Interlude 2 kiSwahili Mahmoud Ahmed Abdulkadir

Abstract

In July 2003, Mahmoud Abdulkadir read an article in one of Kenya’s national newspapers, reporting on the activities of a national committee in charge of the Swahili language. The poet was struck by the accompanying photo of the committee. “None of its members visibly looked Swahili,” he recounts; none of the participants wore Swahili clothing or look like a Swahili person. Rather, all members appeared to derive from “upcountry” Kenya. Unsettled that no waSwahili were concerned with the Swahili language, he wrote this poem....