Anthony Thuo can see on his monitoring devices when one of the Base Transmission Stations he oversees in the Narok region is not working, but customer feedback from a town called Narosura often comes faster.

“The moment it just goes off for a minute, they all call me because of M-PESA. Whenever it’s down, it costs them big time,” Anthony said.

On a normal day, Anthony is used to dusty roads and moving long distances, as he ensures the network is up and running within the Narok cluster.

During the flooding season, the situation was very different.

“We had some areas that never had network for almost two weeks because they were inaccessible because of the rains. You could find that the roads to particular towers are cut off, and bridges have been swept away. We also had seasonal rivers that could not be crossed,” he said.

To keep systems running, Anthony and his team had to use tractors to get to some sites or wade through the water barefoot because the water level was above the height of gumboots and with a stick to test the depth and avoid deep holes.

“You can imagine, we attempt to access a particular site. Day one, we are unable to. Day two, we go, nothing has changed. Day three, we go, if anything, it’s worse, the water levels have gone up. So, you have to go back to the drawing board,” he said.

Anthony’s key performance indicator in his role is ensuring 99 percent network uptime for customers. During the floods, the network would go down every two weeks, which meant things were not looking good.

This meant that he had to go over and above to ensure customers had network.

The muddy terrain, unstable network, and long hours were tough for Anthony and his team, but they also taught him and his team members great lessons.

For Esther Karuga, Senior Manager, Radio Network Implementation and Operations Rift and Greater Western at Safaricom, the experience taught her a lot: “For me, it was great learning. I would say I was thrown into the deep end, and I really needed to learn how to swim very, very fast.”

“I guess we’ve learnt a lot as a company, we weren’t very well prepared for the El Nino. We could have done better. We would have put enough measures in place to mitigate some of those effects, and those are some of the learnings, which I carry with me, which I hope to use in the next rainy season,” said Anthony.

Watch the video below to see how Anthony and his team braved the floods.