Translating Swahili language and knowledge in colonial and post-colonial Tanzania

In the 1940s, a student from Kenya named James Gekonyo applied to the Chemistry Department of Makerere University in Uganda. When his admissions interviewers asked him to explain the difference between a solid, liquid, and gas, Gekonyo said, "I can hold a solid in my hand and it will stay there; a liquid will run to the floor, and I cannot hold a gas at all." Gekonyo was denied admission—his answer was deemed "silly" by the interviewers.