Dennis Kioko

Buying your own kit means you need to carbonate it in a fridge or freezer since Carbon Dioxide best dissolves at temperatures around zero.  I have been making my own sparkling water for about a month now.  It started with a love for carbonated water, but being appalled by the price - about KSh. 80 per 700 ml recyclable glass bottle. Sparkling water is sold as a premium drink.  This got me researching into what it really takes to make your own sparkling water. 

Dire Straits from Bateleur is one of the most popular craft beers in Kenya. High quality ingredients mean more refined flavours I have been running an experiment for months now. Have you ever considered that you could be having a much better beer than what you had last weekend? Most people don’t think so, but the many who have undergone my experiment have found this to be the case. The experiment involved trying out craft beers, and many of my friends found that they liked beers from Bateleur better. These include Dire Straits - a medium beer,  or Bila Shaka which has higher alcohol content for those looking for a punch. Even ladies, many who confess to hate the taste of beer, have found these beers to be pleasant and even drinkable. Kenya is truly in a new beer age. 

An Installation at the Berlin Nineties Museum commemorating victims killed  while trying to escape across the Berlin Wall. Despite it's cruelty, the Nazi regime rose to power and remained popular promising solutions to the  numerous problems Germans faced in the 1920s and 1930s. Why do Kenyans, or any other electorate for that matter, vote for cruel politicians or so-called leaders? The common argument is that the voters are ignorant, or were “misled” or had “no option”. But this is not true. People know who and what they are voting for. People intentionally vote for cruel politicians especially when the voters form part of a majority - clan, tribe, race, nation, class or other majority. It is not that they do not know the politicians are cruel. They simply assume that the...

Do Pandemics usher a new dawn?  Over the last more than 100 years, the world has undergone numerous advancements. Human beings have been to space and the moon, we have powerful nuclear bombs and nuclear energy, bullet trains, planes that fly half around the world, and we can now treat and cure hundreds of diseases that tormented our ancestors.  Yet, despite all these scientific advancements, the world is being ravaged by a pandemic. Worse, one that can be eradicated by people just staying home for 3 weeks. What went wrong? Well, it is important to understand that the world, by nature, is destined for pandemics.  Forests get extreme wildfires, wild animals get almost wiped out by diseases or drought, and human beings get pandemic. Drought too was once a problem, but the wonder that is the modern supply chain means shiploads of grains and all sorts of food can be easily moved from one part of the world to another.  Pandemics, like wildfires, droughts and much more are ...

Machakos People's Park circa 2014. Let me assure you, that's neither a Marina nor a Jetty. Such stagnant water bodies around Nairobi form breeding grounds for mosquitoes if there are no control measures.  Ever wondered why some places in Nairobi are mosquito prone, while others are not? There's popular folk-lore that Nairobi was established a settlement because it's altitude, or height above sea level, is above that preferred by mosquitoes. But this proposition quickly runs into headwinds as much of Eastlands, including JKIA, the country's main airport (long pun coming) are frequented by mosquitoes.  So, I got an expert from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology  (ICIPE) to clear some air on this buzzy issue.  Here is what Professor Clifford Mutero of ICIPE had to say:

Even on the internet, newspapers should encourage buying at a price over free reading The digital world is a very different one for newspapers, and this explains why many have shut down. The ones that survived took some time in the wilderness before figuring it out. Yet the ones that are transitioning seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of those who have been ahead of them. The first problem with digital news publishing is competition. Print newspapers are near monopolies. Setting up a newsprint plant and investing in distribution vans is very costly. You therefore end up with a handful of papers or even just one for a certain geographical zone.

Exactly which tube is larger? Which one is cheaper? Exactly how much does a tube of toothpaste cost? Looks like an easy answer, right? I mean, it’s exactly the amount you pay for the tube. That’s until you walk into a supermarket and realise that something weird is happening. Other than the very small tubes, most of the other tubes look the same size. Or rather the boxes look the same size. But then why do they cost vastly different prices - why do some tubes cost twice or almost thrice the price of others if they are the same?

To the average Kenyan, the supposedly poor person is simply a thief in waiting  In Kenya, when the government first announced measures against Coronavirus - many people on social media pointed out that they would especially affect the poor. More specifically, it has been said that if the poor didn’t get help soon, they would turn to crime. This should be good, right? It shows that we care about the poor? Yet, it raises some dark questions. Was the concern here really about the poor? Why is it that we only remember the poor when bad things are happening? I know a number of people who are going through rough patches due to the measures to combat Coronavirus. There is reduced spending by many businesses and equally by many individuals, and this is directly having an effect on numerous individuals and businesses whose income has effectively dried off. It does not help that the government barely has a welfare fund - when times were good, we spent away all the money. Normally...

KB Lager settles quite quickly when served and is very drinkable while warm. It's flavour maintains a strong profile of roasted grain.  In Nairobi, beers are usually served cold, or sometimes warm depending on the mood of who’s serving you. Outside Nairobi, warm beers may come as a standard and you may have to specify that you indeed would prefer a cold beer, as I once found in Naivasha. I was at an infamous bar next to the Nairobi - Nakuru highway and this was my first time ordering a KB Lager. By the time I realised I had been served a warm beer, it had already been opened and the only option was a second bottle of cold beer then I could mix half-and half. It did not escape my attention that the waitress serving me slightly hesitated when I asked for a cold beer. I got the impression that it was taboo to order a cold KB Lager.

As countries scramble to meet the explosion in demand of medical supplies through locally manufactured alternatives, Kenyans have been wondering why the country even imports. Such optimism misses the fact that such factories are located in protected EPZs rather than across the country ( Image of Shona EPZ from Ministry of Health's Twitter Page ) For many people in Africa, more so Sub-Saharan Africa, local manufacturing is a concept we are very much in love with. We wish that our countries manufactured 90 percent of what we used locally, and by doing so, our feeling is that our countries would become developed countries. Of course, manufacturing 90% of all locally consumed products means we would only import 10%. Early in school, we are taught that 1+3=4, and likewise 4-3=1. Equally, if by manufacturing 90% locally means that we import very little, then the assumption is that importing very little means we manufacture a lot locally. And so, many people call for the bann...

A fancy Bosch iron box with floor showing electrical damage from the appliance. Though more expensive than standard iron boxes, the appliance has proved not to be as reliable nor easy to open up. It once used to be that the more you paid for an electric appliance, the better the quality you got. Then, the world moved to China and it simultaneously became cheaper to make quality appliances, but incredibly cheap to make cheap appliances(here cheap means poor quality than low cost) Turkey also became a global manufacturing hub for appliances, which meant that we now had thousands of brands to choose from since anyone with some money could manufacture easily. More choice, I am shocked to announce, has not been necessarily better. So if paying more for an iron box or cooker does not mean you are paying for better quality, what does it mean? Well, it means you are paying for more features, including a long list of confusing features you may not need. Even more confusing is t...

This post is the last in these series of my first Euro Trip. You can click here to read my previous post on my real experience in Madrid .  https://blog.denniskioko.com/2020/01/eurotrip-madrid-in-2-days-it-has-its.html I was headed to the airport, en route to my final destination - Mallorca pronounced as Majorca (with a Y in place of the J). The island of Mallorca had ended up in my itinerary by accident. When exploring cheap flights between Madrid and Munich - my starting point, it appeared that all flights went through Mallorca. It, therefore, made sense to have a stopover at the island. Again, the Madrid airport is packed during summer and it would be a good idea not to have any check-in luggage for a European stop unless you love queueing in long and winding queues. The Air Norwegian flight between Madrid and Mallorca was hassle free and comes highly recommended.

This article is part of a series of my visit to different European cities. Read about my visit to Barcelona here.  Like Milan, Madrid is another capital city with not much to offer, unless you are a football fan. However, unlike Milan, Madrid does have some soul and even prides itself as the gay capital of Europe, which is a title that Berlin also claims. My transport option from the airport in Madrid was the subway, which I found dependable. Alighting at the Plaza De Espana, I slightly got lost before making my way to the Nemrut restaurant for a late lunch and early drink, followed by laundry at the highly recommended Open Wash Lavandería Autoservicio . It is more automated than my other laundry at Milan and I had learned not to shrink my clothes, yet, the setting I chose was not as satisfactory in cleaning my clothes.

This post is part of a series of my Eurotrip. Read about my trip to Nice by clicking here.  From Nice, I caught a flight the next day out to Barcelona. This time, the flights were cheaper than the trains and the buses took too long. I also found out I happened to be lucky in that this was not one of the weeks that Vueling delayed a literal thousands of flights. Important to note is that if you want to have fun flying cheap between Schengen countries, then ensure you only have hand luggage. The queue to check in luggage can be horrendous, and so can be the costs. So, travel light. It is cheaper to keep laundering a bag of clothes than to pay for check-in luggage.