"Meet the Author" at Afrifest, August 2

Afrifest is an annual Minnesota summer festival which aims to foster awareness of the experience of people of African descent in Africa and the African Diaspora across the ages.

There are always vendors of different products and providers of various services. It is always a delight to be around them. As In the past, I will be there in my capacity as an educator, cultural consultant and author, and here are the books I will have on display.

This is a collection of ten tales from the oral tradition of the Matengo of Southern Tanzania. I recorded them in the mid-seventies, tranlated them into English, and wrote commentaries on them.
















This is a study guide to Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe's famous novel.


















I wrote this book to foster mutual understanding between Africans and Americans, with a focus on cultural differences which hinder or complicate relations between the two sides.

















This is a collection of short essays in Swahili, on economic, political, social, cultural, and educational issues, with a particular focus on the experience of Tanzania, but relevant to the rest of Africa as well.
















This pamphlet is a miniature version of ten posters I created for the first Afrifest, 2007. It highlights the African experience from the origins of the human race in Africa to the present, touching on such topics as the ancient African civilizations, slavery and the slave trade, colonialism, the struggle for independence, the arts, and pan Africanism.

For more information on the festival, check the Afrifest website.

My Articles in "Kwanza Jamii"

Early last year, Maggid Mjengwa, owner of Mjengwa blog, invited me to write a column for Kwanza Jamii, a weekly paper he was starting. For most of the year, I wrote this column. The paper appeared in print and online. The print version ended at the end of the year, but Kwanza Jamii online continued.

Today I went online and saw that two articles I wrote for Kwanza Jamii are leading in the categories of "most discussed" and "most read." My "Safari za JK Nje ya Nchi" has been "most discussed" for many months. Although a handful of readers agreed with my arguments or engaged in civil discourse, most railed against me, with some resorting to "ad-hominem" attacks, instead of dealing with the arguments, a trend that Professor Matondo roundly criticized.

The article that has climbed to the top of the "most read" list is "Tutabadilika JK Akienda Rwanda?" This is a pleasant and welcome development. There is a widely held view in Tanzania that readers of newspapers prefer sensational news, reports of scandals and similar stories, not serious writing. My article appears to challenge this view, even though it has taken many months for it to reach the top spot.

On both counts, I have reason to be pleased. I have a record of provoking debate and controversy, from my early school days, as principal speaker in debating clubs. In writing for Kwanza Jamii, I sought to stimulate debate. I subsequently gathered my articles and published them as book titled CHANGAMOTO.

"Changamoto," a Swahili word, means something that stimulates or provokes thinking. The book came out just a few months ago. I am pleased that my first reader in Tanzania is excited about it, as I reported here. This reader's response and the online evidence indicate that the book will provoke strong reactions, generating, I hope, not only heat, but also light.