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.

Taarab is a style of music performed all along the Swahili coast at weddings and on other celebratory occasions. It is arguably the most important type of entertainment music played in this region, and it is certainly prevalent in Zanzibar, where it has come to be considered part of the very characterisation of the island itself: this is the island of cloves, the island of slaves and `the island of tawab` (Seif Salim Saleh, lecture at the African Music Village Holland Park, London, July 18, 1985)

There are many different traditional costumes in the world. In Zanzibar, a Swahili man is said to be fully attired when he puts on an embroidered cap, locally known as kofia ya viua or just kofia, robe (kanzu) with a coat, and sandals taking a Swahili name of makubadhi. The Kofia is round-shaped with a flat top, adorned with embroidered designs all over For convenience of simplicity in classification kofia are divided into two main groups, simple designed and complex-designed caps.

Aliyetunga kasiga hii, Sheikh Abgallah al-Husni, alikuwa ni mtu maarufu sana Mombasa .. Kwa muda wa myaka arobaini takriban alikuwa akisomesha elimu za gini, msikiti wa Anisa, Mjuwakale; piya alikuwa akitoa waadhi msikiti huu na mahali pengine .. Antunga kasiga mbili za waadhi, moja katika hizo ndiyo hii tuliyoishereheya katika makala haya .. W akati wa kutungwa waadhi huu - 1368 (mwaka 1948 wa milagi) - Mombasa ilikuwa ikali mji wa kiSawahili, yaani mji wa kilsilamu; lakini kulikuwa kuna mabadiliko makubwa yaanza, mabadiliko ambayo mwisho yanaondowa sura za uSawahili katika Mombasa na pwani nzima ya Afrika ya mashariki.

Für das Swahili liegt eine Menge zweisprachiger Worterbucher mit der Ausgangssprache Swahili vor, weniger in umgekehrter Richtung. Die ersten bedeutenden lexikographischen Arbeiten wurden von Missionar L. Krapf seit der Mitte des 19 Jahrhunderts vor allem in Mombasa durchgeführt. 1982 erschien sein Dicitonary of the Swahili Language. Inzwischen gibt es Wörterbucher mit den Zielsprachen Englisch, Deutsch, F ranzosisch, Russisch, Schwedisch, ltalienisch, Polnisch, Tschechisch, Gujerati, Japanisch, Arabisch und anderen.

Deutsch-Swahili Worterbuch is a bilingual German-Swahili Dictionary compiled by Karsten Legere and first published in 1990 Deutsch-Swahili Worterbuch (DSW) is aimed at the German student of Swahili, and to a lesser degree the Swahili speakers, who are advanced learners of German. The former use the dictionary for encoding Swahili and to translate German texts into Swahili The latter use it to decode German.

East Afiica and in particular the coastal region has been attractive for many researchers from the colonial period to the present times. Foreign researchers mostly from Europe and America have come to the Swahili coast with much curiosity on a wide range of subjects. Beginning in the 19th century when Africa was regarded by Europeans as `the dark continent` inquisitive geographers, prospective traders, colonial administrators and Christian missionaries came to satisfy their curiosity. On top of their duties they also embarked on research on various desciplines, in particular geography, linguistics, anthropology, and history. Their findings were then compiled in the form of books and theses which today form the basis of our reference.

Advanced Swahili students as well as teachers of Swahili will surely appreciate the new German Swahili - Handbook published recently. This handbook fills a gap in Swahili teaching materials. Thirteen authors, each of them being a specialist in the given Swahili field, have been collectively working on the volume.

For the students of Swahili poetry that predates the twentieth century (e.g. Muyaka, Alinkishafi, Mwana Kupona, Hamzivva and others) there has always been a dire need for a book which could aid in the understanding of this poetry. This need is made acute by two main reasons: Firstly, classical Swahili poetry is written partly in what is known as Kingozi, an archaic form of language believed by many to be some kind of proto-Swahili. Secondly, the language of old Swahili poetry also incorprates a lot of features from the northern dialects of Swahili (e.g. Kiarnu, Kip ate, Kisiu etc) This combination of archaic Swahili and features from the northern dialects of the language renders both the understanding and the explication of the pre-twentieth Swahili poetry rather difficult for many readers.

As a woodcarver since the age of fifteen, I have been a keen observer of carving patterns and motifs practiced by contemporary Swahili wood carvers. In my investigations, I discovered that carvers along the coast of East Africa, do not practice a uniform style of carving, although their heritage was to a great deal influenced by Middle Eastern and Indian patterns. In Lamu, for instance, four styles of carving are applied to decorating doors and furniture. What I found astonishing, is that most contemporary Swahili wood carvers seem to be unaware of the differences in styles, especially with regard to their history and design features. Apparently, most of the patterns used by the contemporary wood carvers of the three prominent Swahili towns under discussion (Zanzibar, Mombasa, Lamu) are directly copied from doors that were made between 1700-1930. Most of these doors are known to have been introduced to the East African littoral by groups who settled in the region at different periods.