About

That is the whole point of this, and it is worth explaining how it started.

I have been teaching all my life. In Kenya, working with NGOs. In London, ever since.

London Swahili began in 2009, and it began with one person. I had taught them years earlier, while they were volunteering in Kenya, and by the time they left they were close to fluent. We ran into each other again in London and almost the first thing they said was that they were losing it. They had another trip coming. They wanted to carry on, and there was nowhere to carry on to.

So I went and looked at what London actually had. There were Swahili groups all over the city and they were good company: people met, ate together, talked about home. But nobody was being taught. No structure, no correction, nobody checking from one week to the next whether you were getting any better. You could go for a year and still not be able to hold a conversation.

That was the gap. I decided I was going to be the one to fill it.

I am a native speaker, so pronunciation and structure get taught properly from the first lesson rather than patched up later. Everything is built around the person in front of me: their level, their reason for learning, and the way they actually take things in. Every student gets homework, resources, audio of their lessons, and honest feedback on what to work on next.

I also teach the culture alongside the language, because the two do not separate cleanly. If you are heading to East Africa, knowing when to use a greeting matters as much as knowing the words.

And I teach Swahili as a living language, not a museum piece. It moves. Sheng, the street Swahili of Nairobi, shifts faster than any textbook can keep up with. Learners who only ever meet the formal version arrive and find that real people do not talk like their coursebook. Mine do not have that problem.

Alongside teaching I work as a Swahili translator and interpreter, in healthcare, legal and immigration settings, including hospitals and the UK Border Force. Over the years clients have included Channel 4's Unreported World, Marlow Language Centre, Regenerate UK, SOAS language students, and a number of independent charities.

That work feeds directly back into the teaching. It keeps me in the language as it is used under pressure, by real people, in situations that matter.

More than 2,000 people have learned with me since 2009, and two things still tell me it is working.

The first is the moment a student stops translating in their head and we simply talk. Half an hour gone, all of it in Swahili, and they only notice afterwards.

The second is that message from the airport.

Karibu! Sam