Those of you who know me personally know of my rather... ummm.... well... my love for Africa.. the people, the food, the music. 

My first "real" exposure to the music I've really come to love was back in... ummm.. 2002? or was it 2003?  Somewhere back then when I was on one of my many trips to Nariobi, and I attended the Miss Kenya Finals.  The Finals were held in the infamous Carnovore Restaurant and Night Club (by the way, if you ever make it to Nairobi, this is a must visit place).  The event in itself was amazing, and a load of fun, but... it was also a chance for local-ish artists to come out and entertain the crowd between events.

The most memorable band... The Longombas singing Dondosa.  Sadly it's not up on YouTube, so you cannot see them perform.  You can listen though here on EastAfricaTube.  The two singers (brothers) came out on stage and when they started dancing... well you've seen the movies of the women screaming when the Beatles sang?... this was the same... it was deafening

This lead me into a whole new world of music... like Awilo Longomba, Extra Musica, Werrason, and many others...

A couple that really are top of my list.. Brenda Fassie:

and Lady Jay Dee:

If you're up for it... and feel like exploring a little, poke around in YouTube and look for:

• Ndombolo
• Mr. Nice
• E-Sir
• Ogopa DJs
  
• Saida Karoli
• Obsession
• Jose Chameleon
• Adhiambo
• Wahu
• Mr Lenny
• Luo music

The keywords are a mix of artists, song names and music styles... some traditional, some hiphop, and some dance styles.

Oh, another fun video to watch is from a very popular Kenyan TV show called Churchill Live, and the Dance 101 skit... good fun and a nice example of the fun dances they do in East Africa... enjoy

I'm in Sweden, visiting a friend who lives here.  We were poking about on the internet on Sunday morning looking for something interesting to do in Malmö... and I stumbled across a fishing trip thing.  It was only for 4 hours... they take you out on the Öresund (the bit of ocean between Malmö and København), and you can cast as much as you want... and catch as much as you want.  According to the Captain's blog, on Saturday they caught 90 fish.  Wow... seems good, and it's only 20 Euro.  So we show up at the harbor at the right time, and we're off.

The weather is amazing here right now.. the Öresund is calm, almost like a lake on a calm day.  We are taken out to a spot near the Øresundsbron (the bridge over the Öresund), and everyone casts their fishing lures... and the race is on to catch the first fish... which is immediately won.. by a 12 year old kid.  He caught a nice sized 1 or 1.5 kilo cod.  Everyone is over the excitement of the first fish and gets back to the important business of pretending to be professional fisherman... casting the lures, and reeling them in.  We potter aorund to several fishing spots the Captain knows and people are catching fish on a fairly regular basis.... except me... and my friend.  We do catch some rather impressive weeds though, and some huge pieces of seaweed.  Near the end of the 4 hour trip I start catching mussels... lots of mussels.  Little ones... they are in the weeds and when I inevitably drop my lure into the weeds, the mussels close up on the hook.  When I reel it in, I spend 5 minutes prying the little guys off the hooks.  They are each about the size of your finger.. not big enough to do anything with, but just big enough to get a death grip on the hook that makes it rather difficult to remove them.

So, the trip comes to an end.  We start heading back in to Malmö, but the Captain stops us one more time for a last few casts.  My friend casts and a few seconds later he's struggling with reeling in... "I've got more weeds" or so he thinks... he keeps reeling in... and I spot the flash of a fish... he managed to catch the biggest fish of the trip on the last cast of the day.  He's over the moon.. his first fishing trip... and he lands the biggest fish of the day... sigh.. meanwhile the fish were just mocking me... and making me think I had great strikes when it was only seaweed.

Now the fun part though my friend was squeemish about pulling the weeds off his hook.. now he has a whole fish to clean up... hehe... this should be interesting today.

By the way, this is the view from his livingroom window... looking out over the Öresund with the Øresundsbron to Denmark in the distance.  Nice eh?