FelixWaweru/MHENGA

An implementation of Swahili and Node JS to create a Twitter Bot that posts Swahili sayings # MHENGA An implementation of Swahili-lang and Node JS to create a Twitter Bot that posts Swahili sayings ## The Origin Have you ever wanted to become a software developer but were limited by your fluency in English? Well, if you’re a native Swahili speaker I have some good news for you and it is called Swahili-lang. However, before we delve deeper into that, let us talk a bit more about the Swahili language; also known as Kiswahili. Swahili is a Bantu language spoken by tens of millions primarily in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania (East Africa). Similar to many other languages, it has multiple sayings and proverbs that act as a form of oral history about the culture and its people, otherwise known as “Methali”. Thanks to multiple films such as the 1994 smash hit film, The Lion King, Swahili has become an internationally recognized language. Among many other Swahili words, the phrase “Hakuna Matata” is a catch phrase that is still used to this day by friendly tourists and local vendors hoping to attract friendly tourists. Swahili-lang is a programming language created by a small team of Kenyan developers. Built on Node JS, Swahili-lang makes use of the Swahili language within a JavaScript syntax and it offers a platform that allows native speakers of the language to easily read and write code. One example of this is the renaming of the if, else function as kama, au; a literal translation of the if, else statements. In celebration of this year’s Black History Month, I wanted to undertake a project that would allow me to share part of my African culture with more people online. Black History Month being an annual celebration remembering African-American history and the African diaspora, I decided to create a Twitter bot that shares Swahili proverbs and their translations as tweets. In the spirit of staying authentic to my roots, I chose to create the bot using Swahili-lang and a little bit of JavaScript to help with the tweet posting. ## Getting The Data In …