Nick Wadhams

Customer Care Insanity

I have been wrestling with our internet service provider because we have not actually been receiving any internet service for a month. The problem seems to be that someone is illegally interfering with the microwave radio signal that is beamed to a receiver on the roof of our apartment building.

Customer care can be a notoriously tricky thing in a place where there is no real competition for the particular service on offer. So it is with the Internet. We had a great deal _ unlimited and reasonably fast internet at $80 a month. The other options were extremely limited. Unfortunately, our service provider, Swift Global, knows this fact.

I had been operating under the principle that if I made myself as annoying as possible, Swift Global's representatives would work to resolve the problem with our Internet simply so they could stop having to take my calls. So far it hasn't worked.

Advertising Madness

Some dubious advertising on television here have made me wonder if lax consumer law is allowing foreign companies to make claims that they would never get away with making somewhere else. Of course there's the usual insinuation that you're a lousy person (usually mother) if you don't buy a particular product, but a few claims seem so absurd that less stringent regulation has to be a factor.

Take, for example, Colgate toothpaste. It claims to have "liquid calcium" that gets to those hard-to-reach areas between teeth. Liquid calcium? What the hell is liquid calcium?

Dettol soap claims to form a protective barrier around its loyal users, who would be more exposed to bacteria with other soaps. And then there's the laundry detergent that purports to reach those notorious 10 stain-prone areas of a shirt better than other detergents (the stain-prone areas include the front of the shirt and the collar). 

The most egregious that I've seen is for Pampers diapers. Pampers claims that its diapers hold wetness for an impressive 12 hours. According to Pampers, this incredible absorbency allows your baby to sleep longer at night, which in turn makes him fresh in the morning and more ready to learn, which in turn makes him smarter. So, the claim _ baldly stated, not insinuated _ is that Pampers make your baby smarter.

I wonder what scientific evidence Pampers has to back up that claim. To say nothing of the fact that no baby is going to sleep for 12 hours anyway because a) few humans sleep for 12 hours at a stretch; b) it will get hungry; and c) its diaper will fill up with crap as well as "wetness" (absorbency is irrelevant when it comes to crap).

British Airways Blues II

I have to say that I'm getting some satisfaction from British Airways' problems with their new terminal, mostly because it looks like we're going to have to eat it and buy a $600 ticket ($85 plus $515 tax) for the kid to experience the privilege of sitting in our laps for two eight-hour BA flights.

This raises an interesting conundrum. I find myself pleased with British Airways' troubles, yet, as it turns out, we will be passing through London _ and possibly the very terminal in question _  in May and June. Does my desire to see BA's suffering last run so deep that I am prepared to suffer as well?

A Deal

Our internet connection appears to be back after about 10 days. The reason for this is alternately that the radio receiver on our roof is loose or the giant radio antenna on top of the Nairobi post office is loose. But it's working now.

And just in time. Finally, Kenya's leaders appear to have ended the country's political crisis for good, for now anyway. Here's how they did it: First, divide Cabinet posts among your allies, even if they have no experience overseeing whatever it is they will be overseeing. Charity Ngilu, the much respected former health minister, now runs water and irrigation. William Ruto, accused of stirring up electoral violence, heads agriculture. Former Internal Security Minister John Michuki is now in charge of the environment.

Then, when there aren't enough Cabinet posts for your allies, create more Cabinet posts. Kenya now has ministries for Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands, Industrialization, Planning and Vision 2030 (???) and Nairobi Metropolitan Development (even though Nairobi already has a local government).

This is so brazenly cynical that it's almost possible to forget that it's cynical. No one is talking about good governance, or about appointing a minister with experience. Instead, many of the people who have become powerful in the past by occupying powerful ministries are installed in different powerful ministries. It doesn't matter that President Kibaki fired many of them in 2005 because they couldn't get along. No wonder many people didn't seem to care who got named to the Cabinet. There seemed to be no difference in the last three and a half months, when Kenya didn't have a government.

Kid discrimination

It goes without saying that there's a gender divide in Kenya _ today's newspaper, for example, featured an article which discussed whether men or women make better investors. This afternoon, I stood on the very edge of that divide myself.

Here's how it happened: Z is working at home. I take Kid (five weeks old, currently) to the inexplicably named Ya-Ya Center shopping mall to get some stuff. I enter the elevator with Kid snoozing in her stroller and exchange nods with the three other passengers. We descend two floors.

We arrive at our destination and the doors open. I begin to back out of the elevator with stroller in tow. And then, confrontation! A sharply dressed man with whom we have just shared the descent sticks his shiny-loafered foot under the wheel of the stroller, halting Kid and me in our collective tracks. He shimmies past and out of the elevator, turns around, looks me in the eye and says, "Pardon, madame... ummm... monsieur."

Ouch! It should be noted that I am currently sporting a (rather scraggly) beard. I consider delivering a swift punch to his chin but he's about six inches taller than me and I don't want to set a bad example for Kid. Also, I've never delivered a swift punch to anyone's chin anyhow.

The Swelling Cabinet

Kenya may have faded from the Great World Consciousness in recent weeks but the crisis isn't over. The latest issue is the squabbling between the government and the opposition over the size of the future Cabinet.

It strikes me as a terribly depressing thing that the government's solution is just to increase the Cabinet from its current size of 17 to 44. The opposition is only slightly less profligate _ it advocates a Cabinet of 34 ministers. Not very creative on either side.

Of course, this only adds to the impression that Kenya's politicians are less interested in joining hands in the creation of a viable government than they are in getting their share.

Incidentally, it seems important to mention here that Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai was tear-gassed yesterday as she attended a rally in downtown Nairobi to demand that the Cabinet be expanded to no more than 24 ministers. I stand (slightly) humbled.