This paper presents an edited version of a hand written text in Shaba Swahili and French, accompanied by an English translation. The original text was written in ballpoint by a Shaba Zairean ex-houseboy, and sent to his former employer in Belgium It provides an account of his life, with special focus on the period after his Belgian employers left Zaire in 1973. It documents the conditions of hardship in the life of a semi-educated Zairean and provides a detailed account of the migrations he has to undertake in order to find means to support himself and his family. The author Wiote the `recit` at the request of the former employer`s wife, as a symbolic way to repay the debt he had incurred over the years in which he had received money and other goods from the Belgian lady. The text was sent to me by the former employer, who asked me to translate it into Dutch. The former employer granted me the permission to edit and publish the text in its totality. For reasons of privacy, we decided to alter the names of the people mentioned in the text. Thus, for instance, the employer is named Andni Deprins, his wife (who is the central addressee of the text) Helena Arens, and the author of the text is identified as Julien.

The 6th National Book Fair in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2003 saw a new publication in the field of Swahili literary studies that should draw the attention of Swahili scholars in and outside of East Africa: the first comprehensive literary dictionary in Swahili language. Kyallo Wadi Wamitila, who is currently Senior Lecturer for Swahili Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Nairobi, has committed more than a decade of meticulous research to compile this major work. It comprises roughly 1.300 entries, arranged alphabetically, ranging from adhidadi (antonym) to muhakati (mimesis), tashtiti (satire) and zila (tragic flaw).

In the traditional Swahili literature description has a secondary role. Characters` portrayals are limited to a few stereotyped attributes, because they represent types, not individualized characters The model of women`s beauty is taken from Arabic literature: round face, black, flowing hair, big eyes, teeth like pealls with beautiful gaps in between, slender neck... This model is valid to a large extent also in modern novels.. Thus, the complexion of an ideal woman is as clear as possible; even up-rountry heroines are often light-roloured `as a half-cast` or at least bronzed. They are preferably of medium height, lump, but with a slender waist and well-shaped legs.

Between 1977 and 1980 I collected a nuber of texts on the northern Kenya coast Most were tape recorded by myself fiom oral performances, a few were written down or recorded by others Most of the current collection consists of texts gathered so, plus: the Mwiini material, provided by Chuck Kisseberth, originally provided or recorded in Barawa by M I. Abasheikh, and the Bajuni \"contemporary\" verse, taken form a publicly available cassette-recording by AM. Msallarn in the 1970.

This paper presents an edited version of a handwritten text in Shaba Swahili and French, accompanied by an English translation. The original text was written in ballpoint by a Shaba Zairean ex-houseboy, and sent to his former employer in Belgium. It provides an account of his life, with special focus on the period after his Belgian employers left Zaire in 1973. It documents the conditions of hardship in the life of a semi-educated Zairean and provides a detailed account of the migrations he has to undertake in order to find means to support himself and his family. The author wrote the `recit` at the request of the former employer`s wife, as a symbolic way to repay the debt he had incurred over the years in which he had received money and other goods from the Belgian lady. The text was sent to me by the former employer, who asked me to translate it into Dutch. The former employer granted me the permission to edit and publish the text in its totality. For reasons of privacy, we decided to alter the names of the people mentioned in the text. Thus, for instance, the employer is named Andni Deprins, his wife (who is the central addressee of the text) Helena Arens, and the author of the text is identified as Julien.

Chachage Seithy L. Chachage amepata kuandika riwaya nyingine tatu: Sudi ya Yohana (1980), Kivuli (1984) na Almasi za Bandia (1990). Riwaya yake ya nne Makuadi wa Soko Huria (2002) ni ya kihistoria na yenye upekee wa maudhui, muundo na mtindo. Vipengele hivi vinadhihirisha ukomavu na upeo wa juu wa mwandishi ilimradi kwenda sambamba na changamoto ya utandawazi ya karne ya ishirini na moja ya milenia ya tatu. Mwandishi amekitabaruku kitabu hiki kwa kumbukumbu ya Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922-1999).

This article will present a short story which appeared in the newspaper Mzalendo on the 15th January 1978, but it took twenty-six years before it was published in a book. Presumably it was written in the same period as both the play Kaputula la Marx and probably also as some of Kezilahabi’s poems from the second collection Karibu ndani (1988). It is a period of his most critical works. In Mayai – Waziri wa Maradhi the author blames, in a highly symbolic manner, the leading classes of his country who became rich at the expense of common citizens during ten years of Independence, symbolized by ten emaciated ghostly children.

After being for a long time in the shadow of its Tanzanian counterpart, Kenyan fiction has recently come into the foreground with writers such as Kyallo Wadi Wamitila, Rocha Chi-merah, Mwenda Mbatiah and Ken Walibora. The paper deals with his second novel Kufa kuzikana. Although Kufa Kuzikana is a powerful accusation of how ruthless ethnic feelings still inform many people from the intellectuals and top politicians to the uneducated villagers, the novel does contain a positive message as well in that it shows how true friendship can overcome ethnic and other differences and survive even in the most adverse circumstances.

A mention of name in literature is almost always likely to recall the question Juliet posed to Romeo about his family name Montague in William Shakespeare´s Romeo and Juliet. In reading creative works we tend to identify characters basically by the names given to them. It is on this basic premise that some character analysis methods tend to define characters by taking recourse to their names and sometimes identifying them in metaphorical terms or as speaking names. Names play a very central and important role in any reading exercise and so would certainly the names given to characters be of importance to us. These are linguistic or semiotic signs that play a very crucial role in the overall linguistic structure of a literary text or its signification. Decoding of the names therefore becomes an important critical engagement in as far as it helps the reader in his deciphering of the text in which the names are. Characters´ names, as this article will show, can be used artistically to achieve a number of goals like encoding a central trait in a particular character´s signification, embracing crucial thematic motifs, ideological toning as well as even showing the particular writer´s point of view. Some of these qualities are easily lost in translation.

This study aims at studying one of the most important contemporary Kiswahili writers: Euphrase Kezilahabi. In a way this paper can be seen as a continuation of my earlier articles on the same writer. It is definitely different from the other ones though a certain thread links them: the interest in Kezilahabi`s philosophy. In this paper my interest is with two main motifs namely contemptus mundi and carpe diem. Contemptus mundi is a Latin expression for contemptible world, world as a bad place and one that is perceived contemptuously. I intend to explore the said motifs in Kezilahabi\'s prose works: Rosa Mistika, Kichwamaji, Gamba la Nyoka, Dunia Uwanja wa Fujo, Nagana and Mzingile. The latter two works are slightly short, lacking the novel length of the other four works. I do not, however, want to entangle myself in the polemics of genre as to what a novel or novella is. I will, however, regard the two as novellas at least by the virtue of their length.