My African Voice

Bought my ticket!

— July 15th, 2009 —

Airline: KLM Royal Dutch and Northwest (essentially the same company)
From: Newark, New Jersey, USA (that's right outside NYC, for those who don't travel...)
To: Accra, Ghana
Date: September 14, 2009 - October 6, 2009
Price: $1,220.09

That's right! I bought my ticket. And for a whole lotta money, you too can travel to Africa. Actually, I benefitted. My last trip to Ghana to study abroad, I paid around $1,500 flying British Airways. Other students paid more... because they weren't a G like me.

Anyways, one year later, when my mom went, she paid close to $3,000 while we were experiencing the lame duck George W. Bush high mamma jamma oil prices in the midst of the highest economic boom we had seen in decades... only to be followed by Barack H. Obama's re-de-cession.

So now, the prices are low again, perfectly right for me to make my re-entrance through the "gateway to Africa". And I'm back again. Or will be soon enough.

I still have some details to work out, like, where I will be staying, what I will be doing, and what I want to bring with me. I also have to figure out how I am going to time all of this. It just so happens that I have two weddings to visit in September for college friends. The second of which is two days prior to my flight and is at Long Island. Well, actually, I wanted to arrange my flight around that time anyways to save myself transportation costs, especially since I don't own a car.

Another aspect of my trip is that I am flying KLM through Amsterdam, given that Delta offers much faster flights directly from New York City to Accra. Here's my beef with Delta. My mom travelled to Ghana and Liberia last year and they gave her hell.

Delta, being an American company, already has my attention since I don't think Americans really care much about Africa, let alone transporting Africans back and forth to Ghana. I also think that American carriers are horrible when it comes to international flights, with the exception of flying back and forth to Europe, some parts of Asia, and Australia. And my mom's experience made it worse. Sure, she, like me, has a way of exaggerating circumstances. But overall, she gave it horrible remarks:

• She said the plane had troubles both to and from Ghana
• The food service was subpar compared to my service with British Airways
• Delta could not control the situation well at the Accra airport, which is a mess to begin with
• Delta was VERY late leaving, which may possibly be worse for me since I am flying during a fuel shortage

I credit much of this to the fact that this is an American company flying direct to Africa, and well, I'll say it again, Americans don't really care about Africans.

After all, they're just jungle people. They live in huts. Eat grasshoppers and leaves. Piss in holes in the ground. Take a dump in public sewers next to roads. They are all poor. They don't have internet. They wouldn't even know how to use a computer if you tried to teach them. But, daaaammnnn those African girls are fiiinneee. They got cute booties. They are cheap sex. Too bad African guys speak all that bougie bougie click-click "The Gods Must Be Crazy" crap.

And, so I chose to fly with a former colonialist. I figure they would know a thing or two about the continent and, well, probably have more people in the diaspora needing direct flights. Although I am not sure of this.

Anyways, the added benefit is that I choose to give myself the LONGEST layover in Amsterdam as possible in order to explore the city for a few short hours. This should be fun!

Finally, I don't know whether any or all of this will change, given that Vayama.com sometimes pulls a fast one on you. But, hopefully, it will all go well.

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I, wish I was there…

— July 9th, 2009 —

Oh, 'Bama visits Ghana "today" for them, "tomorrow" for me and all I can do is... well, nothing. So, I am scrolling through the reactions on BBC news to the upcoming Obama landing, and well, can't seem to find an American who's interested. Well, so far there are some people in America that are interested. But, it seems, like always, that we here care about more pressing matters, like America's Got Talent.

Don't get me wrong, I like the singing 2 year-old just as much as any other guy, but I'd rather be surrounded by a group of crazy black folks cheering for someone who's gonna do nothing more for them than give a speech. And he better give one heck of a speech, might I add.

For me, I feel left outside of the picture. I live 3 hours from Washington, DC, and have never seen this guy in person. Although, I admit, D.C. is a horrible city to navigate around IMNSHO. In addition, I live in a "battle-ground" state. Last year, the world of American politics practically camped out in Pennsylvania. Obama called us a bunch of gun-tooting religious nut jobs. Our own leaders called us Alabama (which, of course, is an insult). And what's even more crazy, is that I live in the one small pocket of Obama-land surrounded by Palin Country: Centre County, Pennsylvania. Obama came to Penn State. Sarah Palin came to Penn State. Bill Clinton came to Penn State. And I missed them all. Why? Because I was in school.

Now that I'm "done" with school for a while, I just wish I was in the right place at the right time with the right amount of resources to catch a dynamic speech. So, Mr. Obama, save your best one for when I'm in the crowd. Even my best friends got to see him in person. Many of them went to the inauguration ceremony as well. And little ol' MT is stuck at work wondering when he's gonna get his turn to see the King of Pol-i-tics.

So tomorrow, I hope my friends and family have a wonderful time in Ghana. I hope they catch the speech on TV or in person. And I hope they have fun.

I just wish I was there.

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I think I wanna cry!

— July 8th, 2009 —

UPDATE: For a *real* (more fair) analysis of internet services in Ghana, skip down to the first comment. Thanks, Mark.

"No disclaimer" is in affect, as always, and is necessary to understand my opinion. Read this at your own expense. The perspectives in this article are NOT meant for mere mortals who browse the internet infrequently. Those who listening to music, watching YouTube, and chatting with their girly friends and robots might as well go outside and find something more healthy to do with their fat butts.

After a few weeks of research, I am slowly realizing the obvious... internet in Africa sucks. Or at least in West Africa. Or at least in Ghana.

From my apartment in State College, Pennsylvania, with my Comcast high-speed broadband and static IP service, I get speeds up to 22Mbps and 7Mbps respectively for download and upload. It costs a whopping $105 each month, although I may have gotten a good deal. However, either way, this is because of my static IP. Without that, I could get similar speeds for far less.

However, in boo hoo Ghana, I am having a bit of a problem. It seems that everything reasonably available is yucky DSL nonsense and the useless internet service providers are all geeked up about their stupid slow internet service. Not only that, but they must be kidding to really want to charge these ridiculously high prices for snail-like internet service. This has been driving me crazy over the last few days.

What has driven me near insanity as well is the lack of useful information online. It is awfully hard to find something so obviously in need... just a friggen list of internet service providers in Ghana, so here it is. And Google, I deserve hella browny points for doing this. So up my rankings!

List of Internet Service Proiders (ISP) in Ghana

1. Vodafone (OneTouch / Ghana Telecom)
2. BusyInternet (iBurst Africa)
3. InternetGhana

That's it. Unless you're willing to shell out thousands of bucks for enterprise-level service that's probably just as slow, don't believe the lies! There are really no other ISP other than these three musketeers. And if I am wrong, then so be it. I don't care. Any idiot dumb enough to run an ISP without a website online should confine himself to an insane asylum for treatment.

Now, with that said, there are a few other companies, including one very popular one in Africa, that I do not care to list because they do not care to list their prices online. WTF?!? So, I don't consider them real ISPs. More than likely, they're either the one's doing the hard engineering to build these unsophisticated networks or just lying about services they can't provide.

Vodafone (OneTouch / Ghana Telecom)

My take is that this will probably be the most promising internet service provider for a few reasons.

First, it's not African. Seriously, no reason to hate, but for some reason, perhaps when a rich African guy starts a business, he thinks: "Ah, we dey sell to Africans, oh. So there's no reason to increase qua-lit-tee..." and so he creates an inferior product. In reality, this is not entirely true, but I am in a real pissy mood today because of these outrageous prices.

Vodafone, being a British company with many services in Europe has a "whiteness" quality standard to keep. Therefore, it will invest heavily in marketing and advertisement. It will invest in better internet service infrastructure. It will do whatever it takes; even if it means bribing government officials.

In return, Vodafone will probably outlast its lazy good-for-nothing competition by offering lower prices, better services, better customer relations, better advertisements, and better-looking girls on its website. Currently, however, my research tells me that Vodafone sucks... for good reason.

It just took over OneTouch / Ghana Telecom. And what could suck more than a government-run mobile phone company. Come on, people! From what I've heard, OneTouch was one of, if not the first, cell phone company in Ghana. It had massive appeal, but was blown away by MTN, a South African company. Eventually, it settled for around 25% of the market. In April, Vodafone bought a 70% stake in the company and re-branded everything. However, you cannot re-brand human ignorance, unqualified engineers, and culture laziness as fast. So, I suspect that not until the middle of 2010 will Vodafone's true colors show.

When it comes to prices, all residential services are pretty much a slap in the face. Seriously... 256kbps/64kbps download and upload? HAHAHA! Is that a joke? I would have better success picking up the phone and making computer noises or tying a vibrating string from my computer to everyone else in the world. No wonder people complain that "the service doesn't work" on forums... wait? What service?

Listen, Kbps stands for "Kilobits per second" and Mbps stands for "Megabits per second":

• That's bits (lowercase "b") not Byte (uppercase "B")
• A bit is either 1 or 0
• This is in Binary
• A Byte is made of eight bits
• A Byte can be 0 to 11111111
• 11111111 (Binary) = 2⁸ = 256
• 1 Kbps = 1/8 KBps = 0.125KBps
• 1024 Kpbs = 1 Mbps
• 1 Mbps = 125 KBps

So, basically, for those not so technically inclined, if you want to know why your connection in Ghana is so slow, divide by eight to get the real important figures. Meaning, here in the US, I can download up to 2.7 MBps and upload 800KBps. Whereas in Ghana, my best Vodafone option "Business Pro" which gets me:

• Business Pro
• 1024Kbps = 1Mbps = 128KBps download (pretty slow, but I can survive)
• 256Kbps = 32 KBps upload (waaaaay toooooo slow!)
• 232 GH¢ = $155 USD a month (waaaaay toooo expensive!)

BusyInternet / iBurst Africa

First, don't get me wrong, I know that iBurst Africa and BusyInternet are not equivalent. But unless, you intend to shell out thousands of buckeroos a month for internet service, you are pretty much not going to use iBurst. Well, my mistake. That is, unless you are a mere mortal and you actually are going to pay-per-use.

People in Ghana are already hooked on to ridiculously high mobile phone usage prices paying per-minute instead of paying per-month. Why should someone pay per-download for internet? I don't know, but some of my friends do. They are, however, mere mortal beings. Demi-gods, like me, aren't down with that. We need internet 24/7/365.

Anyways, even if you're not willing to spend thousands of dollars on internet service, you might as well if you are considering using BusyInternet. Just check out their prices. $2,100 for "dedicated" internet service at, oh, 512Kbps. Remember, that's just 512 / 8 = 64 KBps. Are you kidding me?!?!?

You can seriously get the data faster to where you need it to go by sending it in the mail. Consider this scenario. You manage a business server and want to upload 5 GB of data, music, and videos to a server 2 blocks down the road.

• 5 GB is roughly 5,000,000 Bytes
• 5,000,000 / 64 = 78,125 seconds
• 78,125 / 60 = 1,302 minutes
• 1,302 / 60 =  21.7 hours

Oh looky there, for just a small price of $2,100 a month you can send that bootleg DVD to your girlfriend online so that she gets it... TOMORROW! Better yet, BusyInternet also charges you for setup in an interesting fashion that I cannot decipher:

Get Busy's award winning service for just $200 startup!

Ok. Expensive, but I understand this in English.

All prices are quoted in USD$, payable monthly. Setup is $200 with $50 x 6 months ($500 total)

Now, WTF does this mean?

I am pretty decent at math, at least so far in this article, but something doesn't add up here. How does "Just $200 startup" somehow equal "$500 total". Right... Call it what it is: a $500 setup fee!

Even worse, it's in dollars. That is, if it was 500 GH¢, it would be only $350 today, perhaps only $300 by the time I travel back to Ghana. But these idiots know this. So, instead of charging in Ghanaian currency, they charge in US currency. No idea why they do this other than to rob customers... those bastards! Yeah, I said it.

So, if anyone is seriously considering BusyInternet... DON'T!

You are probably better off just ordering iBurst Africa's expensive service on your own. Guess what? iBurst uses Ghanaian currency, so your US dollars are more valuable.

BusyInternet may be "fast" and may not be on crowded networks, but there is a good reason why: nobody is using it! Who in their right mind would seriously pay $500 up front and then pay $350 - $2,100 each month for service slower than the promised 3G network from Vodafone. If I come to Ghana, one thing I will be anxiously waiting for is the downfall of BusyInternet's broadband service. Their stupid prices simply piss me off!

InternetGhana

Finally, the last of the ISPs left to review. InternetGhana to me seems like the best value for mere mortals. If you're not seriously into using the internet, but for some strange reason you have extra cash and are against going to internet cafes, then get InternetGhana.

Much like everything related to internet access in Ghana, InternetGhana makes me no less angry. But for other reasons. First, I find it hard to imagine how a single company can dish out a kazillion different "types" of DSL services. I will never understand the difference between Skyburst, DSL@InternetGHANA, iDirect, and DATAMatrix. To me, it's all the same DSL service with a different name. Like putting Pepsi in a Coke bottle and calling it Coke.

Second, the prices. My question to InternetGhana is "What the heck does the speed a customer wants have to do with the number of computers they will attach to the modem?"

After all, why does the number of computers even matter to InternetGhana? There appears to be a "PC Configuration"  feature. Or should I call it, a "feature" that I don't understand. If I wanna plug my router into a $100 modem, then I wanna plug as many damn computers into that router as I see fit! I wanna run as many friggen machines on a local network as I see fit! Why the crap does or should this ISP care?

Because they're idiots as well.

They charge $50 for domain registration per year. Something that costs $10 at 1&1. They also charge $150 for "Domain Name Hosting". I hope this means domain hosting otherwise these people are even worse than I thought. But, hey, they better have better service than HostMonster or BlueHost or a real hosting company. And, well, even if they had reliable hosting (which more than likely they don't), they would still be more expensive than other hosts AND much much slower!

I really cannot find a good reason to use any of InternetGhana's services. Their arrogance pisses me off. I am thinking of how I could compete with them in web design and hosting. Geez! $200 a year for a website, plus they probably charge hundreds more for web design. And much like BusyInternet, they also charge you in US dollars!

Overall conclusion

I am now a man of broken dreams. I wanted to find a US job that paid me while I lived abroad in Ghana, working as a software designer or network admin. But the internet service just doesn't sit well with me. At least not right now.

I wish there was another way and I find myself putting all my hope in an emerging and possible ISP monopoly: Vodafone. Save the day for me, please? All my prayers go into you smashing the rest of the competition by the middle of 2010. Or, well, I will have to find something else to do with my life in Ghana.

Well, I guess I'll have the business plan competition project.

And who knows, what else will come.

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BPlan Construction – Update #4

— July 1st, 2009 —

It's been a while... Today I put a lot more work into producing a better looking theme for the Business Plan Competition site.

Not much has changed on the backend with the Drupal modules I am using. I assume that there are some updates I need to make to some modules... I need to run this off my own server so I can use CVS, but for now, I'll keep it this way. Since my server is right here in my room, I tend to turn it off some days, so I'm fine with keeping it hosted on Hostmonster until my contract expires.

I must be in the theming mood since I have been making changes here an there to this blog's theme on Wordpress. Really, I think this theme is the wackiest piece of crap excuse for XHTML and CSS that I've ever seen. However, I have not seen many Wordpress themes. I believe that the designer used YUI to generate much of the XHTML and CSS. So, it's not really meant for real programmers to look at. However, I manage to fix things here and there. Anyways, if I really want a real theme, I guess I would have to make it myself as I am doing in Drupal.

There, I am using the Zen theme, as I usually do, as my base and creating a sub-theme for the BPlan site. Drupal themes seem much prettier under the hood. Or at least these do. I have heard of some horror stories.

Nevertheless, this whole process is turning out quite well. We'll see how it ends up.

Yeah, this is a short post, but I am really tired.

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