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ChickAboutTown

  Living & Lifestyle in East Africa

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20 Hottest Blogs in East Africa

EACRecently, I had the pleasure of spending an entire week with one of my favorite cousins who was visiting from Kampala. We hung out and caught up like we used to way back in the day when we were both still single young females (I am still single; she’s married with two kids). We talked about everything under the sun, and of course, because she’s an avid reader of ChickAboutTown, we also talked about blogging and about our respective experiences in the blogosphere.

During one such conversation, my cousin let on that she now reads blogs regularly and that she discovered a couple of the blogs she reads through my “The Chick Behind the Blog…” post. I was surprised and pleased. The blogs that she mentioned are ones that I enjoy reading, and I knew her life must be richer for reading these blogs too.

It got me thinking. Although I never read blogs before I started blogging (don’t ask me how I decided to start blogging – call it divine inspiration :-) ), I have since become an avid frequenter of the blogosphere, in general, and the East African blogosphere, in particular. Why the East African blogosphere? Well, mainly for two reasons. First, the subject of my blog is East Africa so I tend to attract East African readers. It’s only natural, therefore, when these readers also happen to be bloggers, to be curious about their blogs and to find my way to them. In the 2+ years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve come to know and love my fair share of blogs in the East African blogosphere this way. The second reason is a little more intentional. Reading East African blogs helps me keep informed about everyday living in the different countries that make up this region. There’s nothing like reading blogs to find out what’s truly on the hearts and minds of a people.

And now to today’s list.  With the endless number of blogs across the East African blogosphere, how do I choose which blogs to read regularly? Honestly, it’s quite simple: I don’t. Instead, I let someone else do the choosing for me. What?! Yes, you heard me. To figure out what blogs to read in the East African blogosphere, I turn to Afrigator, an African social media aggregator. Continue reading

Readers’ Choice: 15 Most Popular Posts on ChickAboutTown

Screen ShotOn June 29, 2009, ChickAboutTown will be turning two.  I’ve greatly enjoyed writing this blog and recently decided to take a trip down memory lane to take stock of what exactly has been going on, on this blog, for the past two years. I reread some of my older posts and, most importantly, tried to figure out which of my posts you, my readers, enjoyed most.

In doing this, several things became glaringly clear to me. For starters, I found out that whereas you, my readers, enjoy reading about places to hang out at, you are a lot more concerned with going to the movies, shopping, and well…having sex! :-) Don’t stop reading me yet, I say that in jest! On a more serious note, to measure the popularity of a post, I took note of how much traffic it generated regularly during the first half of this year. Although this method is not foolproof (nor particularly thorough since I know many factors go into determining how much traffic a post generates), still, I thought this was a good general indicator of which posts you found to be most interesting and relevant.

Honest Scrap AwardAnd so, I’ve decided to share my findings with you here. For the newcomers to this blog (many who discovered ChickAboutTown through my participation in The Honest Scrap Awards), I hope this list helps you to discover more quickly the best of what ChickAboutTown has to offer. For my older readers, I hope this list points you to at least one oldie-but-goodie that you haven’t read yet.

Whatever the case, here is the official list. Continue reading

The Chick Behind the Blog…

Honest Scrap AwardDid you know that Mama of Maisha blog thought ChickAboutTown had brilliant content and/or design? Well, she didn’t tell me so herself, but since she recently prized me with The Honest Scrap Award, I can only extrapolate! :-) Thank you, Mama, for this great honor!

I humbly accept this award whose attachments are:

Attachments to the award:

  1. You must brag about the award.
  2. You must include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on you and link back to the blogger.
  3. You must choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.
  4. Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.
  5. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself.

Then pass it on with the instructions!

Bloggers BlogSince I have bragged about the award and let you know who awarded it to me, I’ll now move on to the next step and tell you which seven bloggers I’m  passing the award on to. To these seven: you may never have heard of me or my blog before, but I am an avid reader of each of your blogs! I hope you will accept my award for what it is: a testament to how much I enjoy your writing. Thanks for your wonderful thoughts and words; I look forward to reading much more from you. Without further ado, these seven are: Continue reading

You Missed This – Kumekucha

Kumekucha-ImageAs much as I blog, I am not an avid reader of blogs. It’s not that I am not interested in what others have to say, rather, in this fast paced world of having so many things to do, I am not too keen to add tasks to my regular to-do list. Still, there are a couple of blogs that I enjoy reading whenever I do get the chance to do some leisurely internet surfing. One such blog is You Missed This – Kumekucha (which I will simply call  Kumekucha from this point on in this post). Continue reading

Afripay

Afripay
Mezzanine Floor, Titan Complex
Chaka Road (off Argwings Kodhek Road, near Yaya Center)
Tel: +254-(20)-2730770
Mobile: +254-(722)-256368
Website : www.afripay.net
Email: sales@afripay.net

Afripay LogoIn the developed world, almost everything can be bought and sold online, and so it often is. On my most recent visit to the US, a couple of years ago, I asked a good girlfriend to recommend stores that she thought I should visit during my then-quest to buy a new laptop. My friend seemed a little flabbergasted. She couldn’t understand why I would go through all the trouble of shopping for a laptop in person when she felt I could do so more efficiently online. Her reaction surprised me a little bit. The African that I am (or at least that I was at the time) was used to shopping for things in person and, especially in the case of an expensive purchase, much preferred to physically see the item I was purchasing before I actually paid for it.

This experience was to be my first aperçu of how pervasive shopping online had become in the Western world. Later, during that same trip, I often saw my parents (who were soon to be 60 years old at the time) and brothers do the most mundane things (like buying books) as well as some not-so-mundane things (like buying complex musical instruments) online, seemingly without giving it a second thought.

This was a far cry from my reality in Kenya at the time. Although I moved in pretty technologically savvy circles, partaking in e-commerce was not a main stream activity for most people that I knew. Although the reasons for this were many, I am pretty sure one of the main reasons for this was that so few of the people I knew had credit cards (and this was pre-M-pesa days in the case of local e-commerce). Speaking for myself, the lack of a credit card was definitely the reason I never sought to buy anything online or even subscribe to some of the online services that I found interesting. Do you find yourself in the same situation? Continue reading

Facebook

When I first thought of writing a post about Facebook, I wasn’t sure that I would really be telling anyone anything new. Facebook has been around for four years now (did you know it’s been that long?) and, according to several articles on the net, is currently the second most popular social networking website after MySpace. (Excuse me, but the whole MySpace phenomenon passed me by.) And then, I started to discuss Facebook with my tech-savvy cousin, JO, who had heard nothing about it. JO, this one is for you!

So to begin with: what is Facebook? Continue reading

AllRecipes.com

Today, I am not going to tell you about a place to visit or a product to buy. Rather, I will tell you about a website that has come in handy for me many times and that I consider to be a real life saver.

The website, AllRecipes.com, is an online cooking community where home cooks from around the world go to share, rate and download recipes and meal ideas. That’s how AllRecipes.com describes itself. In my words, AllRecipes.com is a great place to find recipes that will have your friends and family swearing that you are a great cook! If you chose correctly, AllRecipes.com will never let you down! Continue reading