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.

Recently we have seen the appearance of an interesting and provocative book on the Swahili. This book, by Ali Amin Mazrui and Ibrahim Noor Shariff (1994), takes a serious look at the question of Swahili identity and origins. This paper has at least two goals. One is to help define the nature of the debate about origins, and in so doing I will explicate and critique the Mazrui and Shariff hypothesis. The second is to reiterate the theme of the study of Swahili by Derek Nurse and the present author (1993), entitled Swahili and Sabaki · A Linguistic History (hereafter N&H). The linking of Swahili and Sabaki in the title was deliberate: the history of Swahili is inextricably intertwined with that of Sabaki and we cannot speak of the former without direct reference to the latter. The paper is divided into several sections. The first reviews the position taken by Mazrui and Shariff, the second discusses the view of N&H, implicit in their work on Sabaki, that Swahili is an integrated development from its Afiican heritage, the Sabaki languages. Finally, a critique of the Mazrui and Shariff hypothesis will conclude the paper.

This book records the knowledge and experience Swahili-speaking people have acquired in dealing with then plant world (p. 12). With its folk botanic approach it aims at discovering the principles of taxonomy they apply in classifying and labelling their plants as well as the different kinds of uses they make of them. This is what distinguishes the book from other dictionaries of Swahili plant names, e.g. P. J. Greenway (A Swahili-Botanical-English Dictionary of Plant Names Second edition. Dares Salaam 1940) where short descriptions of morphological plant characteristics are given. Greenway only makes some remarks about the use of important plants. The dictionary of J. Schroebler and J. Berchem (Mimea ya Afrika Mashariki. Sehemu ya pili. Kamusi ya majina ya mimea. Cologne: Omimee Publishers 1992) consists of a list of Swahili plant names with then botanical equivalents and some additional remarks on plant ecology.

This paper addresses the history and current status of the Swahili 0 tense marker.

Kenyan Swahili creative writing has been in the shadow of Tanzanian creative works for a long time. Infact some critics even end up claiming that one cannot really talk of Kenyan Swahili prose creative writing. This is notwithstanding a number of commendable works some of which belong to the very first generation of Swahili literature.

One of the most striking charactetistics of contemporary drama is its denial of illusion. Modern playwrights do their best to convince the audience that what is presented on the stage is not a tranche de vie (as was the aspiration of naturalist writers), but a performance.

There are two matters for us to consider.The first is that of the association of Alhamisi with religious connotations and if that is only specific to Kiswahili language (community); and the second is if the borrowing of Alhamisi is linguistically well motivated even for that purpose. For both these matters, we shall be comparing the Kiswahili calendar with that of its neighbours to determine what we think is a discrepancy, especially, with the Kiswahili borrowing of Alhamisi. We shall discuss the issues above and others in this paper as follows. In the following section we shall, briefly, consider the basis of the formulation of some week calendars.This will be followed by the consideration of the week calendars of a number of languages in East Afiica. Lastly, we shall focus specifically on the Kiswahili week calendar; comparing it with the others and drawing our conclusion.