The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

I normally spend my July 4th weekends going to a bunch of Ghanaian events. Because of the present recession, I couldn't make the trip to DC unfortunately (and it was gonna be double the price with my brother around), so I settled with being in the Bay Area. My July 4th party agenda? Hit up the young Kenyan ladies association signature party of the year. Hey, Barack Obama is Kenyan if you forgot. I ended up attending a West African (Senegalese) party that rocked and crashed the Kenyan gig at its end. My favorite Ladybug was stuck in Boston anyway. Talking about Boston, it is the city where I was introduced to Kenyan music. And this whole LadyBug stuff is bugging me to represent Kenya in my ongoing 10 song list. So here we go. Twende. Before that, you have to check out my 10 favorite songs from South Africa , my 10 favorite Nigerian songs and 10 African songs I think you should know about. If you can find a Tusker joint near you, have a drink on me. I will e-pesa you some chapaa la...

I asked my Kenyan friends to name their top 5 songs ever, from Kenya . My Kenyan alter-ego, David Ochieng Mwangi , also contributed, thanks to all he has learnt around Museke . I also asked Google Gemini (yes, not Meta AI, Chat GPT, Grok, Deepseek, or POE - because, I asked it through Google Sheets). You know it is my friend these days right? I also contributed my top 5, while reminiscing this list from 2009 . My first time in Kenya was in 2011. But prior to that, since 2002, I had been learning about Kenyan music from my Kenyan friends at MIT . I got to know more about this when me, Edward Mabonga and others started Museke in 2006. It was great to see some of my friends suggest songs that we were jamming to back in the day. I wanted to do a list of top 5, but there are too many songs. So I have aggregated 11 , to represent Kenya in the World Cup of #MusicWeDeyFeel . The starting eleven . Drop your opinions, props, suggestions in the comments section . Here we go, in no part...

Wande Coal , Lizha James , Barbara Kanam , AY , HHP , Bracket , Blu3 , Radio & Weasel , Alikiba , Black Coffee , and Cheb Khaled lead the nominees for the Museke Online Africa Music Awards . The MOAMAs will award the best of African music over the last year and put the winners in the spotlight as Africa prepares to host the globe at the World Cup in South Africa. The awards are being organized by Museke.com, home of the African music fan which seeks to unify Africa through its music. The nominees were selected over a 3 month period by an academy made up of African music enthusiasts and fans. Voting will take place on http://awards.museke.com (http://moamas.com) until 15 May, with winners being announced on 1 June. Users can vote once everyday. Below is the full list of nominees (arranged by song/album, name & country) African song of the year Bumper to bumper – Wande Coal – Nigeria Juju - Black Coffee - South Africa Meme pas fatigue – Magic System/Cheb Khaled –...

I really got to know a lot more about Kenya when I first went to MIT. Two of my best friends during my time there were Kenyan,  +Eric Mibuari  &  +Edward Mabonga . We used to do homework together. We were not concerned about competing, we were concerned about succeeding. We'd help each other, together with other African students, with our homework. The Kenyan students were together a lot too, they'd have their Kenyan shindigs with their Harvard friends and they had their own mailing list. Many of the Kenyan students were studying computer science and electrical engineering while the Ghanaian students were studying different majors. Today, Kenya's ICT industry is ahead of Ghana's and is seeming to stay so. The very first concert I ever went to in my life was by Kenyan musicians.  +Samuel Gikandi ,  +Chilongo Mulanda  and co were going to a Nameless-Wahu-Mr.Lenny concert in Worcester and I tagged along. By the end of the night, I was saying wha-who! ...

African musicians involved are Freshlyground , Lira , Nneka , Nameless , TKZee , Angelique Kidjo , Uju, Siphiwo, Soweto Spiritual Singers, Louise Carver, etc Listen Up! The Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Album is a collaboration by various artists, both local African and international. The album was be released on May 31, 2010. See the Tracklist here. Check out some of the songs # 1. R. Kelly feat. Soweto Spiritual Singers - Sign of a Victory (The Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Anthem) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lAq1xbgCyE #2. Shakira feat. Freshlyground - Click here for Waka Waka (This Time For Africa) (The Official Song of the 2010 FIFA World Cup) #3. Nneka - Click here for Viva Africa #4. Matisyahu feat. Nameless - One Day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNhpRerXfgk #5. Ternielle Nelson, Jason Hartman, UJU, Louise Carver, Aya & Deep Level - Shosholoza 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T1xV91s15c #6. J Pre, Wyclef, Jazmine Sullivan, and B Howard - Ke Nako http://www.youtu...

Happy Women's Month! I promised myself to talk more about women this August and sadly, it's ending already. I only managed to talk about pick-up lines and their use . It's all going to be remedied with this post (I hope). We all love African Queen and how it became a phenomenon in the Diaspora. There are many more songs like that and I'll like to share some with y'all. Because If I could glow like an African beauty; I would show the make up of an African beauty; And not make up make up to show African beauty; Because before make up, there was African beauty. This is from a poem I wrote, which I could consider my best to date. Before that, you have to check out my favorite Ghanaian songs , 10 favorite songs from Kenya , 10 favorite songs from South Africa , my 10 favorite Nigerian songs and 10 African songs I think you should know about. So these songs are for all the African women out there and for all who love them. Click the songs to find the lyrics, video, a...

Originally posted on GhanaConscious ...Sounds on da ground and seens on the see-ins I was at the recent Harvard African Business Conference. Why did I go? I went just because it was an African business conference and I had been attending as long as I knew it existed. I went because credit is crunching and it would be nice to pay some more attention to what I could do back home and it became absolutely necessary (to go back home). I went to network and identify partners for various undertakings in the future. I went to identify the leaders of the future as well. As you know, most of our African presidents are not the best people to write home about, especially with Barack Obama front and center in leadership chatter. A-Plus chastised a whole lot of African presidents in his 'A Letter to the West' song, likening their reigns to horror movies. One president who is turning his own horror movie story into a feel-good one is Rwanda’s Paul Kagame. In fact, this last weekend has made...

What the heck does this title mean? Chill, don't get so hot. I wanted to make an alliteration. If you want to get hot, go find some steam room and burn enjoy yasef. So I arrived at Sarova Stanley in Nairobi at 7am ready to take a nap because I had hardly slept the night before watching a nameless movie on Kenya Airways and generally not having the best flight. I had never heard of this 5-Star Hotel until a room was booked for me there. The 3 previous times I was in Nairobi, I stayed at Hotel Sankara . Best hotel I've been to ever, anywhere. The hotel wouldn't check me in to a room until 12 noon, as per hotel policy. But I wanted an exception to be made for me because (a) I needed to sleep, (b) I needed to use the wi-fi, (c) Sankara has done it before :-) I hadn't booked my room, someone else had, and I was not about to pay extra money to get this. We arrived at a good compromise though. The receptionist said I could go to the health club and wait there, take a n...

Before I get into this blog post proper, let me declare that South African Airways is my favorite airline. I really looked forward to flying it earlier this month from Accra to Johannesburg because I expected to watch some great African movies. This time, I got to watch the much acclaimed Nairobi Half-Life . Relelased in 2012, Nairobi Half-Life was directed by David Tosh Gitonga and features many rather unknown actors and actresses like Joseph Wairimu, Olwenya Maina and Nancy Wanjiku Karanja . I knew I wanted to blog about and review the movie once I began to watch it and took some notes. I loved the movie and would recommend it as a collectible. It's been billed as the most successful Kenyan movie ever. Sometimes, great movies give birth to great actors. In many places like Ghana, good actors sell good or not so good movies. The notion that you always need bankable actors and actresses to produce successful movies is not always true. This movie was the very first Kenyan ...

Ever since I went to Kenya for the first time, I have been imagining what my Kenyan alter-ego would be like. I have many Kenyan friends, most of which I met in the USA. I actually have more Kenyan friends who've returned to Kenya after sojourns abroad than for all other African countries. Like one friend said, "As for Kenyans, we move back". " I'm coming home, narudi nyumbani ". So a fter Ayooluwaato Eze from Nigeria and Richard Nshuti Mayanja from Uganda , I introduce to you all David Ochieng Mwangi. Yes, you heard it right. What a strange set of names? Kweli. Lakini kuona. My father is from the biggest tribe in Kenya, the Kikuyu. During my time abroad, most of the Kenyans I met were Kikuyu too. We're a proud people but you will always see us speak Sheng to feel as Kenyan as possible (instead of Kikuyu). Mwangi is a popular name you say. Yes, I am related to every popular Kenyan Mwangi you might know. We run deep mabibi na mabwana. My moth...

After Uganda took the title of "first ever African country I would spend a night in", Kenya followed suit shortly in September 2011. I was going to show off the Swahili I had learnt from my East African friends and been taught by my Kenyan KiSwahili teacher at Stanford. I was in Kenya for more than a week, up till date the most amount of time I have spent in any other African country. I had a lot of friends in Nairobi too. A Kenyan friend commented on an "African returnee" conversation we were having saying, "As for we Kenyans, we move back". Kweli kabisa. I had asked my Kenya based friends et al on Facebook & Twitter what I should do before I left Kenya and I tried to go through with some of their suggestions. I had every intention of getting stories to tell so let's recount the Mighty African experiences. I arrived in Nairobi on a Saturday and was welcomed by traffic from the Jomo Kenyatta airport on our way to Hotel Sankara. I recognised Nya...

I always say: I am from Elmina , I grew up in Kumasi , I live in Accra , I care a lot about Ghana and I love Africa . But for a decade, I was living in the USA. Even then, I always say, I had one foot in Ghana all throughout. What took me there? What brought me back? What grazing in colder pastures? Where is your American accent? Let’s dig in, thanks to a conversation I had with Frank Bentum , on Ghanaian students choosing Western higher education and how this impacts human capital development in Ghana, with findings informing policy recommendations.  Motivations for Studying Abroad (Push Factors) My decision to study at MIT was primarily influenced by a role model , Arthur Musah. Arthur finished Presec in 1998, just before I entered the green grounds of Presec-Legon . He had emerged as the second best (WA)SSCE candidate in this year and he was being duly celebrated. I learnt that he had also played a major part of the Presec Drama Club. I looked up to him. In 2000, when I was...