Unashig: Healthcare Service at Your Doorstep, in the Time of Covid-19

In this global-scale and unprecedented time of Covid-19, with the mandatory "social distancing" rule imposed by governments and embraced by individuals, families and communities all around the world, Unashig's health insurance underwriter, UAP OldMutual, is offering a new service to all insured individuals, families and groups in Nairobi and presumably other cities and towns in Kenya -- including 76 Unashig Members. 

The service is branded Healthcare at Your Doorstep. It has three components, as follows:
1)    Med On Wheels: This service will deliver medicine at your doorstep based on the  prescription which you share via a specified WhatsApp number or email address.
2)    Cellphone consultations with a doctor available at a specified mobile phone number.
3)    Counselling Session: This service will be offered via another dedicated mobile phone number.  

For Details, Tap This Link: Healthcare at your doorstep

MUSIC: Lumumba Heros National by Joseph Kabasele (c. 1960)

Play Lumumba Heros National {Audio + Still Pictures}

[DRC]

Joseph Kabasele Tshamala (1930-1983), Le Grand Kalle himself, was in many ways the founding father of modern Congolese music[1]; a brand of music which we, a good number of us, have come to know as #LingalaPop. Many keen observers will acknowledge that LingalaPop in many ways became the roots and trunk of Afropop, and now dominates all of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa – and even parts of West Africa. Its counterpart in North Africa is the even more recent phenomenon – ArabPop and/or MaghrebPop. Afrobeat is dominant in Nigeria, and has a huge influence among its neighbors – particularly Ghana, Togo and Cameroon. 

In Lumumba Heros National, Joseph Kabasele and his pioneering band, African Jazz, sing the praises of Patrice Emery Lumumba (1925-61) – a leading pro-independence politician and Republic of the Congo’s first Prime Minister[2].

The song is a finely fitting and absolutely spell-binding melody. Though the clip makes use of still pictures rather than ‘moving’, the visibility of the song’s hero and the events around him that it offers is co-equal with the sounds that the ear is ‘fed’ with. It is both memorable and historic in tenor, like the lyrics and the band’s instrumental rendition of moments in a young nation’s early life that are at once triumphant and tragic. It’s a forever song.

One noteworthy and perhaps most surprising feature of this song is that the lyrics were written and sung (in the early Sixties!) almost entirely in Swahili and not, as one would have expected, Lingala![3] Likewise noteworthy, too, is that Swahili was one of the four languages which Lumumba, a sapeur of sorts, spoke. How he learnt it, and what motivated him, one would love to know. Let me know when you do.

I vividly remember the song’s mournful and funerary sounds from long ago – not when it was released, but as the Sixties got going. The sounds came mostly over wired radio – and sometimes levitated over vinyl – in our pioneering ‘gated community’ of railway workers and, as I can say now, their young families – there in Nairobi’s Eastlands, some 2,415 kilometers (roughly 1,500 miles) far, far to the east of Kinshasa, DRC’s capital, as the pigeon – or the Osprey[4] – flies.

But I remember just as clearly conversations that I, playing with mates,  could hear going on among despondent grounds-workers in our ‘estate’ – nay, ‘lawn-mowers’ of sorts and such – when the news of Lumumba’s assassination arrived and churned in our midst at radio and ‘bush-telegraph’ speeds. It must have been January 1961. 

A song which had surely begun its unique life-course as an inspirational, celebratory, chante for an independence hero in circa June 1960, so soon and so tragically became, in effect and in the space of only seven months or so, a dirge! Those who encountered its distinct and entrancing tunes in the years after January 1961, and knew of the fate that had befallen their hero Lumumba, must have been, I imagine, hard put to believe that it had ever been anything but a mourning song. Not knowing exactly when the song was released, I, for one, had for the longest time, indeed until year 2020 came calling, assumed that it had been prompted, ‘inspired’, by Lumumba’s assassination. The lyrics, mostly in a quaint version of Swahili, included a few distinct words (such as ‘sikukuu’) and phrases with patently ‘broken’ meaning-strings and allusions which one could be forgiven for not taking too literally.

In 1967, Franco and L’O.K. Jazz also released a music audio by the same title. It was much more conducive to dancing than its introspective and soul-searching predecessor, and in it Mobutu’s name featured prominently. But that’s not the only reason I much prefer Kabasele’s. Comparisons will probably rage forever. Here it is: Lumumba Heros National. The lyrics, both in Lingala and in English translation, appear on the same YouTube page as the audio of the song.

LISTEN:  Tabu Ley Mourns Kabasele {Audio}

The lyrics of Franco’s version, which appear lower down the page to which the link just given takes you, don’t have the funerary bent of the earlier song. But it adds references to Mobutu which, given his reported complicity in the execution of Lumumba, will surely rub Lumumba’s admirers the wrong way. As Vientianegirl remarked in one of the public comments on the song’s YouTube page, “Franco is praising Mobutu as [an] heir [to] Lumumba’s legacy, while in reality Mobutu actively took part in Lumumba's assassination.”[5]

---

[1] See Chris May (2003) “Le Grand Kalle: His Life, His Music” www.allaboutjazz.com

[2] He was in office only from June 30^th, 1960 to September 1960, when he was deposed by a cold-war coalition of local political and military actors (spearheaded by Joseph Kasavubu and Joseph Mobutu) on the one hand and foreign state and multinational actors (Belgium, the US and the UN) on the other. He was then into custody in October and – after three months or so of byzantine machinations, prison-break, cat-and-mouse pursuits and final capture – executed by his captors on January 17^th, 1961. martyred national hero.

[3] Lumumba Heros National is not the only song he sung in Swahili. Another song, released in 1961-1962, is now titled simply and confoundingly as B.B 69. It is a truly funky piece, and was extremely popular on radio in Nairobi, back in the day. It remains super-hot, even now! But most of B.B 69’s visibility, I hazard to say, was in the clubs and at parties – and secondarily in the modest but aspirational homes of the lumpen proletariat, the nascent elite, and parents of future ones.

[4] See here’s how Ospreys fly and how they risk their lives when they fish.

[5] See Hidde (2019) “Appropriating the Legacy of Lumumba in “Lumumba Heros National” (1972)

MUSIC: Chokoza by Marya ft. Avril

Play Chokoza  {video}
[Kenya]

Chokoza is a 2010 song, if you remember how or what Nairobi was like then; but I'm still asking myself whether it really shows or if it’s merely a figment. Everyone alive then, and now, was 10 years younger, of course, as you can see in Marya's face, and in Avril's. You can see it in their body texts as well, and hear it in their slang and their overall vocabulary, as well as the more specific memes that they pick and use so seamlessly. They're still, here in this song, in the precarious and multi-faceted girls-to-women transition -- more than one transition perhaps.

It took me more than half of the 2010s, I think,  to find out that Chokoza even existed. It was something of a surprise when I did, given what I'd already written about African music, Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) -- that 2010 blockbuster by Shakira and Friends -- and the world.

Chokoza is an interesting song, even if it stands distinctly now as a period-piece. Remember that it came out just months after, and not before, that watershed Vuvuzela World Cup hosted with such memorable hospitality and passion by South Africa.

What is most important to remember is that the girl Avril had great potential and detectable skills even then -- when the future for the African artist was far less clear-cut and promising than it is today. And so had Marya, but I wonder what ever happened to her. I just don't remember seeing her in another song since. Perhaps I just haven't looked around enough, or long enough.

Looking at Chokoza now, let me say this as I conclude: Times have really and truly changed since 2010 -- both for the African artiste and the music ecosystem within which he or she operates -- and so much for the better.

Watch: Avril and Naiboi in this 2020 song, Weka

KENYA ~ UAP Provider Panel List, April 2020

UAP has recently released its latest Provider Panel List for Kenya, with effect from April 2020.  We received it via an email dated May 3rd, 2020. The list can be accessed through the link given below: 

Link: UAP Provider Panel List, April 2020

Unashig Members already participating in the group health insurance underwritten by UAP are strongly advised that this new panel list is the only one currently valid. All decisions as to which provider to visit for any particular health services must be guided by the details provided in the new list. UAP will not honour any financial commitments between a Member and any provider who is not on the current list.