Friday, March 11, 2011

Blogging on albinos and happy babies

Today we have a guest lecturer in class, as Maggid Mjengwa, Tanzanian blogger and newspaper columnist, has been presenting to us his blog and explaining how he operates it, updating pictures and comments usually several times a day.

Maggid is a long-time friend of mine from Iringa, where he is heading the Tanzania programme of the Swedish NGO, Forum Syd. But he is also a journalist, writing weekly columns to the Raia Mwema newspaper and nowadays also publishing a local newspaper in Njombe district as well as an online publication called Kwanza Jamii. His own blog at mjengwa.blogspot.com is one of the most famous and most visited blogs in Tanzania, giving a sympathetic picture of the lives Tanzanians are living in both the rural areas and in the cities. You’ll see photos of people and peculiar events wherever Maggid moves, telling a story often more worth than thousand words.

These days you can see in his blog pictures from Dar es Salaam. Here’s a woman carrying a heavy load in Morogoro Street, here’s Maggid’s plate of changu and ugali at a restaurant in Kijitonyama, and here are his blogger colleagues of the Full Shangwe news blog with their laptops filling the table space.

Lately, there’s appeared several other interesting blogs in Tanzania, each of them usually focusing on one particular topic.

Daily News journalist Jiang Alipo maintains the Mama na Mwana blog for publishing happy photos of babies and comments about baby care. Tuntufye Abel is hosting a blog on football coaching, with comments and advice. Mzee Mwanakijiji, again, is a Tanzanian living in USA and running a podcast blog with audio recordings, on corruption revelations and other local Tanzanian topics.

Other blogs include the cartoon blog Katuni inasema, Cartoons say it all, by Tanzania Daima cartoonist Said Michael, the fashion blog 8020 Fashions by Darhotwire journalist Shamim Mwasha, and Albinos in Tanzania, a blog reporting on the violence targeting albinos and the general situation of people with albanism in the country.

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