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COMMUNICATIONS |
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Keeping in touch by post, telephone and email is generally easy, but
not fantastically reliable. Mail takes a few days to Europe and around
ten days to North America, Australia and New Zealand; times from these
places to Kenya are slightly longer, and things go missing frequently
enough - keep photocopies of letters you don't want to lose, and don't
send valuables. Kenya's telephone system is improving, though lines are
often busy, while emailing is becoming more and more useful as a means
of communication
Receiving and sending mail
Stamps can be bought only at post offices and large hotels. There are
main post offices in all the towns and, except in the far north, sub-post
offices throughout the rural areas. City post offices are usually open
Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, Sat 9am-1pm, while those in the country generally open
Mon-Fri 8am-12.30pm & 2-5pm. Prepaid " aerograms " are the cheapest way
of writing home, but they tend to sell out quickly. If you want speedy
delivery, pay a little extra for express. The internal service, like the
international one, is steadily getting less efficient and things do go
missing.
Poste restante (general delivery) is free, and fairly reliable in
Nairobi, Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu. Have your family name marked clearly,
but look under any combination of initials and be ready to show your
passport. Smaller post offices will also hold mail but your
correspondent should mark the letter "To Be Collected". Parcels can be
received, too, but expect to haggle over import-duty payment when
they're opened. Ask the sender to mark packages "Contents To Be Re-exported
From Kenya".
When posting things home, out of Kenya, airmail packages are expensive
but surface mail (up to a maximum of 20kg) is good value, reliable and
worth considering if you've accumulated things on your travels. Parcels
must be no more than 105cm long and the sum of the three sides less than
200cm, and must be wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. They are
usually examined in advance, so everything has to be checked, in the
post office, before you wrap it. Cheaper for large consignments (over
10kg) is to get yourself and the parcel to the British Airways cargo
counter at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. BA can send
it to any airport they serve - rapid and efficient to London, but can
take weeks to anywhere else.
Telephones
The local telephone service is generally dependable and inexpensive; not
so long distance, which gets close to international rates. Outside the
big towns, you can spend a long time waiting for a connection or passing
the time of day with the operator. Phonecards are a help, if you find
any (no easier outside large towns than finding a working phone that
will take them).
To make local calls from a call box you need a good handful of Ksh1, 5
and 10 coins. When you pick up any pay phone you'll hear a sustained
tone and, in the background, a series of beeps. After five beeps you
dial (you can dial before that, but you might lose your money). Use the
area code or dial 900 for the operator.
The easiest and most economical way to make an international call is to
dial direct from a cardphone (most commonly found outside Telekom
offices and post offices). The prepaid, credit-card-sized plastic
phonecards used in them can often be bought at newsstands, Telekom
offices and post offices, but are often unavailable. Cardphones are also
useful for using a charge card from your own telephone company (they
don't take ordinary credit cards). You dial 0800/44 for the UK or
0800/10 for the USA or Canada and get through to an international
operator in your country. The operator should be able to tell you how
much the call - charged to your account - will cost; the Kenyan Telekom
people have no idea.
In the absence of a cardphone it's possible to make operator-assisted
international calls from a main post office ("station-to-station").
Charges are about £10 ($14) for three minutes to Europe, more to North
America or Australasia. Shorter calls are now possible, but cost more
per minute (about £6/$9). When you ask for a station-to-station
connection, you pre-pay for a specified number of minutes, and you get
your money back if you fail to get through, but not if the conversation
ends up taking less time than you expected, for example if you get
through to an answering machine. If you want more minutes you have to
specify how many - all very user-unfriendly. You can also usually phone
from large hotels, but you could pay well over twice the usual price for
this facility.
Collect calls can also be made, but not from call boxes. Three minutes'
worth costs about £13 ($20). It works out cheaper overall if you call
your correspondent briefly and ask them to call you back at a hotel.
Larger post offices and some internet or telecommunications offices have
fax machines - the international rate is around £5/$7 per page - or you
can use a private fax bureau, where the rate will sometimes be cheaper.
Charges for receiving faxes, however, are nominal.
Internet and email
One of the best ways to keep in touch while travelling is to sign up for
a free internet email address which can be accessed from anywhere, for
example YahooMail or Hotmail - accessible through and . Once you've set
up an account, you can use these sites to pick up and send mail, but
Hotmail in particular can be painfully slow, and often seizes up
altogether after about 10am, so if you have a Hotmail account, try to
use it before that time. Internet offices are reasonably widespread in
Kenya, but they can be thin on the ground in small places, and also much
more expensive due to the cost of long-distance calls to the nearest
server. The cheapest places to use the internet are Nairobi and Mombasa,
where you can pay less than a shilling a minute. The price can be as
much as ten times more than that elsewhere.
Useful numbers
International operator/directory enquiries 0196
Line problems 980
Emergency (fire, police, ambulance) 99
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