Hujambo! | Page 26 | Living and Working in Nairobi, Kenya

Travel

Malawi is Beautiful

Randi and I finally got out of Morogoro, and wow, Malawi is beautiful! Also, as it turns out, being stuck in Morogoro for a few extra days wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be.

Our initial impression was so bad because the town is hot, dry and dusty. To its credit, though, there are some beautiful mountains very nearby. We spent our time wisely (searching for postcards and eating Indian food), and by the third day we were ready to hop on the bus to Mbeya.

Mbeya’s another medium-sized town in southern Tanzania. It was raining when we rolled in, but we managed to chat with some guys at the bus station and eat some dinner. We were happy to find lots of ATMs, and “central” Mbeya sits smack dab in some hills, so it was quite nice to walk around and take some pictures.

Kenya, Travel

Stuck in Morogoro

We set out from Nairobi on December 22nd at a breakneck pace — our sights are on Malawi, and we have two weeks to get there and back. By bus! It’s really far, but we’ve been to most of the cities in between before, so it doesn’t matter if we blow right through them.

Other than the first leg (Nairobi to Arusha) we weren’t quite sure on the route to take to get to southern Tanzania. Most of the reviews and blogs we read said to steer clear of Dodoma (capital of Tanzania) route due to crappy roads, so we figured it’d be a good bet to head directly to Moshi then ask around there. We learned pretty quickly that, from Morogoro, “barabara ni lami mpaka South Africa” (the road is tarmac all the way to South Africa). Haya, twende Morogoro basi (alright, let’s go to Morogoro then).

Kenya, Music, Rants

Music Copyrights in Kenya

Yesterday I happened to speak with some representatives from the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK) at an event promoting local music in Kenya. I was shocked to learn that, in Kenya, music works are granted copyright protection for 50 years after the death of the composer. I’m neither a musician nor a lawyer (so maybe I don’t “get it”), but it certainly seems like there is something wrong with that legislation.

For example, let’s say I’m twenty-five years old and I publish a song in the year 1900. If I die in 1960, at the age of eighty five, my copyright would have just expired this year (2010). Exactly whose interests is the copyright protecting fifty years after my death? Keep in mind, the song would have been published 110 years ago! Do you know what people were doing in Kenya ~100 years ago?