How do you stay in touch?

[mmarlo 1]

I've been using a $5 phone card called African Safari from tigerphonecard.com. It has a pretty good connection to her Safaricom cell phone line in Nairobi, and I get 25-30 minutes on it (although it says I should get 49). I've tried a lot of different cards, but this one seems to be the best. The only annoying things are that they force you to make a $20 purchase or you have to pay a $1 surcharge, so I just buy 4 cards at a time to avoid the surcharge, and the first time you buy they have to confirm your account with you buy calling you and verifying your credit card number.

Jacinta isn't very good about staying in touch via email. It's so convenient for me, but SMS is more convenient for her, since she can do it directly from her cell phone. I've been using SMSCountry as a pretty good compromise. You can send SMS messages through their website at a cheap rate to a cell phone, and they can send an SMS back to your account on the website if you set things up properly and if they format the message properly. The best thing is that you can set it up so that the email

I don't have any ties to these services; it's just what seems to be working best for me. But there is some kind of referral program through SMSCountry, so if you want to try it, we can set up a network of people mutually benefiting from the service. But if you know of something better, please let me know!

[randolady 1]

I've been using a $5 phone card called African Safari from tigerphonecard.com. It has a pretty good connection to her Safaricom cell phone line in Nairobi, and I get 25-30 minutes on it (although it says I should get 49). I've tried a lot of different cards, but this one seems to be the best. The only annoying things are that they force you to make a $20 purchase or you have to pay a $1 surcharge, so I just buy 4 cards at a time to avoid the surcharge, and the first time you buy they have to confirm your account with you buy calling you and verifying your credit card number.

Jacinta isn't very good about staying in touch via email. It's so convenient for me, but SMS is more convenient for her, since she can do it directly from her cell phone. I've been using SMSCountry as a pretty good compromise. You can send SMS messages through their website at a cheap rate to a cell phone, and they can send an SMS back to your account on the website if you set things up properly and if they format the message properly. The best thing is that you can set it up so that the email

I don't have any ties to these services; it's just what seems to be working best for me. But there is some kind of referral program through SMSCountry, so if you want to try it, we can set up a network of people mutually benefiting from the service. But if you know of something better, please let me know!

I've been using the Boss LA card from viapin.com, which is 20 cents per minute to Tanzanian mobiles with 1 minute rounding and a $.69 service fee every two weeks. The connection is good, and overall I've been happy with it. But I think I'm going to switch to 3utelecom.com, which charges 19.9 cents (woohoo!) per minute with 1 second rounding and no other fees. And it bills monthly (which is kind of dangerous for me...), with a record of the numbers dialed.

Ombeni emails me almost every day, which is probably really inconvenient for him, but he insists upon it.

SMSCountry sounds interesting, and he'd probably like that better than email. Is it tricky for Jacinta to format the message correctly? I wonder if it would work for Ombeni, since I don't think Vodacom allows sending international SMS.

And I'm going to try to be better about sending snail mail now that he has his own PO Box, since it's oh so much fun to receive (and good evidence!).

[mmarlo 1]

Thanks for the info. Viapin looks like there's maybe one card that would be comparable to the one I've been using, except that it also provides an online calling history, which I don't think mine does. Maybe I'll try that one next time.

Unfortunately, 3utelecom charges 39.9¢ per minute to Kenyan cell phones. Ouch! If it were half that, I'd jump on it, but not at that rate.

If Ombeni can't send International SMSs through Vodacom, SMSCountry would only work for him if he also joined SMSCountry and used it from a cyber cafe. It's really cheap to send an SMS from one SMSCountry account to another, but if he's already at the cyber, why not just send an email!?

The way it works for Jacinta is she sends an SMS to a generic SMSCountry number, which I think is an Indian number, and puts my account name as the first word of the SMS. Then her message follows. It works quite well for Jacinta, but Safaricom does have International SMS capabilities. She's charged 5 KSh for local SMS and 10 KSh for international. She sent me 7 SMS messages today of short sweet nothings...but could have really written a long story for the same amount of money if she had gone to the cyber on the corner. But SMS is her preference, so I don't complain.

What I really like about receiving the SMSs through SMSCountry is that you don't pay anything to receive the messages (and they go directly to my email, which I have almost 24/7 access to). If she messaged my T-Mobile number, not only would she get charged, but I'd also be charged 15¢ per message, and there's no special deals on international SMS!

Funny thing about snail mail. I sent a really nice Valentine's Day card to Jacinta around February 1, but somehow it's never shown up. Then I sent her a couple of blouses on Feb. 15, cut the tags and marked them as used/worn, and she got them within 10 days, and she wasn't charged any import duty. But she's never gotten the card I sent her.

[forchika 4]

I communicate with my SO thru yahoo instant messenger, the computer has been a great way to stay in touch. You can even chat via web cam. I am unsure about the rates calling to Kenya. Some of the ones mentioned here were Pingo(they have to verify account before making active, in the mean time they give you at least 30 mins to try it out. I personally use Raza and Shopcalling card. I have never tried SMS messaging, I wanted to but just never got around to it because we would talk thru instant messenger daily.

[mmarlo 1]

Yeah. I have YM, AIM, and MSN, but Jacinta for some reason never really warmed to the idea of the webcam or online chat. I would have liked to have tried it, but I dunno, maybe it's the time difference, maybe she didn't want to learn a new technology, but she didn't go for it. I always stay up late so I can wish her a good morning by email/SMS and then I tend to sleep a bit late (I'm a student) and only have a few hours before she's going to bed, so that's a bit limiting, especially since the cyber that's near her apartment doesn't stay open that late. We tend to just leave a lot of messages for each other that we don't necessarily have to respond to "live", and I tend to call her when it's a bit late and she's definitely back from town, in the house, and not going anywhere. It works for us. I guess I would tweak it slightly to include the webcam if I could, but I'm not going to push her now after a few months apart and now that we're hopefully within a month or so of being together.

[akim oda 0]

I have been using pingo for a few months now(thanks to felshen, for telling me about it), for me it is great. Before that I was using a few different calling cards, but mainly African Dream, the $5.00 card and allowed me to talk for 50 minutes, without hanging up though. If you hang up, well you'll loose most the minutes. For calling a cell phone in Ghana, from pingo is, I think 14 cents per min. I really like the service and there is a record of the call history, which you don't get with calling cards. I understand we need proof of our call history, for the intrerview.

I don't quite understand the whole SMS thing your talking about. I guess because I've never heard of it before. Where can I go to read more info on it?

Mainly we keep in touch with daily phone calls, or text message. 20cets for me to send with cingular, nothing to receive. I don't know how much it is for my fiance to send text, but it must be cheap, because he sends them quite often. We used to send a lot of emails, but that has kind of died down to once or twice a week. We rarely chat anymore and then occasionally send things snail mail, for holidays and such.

[Perseverance 1]

We (when we needed phone cards) used pingo, it is very imprtant to have the phone records at your interview, I highly recomend pingo we have never had a problem. I actually still have my account set up so he can call his family at his leisure.

[Queen Jenn 0]

I communicate with my SO thru yahoo instant messenger, the computer has been a great way to stay in touch. You can even chat via web cam. I am unsure about the rates calling to Kenya. Some of the ones mentioned here were Pingo(they have to verify account before making active, in the mean time they give you at least 30 mins to try it out. I personally use Raza and Shopcalling card. I have never tried SMS messaging, I wanted to but just never got around to it because we would talk thru instant messenger daily.

We've been using Yahoo instant messenger, too. I love it when we get to use the webcams!!!!!!! As far as calling Nigeria, I purchased a phonecard through www.zaptel.com. I bought the Flying Colors card. It's about 9 cents/minute to a landline and 22 cents/minute to a cell phone. I like it because on their website, they keep receipts of all my refill purchases and details, including phone numbers used and call minutes, on all my calls (so I can use it for proof of relationship with the embassy).

Anywho . . . . hope this helps someone

[akatagirl 0]

I now use Pingo thanks to Felshen's advice on this and I love because the fact that it keeps a record of calls made is great evidence to use for your SO's interview. Also you can call from any phone you have listed from your pingo account and just type the long international number to your honey.

[Carl & Susan 0]

I usually use cards picked up from the gas station, the best I've found is the Extreme Africa card from STI

http://stiphonecard.com/prepaid/phone-card/STIXA05

I get a little under an hour (I think usually about 55 minutes) on a $5.00 card

with the baby and all, I'm not too worried about having phone records to prove a relationship and would rather have the extra minutes.

Otherwise it's usually IM over Skype, unfortunately the internet connection is so bad at our home in Uganda there's no way to use skype for voice calls.

[blah0323 0]

Before my DH arrived I used every card on the book. But right now we stick with African Dream and US Airways. Actually if you keep the phone cards and get a log of your local phone, you will have all of the access numbers for the calls on your phone log. Either way it is expensive. I actually ran up my bill a little, or should I say a lot to have one record to send as well.

[We_Destiny 1]

I agree that www.pingo.com is great. I have been using for 4 months and have never had a problem with the connection, and I have always been able to get through to Nigerian cell phones with no droped calls. However, I had a problem with the automatic reccharge and now only recharge manually. You forget that it willl continually charge your cell and I have ended up spending more than I wanted with automatic recharge it enables me to account or keep up with my monthly calling budget. When I have exceeded my budget on pingo. I use phone cards.

[olutayo82 0]

Hi

I have been gone from this message board for long. I have a suggestion.Do you by any chance have vonage . i.e the VOIP Phone system?

If you do, there is a way of calling anwhere in Africa sort of free wihout having to pay anything i guess.

E-mail me if youwant to. It also involves using you cell phone minutes especially if you havea lot of minutes you can use. And by the way , it is LEGAL so no questions asked

It depends on you having the service in your area.

[olutayo82 0]

Hi

I have been gone from this message board for long. I have a suggestion.Do you by any chance have vonage . i.e the VOIP Phone system?

If you do, there is a way of calling anwhere in Africa sort of free wihout having to pay anything i guess.

E-mail me if youwant to. It also involves using you cell phone minutes especially if you havea lot of minutes you can use. And by the way , it is LEGAL so no questions asked

It depends on you having the service in your area.

[mmarlo 1]

Interesting. I looked into Vonage, which has pretty reasonable rates to Kenya about $.35/minute to a cell phone (less if you're calling a landline, especially in Nairobi), which isn't good, but it isn't terrible, since there aren't any hidden fees.