)

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:10:00 -0500

Spend every night asking about me
When I call, pretend not to know me
After 10 minutes, offer a weak recall
When I hang up, I'll never call again
This silly ritual of playing hard to get
Only makes you "the same old song"

This is Ghana: My thoughts on writing the guide to Ghana

Gayle Pescud — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:37:00 -0500

span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"This time around Godwin interview me on my experience writing the guide. Surreal! You can read more at a href="http://www.g-lish.org/ghanaguide"www.g-lish.org/ghanaguide/a/spanbr / br / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"strongMost challenging aspect of writing the guide book?/strong/spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"/spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"When I tried calling the STC in Accra to get the timetables they hung up on me five times. I’d get as far as, say, Cape and Kumasi and I still needed about six other cities and the customer service woman would say, “Oh Madame, why?!” and hang up on me. I waited a few days and tried again, got a different person, and they hung up too. I melted a pair of flipflops in Accra when we ran around finally getting the info on foot. During the final two weeks of writing we had no electricity at home between 9 am and 5 pm so I had to change my work pattern to start in the late afternoon and end around 2, 3 and 4 am—which was very productive, actually—and Godwin would get up and work from 3 or 4 a.m. until the power was cut around 9 or 10 am. /spanspan style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"strongWhat was the most exciting part?/strong/spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"Rediscovering places I hadn’t seen or been for a while and the thought of sharing that with travelers who would experience it for the first time. Seeing it come together at the end and hearing the first words of feedback from readers was fantastic. /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"strongWhat would you like to say to readers? /strong/spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"I remember how nervous I felt before coming toGhana. And I remember struggling to work out how the parts of the guide book I had joined together on the ground in Ghana. I hope that our guide provides a strong sense of Ghana, while also being entertaining and, most importantly, useful. And I truly hope that this guide helps you enjoy your travels, that it makes the everyday details on the ground easy to manage, and that you find it useful throughout your long-distance journeys. Any problems, confusing areas—please let us know. And let us know what you enjoy too!/spanspan style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"strongAnything else you want to say about the experience?/strong/spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"Details, details, details. I said I’d never write a guide book. It was surreal. I like things to be as great as they can be and we’ve begun a new round of updating as we write./spanbr / br / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"strongWhat will you be working on next?/strong/spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"Like Godwin said, we have been developing an innovative basket making project in Bolgatanga, the poorest region of Ghana, where we live. It will be an income generating project that will support about 50 women to begin with. The guide helps us fund this. Actually, the guide income goes into the hands of basket makers, so our guide customers are directly supporting impoverished communities in far northern Ghana. Basket making is huge here but the producers are taken advantage of because of over supply; many are illiterate and they have no bargaining power. The middle man doubles the price he pays to the basket maker and sells it on to another middle man or the overseas buyer. We intend to change that and shorten the supply chain by selling online directly to customers at G-lish. Producers will be paid at least twice what they’re being paid now, if not more and we’ll be giving a reliable income to over 50 women, skilled and unskilled, who otherwise have no work or engage in subsistence farming. You’ll see more on This is Ghana and G-lish shortly. /spanbr / span style="font-family: quot;Trebuchet MSquot;, sans-serif;"br / /spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"div style="text-align: center;" div style="text-align: left;" a href="http://www.g-lish.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Ghana-Guide-Sample.pdf"Download a free sample of our Travel Guide to Ghana/ab see inside the guide/b before buying. /div /divimg width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8826326494207776999-5823817328590880632?l=gisforghana.blogspot.com' alt='' //divdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?a=w6hiBxoIWL8:htq0AgKD-14:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?a=w6hiBxoIWL8:htq0AgKD-14:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?a=w6hiBxoIWL8:htq0AgKD-14:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?i=w6hiBxoIWL8:htq0AgKD-14:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ThisIsGhana/~4/w6hiBxoIWL8" height="1" width="1"/

my funny little frog: Rasisme eller bare tilfeldigheter?

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:21:07 -0500

Ka gjør man når man mistenker noen å være rasistisk uten å vite det sikkert, dermed kan du ikke anklage dem?
For hvis noen viser rasistiske holdninger mot MIN mann i Norge, da kommer klørne ut på den her dama. Men
ka gjør æ hvis æ bare har en følelse av at han e blitt behandla annerledes fordi han ikke e norsk?

Historien går som følger:
Æ sendte en mail til arrangør av vinterens største kulturelle happeningen i Levanger, Marsimartnan. Æ forhørte mæ om dem hadde bruk for frivillige under "festivalen", og fikk overveldende lykkelige tilbakemeldinger, både på mail og telefon. Forklarte at æ hadde forhørt mæ på vegne av min mann, som for tiden gikk på norskkurs og ellers hadde mye fritid, og som gjerne ville bidra/gjøre noe nyttig. Æ avtalte med den lykkelige, ikke nevnt med navn-personen at han skulle kontakte dem. Han gjorde så. Det gikk en uke. Ingen svar. Æ sendte mail til personen æ hadde snakka med, for å minne personen på at æ hadde snakka med min mann og han hadde sendt en mail. DA fikk han svar.

"Vi har ikke behov for folk til å jobbe under Marsimartnan, men hvis du kunne tenke deg å spille tromme under Fakkelnatta, er det fint."

Det va ikke akkurat folk som kunne spille afrikanske trommer dem va i beit for når æ snakka med dem.

Æ blir forbanna, men ka kan æ gjøre? Ka ville DU gjort?

This is Ghana: Guide sale: US$10.00 for the next 24 hours

Gayle Pescud — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:56:00 -0500

To all our readers:br / br / We're having a 24 hour discount sale for the Insider's Guide to Ghana. For the next 18 hours, until 9 a.m. Monday morning GMT, you can download the Insider's Guide to Ghana for US$8.00.br / br / You can read more about the guide at a href="http://www.g-lish.org/ghanaguide"www.g-lish.org/ghanaguide/a or buy it now by clicking on the link at the top right-hand corner of this page. br / br / All the best,br / Gayle.br / br / ps. If you happen to have found the discount codes hidden somewhere guide-related...even better of a discount: go you!div class="blogger-post-footer"div style="text-align: center;" div style="text-align: left;" a href="http://www.g-lish.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Ghana-Guide-Sample.pdf"Download a free sample of our Travel Guide to Ghana/ab see inside the guide/b before buying. /div /divimg width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8826326494207776999-6934312653737800444?l=gisforghana.blogspot.com' alt='' //divdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?a=Lgq4geuC99I:NYguz6Ualts:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?a=Lgq4geuC99I:NYguz6Ualts:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?a=Lgq4geuC99I:NYguz6Ualts:gIN9vFwOqvQ"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ThisIsGhana?i=Lgq4geuC99I:NYguz6Ualts:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ThisIsGhana/~4/Lgq4geuC99I" height="1" width="1"/

Oluniyi David Ajao: A review of MTN Nigeria Mobile Broadband service

Oluniyi David Ajao — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:26:12 -0500

I picked-up an MTN Nigeria mobile broadband kit recently and have used it heavily, since then. Find below my review of the service.

The entire kit cost N18,650:

HSDPA USB stick: N8,500
MTN SIM: N150
Airtime: N10,000 (24/7 monthly plan)

The MTN agent asked for an ID and passport photo. As I had no prior knowledge they would demand this, I was only fortunate that I always carried a driving licence and spare passport photos in my wallet everywhere I go, for times like this. Be informed. Also, I was made to sign a fine print containing their terms of service.

The MTN F@stlink modem pack

The device
Branded as MTN F@stlink E156G, the USB stick is essentially a Huawei E156G with the following specifications:

HSDPA/UMTS 2100MHz – it can connect to just about any 3.5G cellular network in the world if it were unlocked.
EDGE/GPRS/GSM 1900/1800/900/850 MHz – it can connect to just about any GSM cellular network in the world if it were unlocked.
HSDPA service data rate up to 3.6Mbps – real life speeds would vary
SMS service – users can send and receive text messages when using the bundled software
Micro SD card slot – it can take a Micro SD of up to 4GB capacity and thus double as a USB drive
Plug and play – there is no need to install software from a CD. The software bundled on the device would have to be installed though, for PCs and Macs.

Before you decide to buy, the device has the following system requirements:

Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista. I am safely assuming it would work well on Windows 7. Also, I got it to work on Ubuntu 9.10
Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 with latest upgrades
Hardware system should meet the recommended requirements for the installed OS version
Display resolution: 800 x 600 and above
Standard USB interface

MTN F@stlink software interface

The software
Branded MTN F@stlink, it offers 7 tabs, namely:

Connection: this is where the user initiates a connection or disconnection to/from the MTN network
Statistics: offers a detailed break-down of data usage and includes a graph
Message: enables the user to send/receive text messages and manage existing messages
Phonebook: an address book that saves contact details.. Record include Name, Mobile Number, Office Number, Home Number, Email address and Remarks.
Airtime: enables the user to check and load airtime. It is divided into postpaid and prepaid, to cater for both market segments.
Internet: a click on this loads the default web browser
Bundle plan: enables the user to select which of the bundle plans to subscribe to, and check the status of an existing bundle. This service is for prepaid subscribers only. The confirmation is via a text message.

The bundles
MTN Nigeria offers 3 data bundles:

24/7 Monthly Plan: this is the ultimate plan from MTN and comes with a 3GB data cap but is available 24 hours every day within a 30 days period. It goes for N10,000 per month. This bundle is ideal for heavy users.
Nite Plan: this is usable only from 10pm to 5am and also comes with a 3GB data limit but costs only N2,500 monthly. This bundle is ideal for surfers who have a day job and can afford to stay awake all night.
24 hours Daily: this is clearly targetted at the occasional web surfer and comes with a meagre 50MB data cap. It costs only N500.

The service
I subjected the mobile broadband service to a speed test at the time of writing using speedtest.net; the following screenshot shows the highest speed I got. Note that speedtest.com used Vodafone Ghana’s server for the test.

A screenshot of MTN Nigeria speed test as taken on 18th February 2010 using speedtest.net

The results shown in the screenshot above just about represent an average of the several tests I carried out. It shows that MTN Nigeria offers a download speed of about 0.43 Mb/s and a miserable upload speed of 0.06Mb/s as well as a high latency of 366ms.

This means, upload heavy data using the mobile broadband service would be a slow experience and making phone/video calls via the Internet would be less than ideal due to the high latency as seen from the ping test.

The coverage
It is critical to confirm 3G coverage in your locality before opting for MTN’s mobile broadband service for therein lies the key to the advertised speeds. From the marketing flyer attached to the kit:

3G service is currently available in most part of Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Kano, Benin, Ibadan, Kaduna, Onitsha, Aba, Asaba.

MTN also offers an extensive EDGE coverage that is even more nationwide. EDGE which offers a fairly fast connectivity is available where there is no 3G coverage.

The bad
The MTN mobile broadband service was not without hiccups, at the time of extensive use.

Intermittent disconnections: The service simply went off occasionally and connection could be re-established by disconnecting and re-connecting from the network. At other times, the downtime lasted over an hour.
SSL traffic: Occasionally, it was impossible to access secured websites. All access to URLs starting with [https:] were in possible and thus secured chatting programs like Yahoo Messenger and Skype failed to connect too. This error typically occurred at mid-mornings.
Not all websites were accessible: Even when the mobile broadband service was at its peak of performance, some websites were not accessible despite repeated attempts. The persistent error message was: “No suitable nodes are available to serve your request.” A work-around this was to use a proxy server.
The offered data bundles are not very flexible as users’ choices are limited. Heavy users are forced to subscribed to the 24/7 monthly plan for N10,000 even if they would need less than 3GB monthly.
It is difficult to know the status of usage after crossing the 1GB milestone. Checking your data usage via SMS thereafter does not offer an exact figure of used data but simply states that 2GB has been used. It is thus difficult for the user to know when usage is getting close to the 3GB limit.

The verdict
MTN Nigeria’s mobile broadband service offers high-speed internet connectivity much of the time and is worth buying where mobile connectivity is needed or fixed broadband options are not available provided the user can live with the few annoyances highlighted above.

Note: it is possible to enjoy the broadband service from MTN without buying their F@stlink modem. One could either browse on the (smart)phone itself or use it as a modem. When using the phone as a modem, the user would need the following:

a 3.5G-capable mobile phone
modem driver & dialling software: these are typically provided on a CD bundled with the phone, by the phone manufacturer, or can be downloaded via the Internet
a means of connectivity the phone to a computer: whilst bluetooth is usable, USB is ideal. Infrared is archaic.
an MTN data bundle subscription

Backstory*:

I have used the MTN Mobile Broadband service extensively before buying their F@stlink modem, using Nokia smartphones as modem and have experienced the high speed in Lagos, Ibadan and Kaduna. EDGE worked in Zaria.
MTN branded complimentary gift items accompanied the broadband kit: a pen and a writing pad.
I did not have enough time to read the terms before signing and so not sure about what it contains.

*The info in the “backstory” section, are what I considered too trivial to add into the main body of the review but useful enough to share with you.

Did you find this review useful, feel free to share this blog with others. Do you have an additions or questions about this review, add these using the comments area.

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Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:00:00 -0500

Hotel President May 24, 2005 The past few weeks have made me realize that itrsquo;s not easy to be a father. Itrsquo;s even more difficult when you are in a responsible position. The Bible says that the iniquities of the fathers will be visited upon their sons. But in Sikaman the opposite ...