Guaka

I will be attending Wikimania. We should meet! Ndesanjo

And I´m very glad we did! Guaka 19:21, 10 Agosti 2006 (UTC)

Answers to your questions

Hi Guaka, thanks for the congrats, which I will have to share with the other regular contributors. It's indeed wonderful that the Swahili Wikipedia has breached the 1000 mark. It could well be the first in an African language, I have not checked. Reading your questions, I am again reminded that it is high time I introduced myself on the various Wikipedias to which I contribute. My answers to your questions are a start:
1. I was born in the Netherlands like yourself but left the country after my studies at Wageningen University in 1979. I have been back only occasionally since then. I learned Swahili in Kenya during a study period in 1976/7. Later, I have lived and worked in that country twice for a total of more than 10 years. I have regularly visited Tanzania as well. In addition, I have lived in Niger, Nigeria and Sudan, and travelled extensively throughout the continent. Though I now work in Benin, my Kenyan wife still lives in the highland town of Nanyuki where I visit her twice a year.
2. I learned about Wikipedia in 2004 and it did not take me long to discover the Swahili one. I started to contribute last year.
3. I assume that with "this project" you mean the Swahili Wikipedia. I have to admit that initially I was a bit pessimistic about the future of the project, especially since I had the impression that few native Africans contributed. It was partly the reason for me to start contributing. I am now more optimistic, though cautiously so. I think we need many more Africans to contribute. ChriKo 22:32, 7 Agosti 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. Just this week a mailinglist about Wikipedias in African languages was started. You might be interested in joining it. It can be found here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/ Guaka 19:21, 10 Agosti 2006 (UTC)

Kurasa za pekee - kurasa za kale

Guaka hujambo? - Kiswahili chako vipi sasa??

Now I stumbled across your collection of special pages and found "oldest pages" quite interesting. In the beginning categories were not much in use on this wiki so there seems to be a number of articles which are more or less "secret" because they are just not linked to anything.

Can you imagine to try to look for existing Categories to link to for these old articles? Otherwise lets communicate and think what to do about them. --Kipala 09:29, 4 Novemba 2006 (UTC)

Guaka, Long time! Thanks a lot for your work. Ndesanjo 25 Agosti 2007