All about Swahili - and our first Swahili visitor

I did learn a bit of Swahili at the University of Budapest - where I attended Swahili classes presented by Mr Fussi. Well we didn't get too far and today my Swahili is limited to about 20 words :-) - but we enjoyed getting to know the language and discovering all the Arabic words. If you are ready to learn or just see the most commonly used words and phrases try this link.

This is what the above site says about the language:

"Kiswahili (or Swahili) is an African language spoken mainly by the people of eastern and central Africa. That is, people who live in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, eastern Zaire, northern Zaire, northern Malawi, northern Mozambique, northern Zambia and Somali Republic. Although not widely as in the above mentioned countries, Kiswahili is also used by some people in Congo Brazzaville, southern Sudan, the Comoro Islands, the northern part of Malagasy Republic, the Persian Gulf states, and the Central African Republic
Kiswahili is the national language in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda"

Later on we might start working on language projects - it'd be lots of fun to restart my Swahili studies - actually we have already started collecting everyday phrases from various languages spoken in Africa - including Setswana, Isizulu, Kiswahili, Arabic, Portuguese, French, Afrikaans .... and more to come.



Our first East African visitor - Kevin - is from Kenya - he is a musician and will take part in our ArtMarketOnline project.

We have already set up the first version of his website at ArtMarketonline.

Click here to visit the site!



We also keep in touch with Ndesanjo Macha - master blogger from Tanzania -
click here to visit Ndesanjo's blog "Digital Africa" or here to read an interview with him on the Global Voices website.



Another Kenyan connection is Dorcas Muthoni - Co-Founder ( together with Anna Badimo of WITS ) of the LinuxchixAfrica Intiative click here to visit their site.

During Aardklop I met Peter Okeno - click here to read more about his group, Ngoma Africa. They were quite interested in hearing more about our ArtMarketOnline project so we might work together on websites in the future.

We have also started putting online our PanAfrican pages so that we can summarize all Pan African projects we take part in and the people we keep in touch with Africa wide.

The great thing about open source and open content projects is the fact that they are international and anyone can take part in them - this way I get to meet unbelievable people from all over the world - both offline - in the cafe - and also online.