nchi nzuri, hakuna matata. . . # that's the way it went.is song. it went silver, then gold, then it went platinum. that came as a complete surprise to me. i started the group, them mushrooms, in 1972. me and him were working in a cement factory in mombasa. there was a lot of tourists coming into mombasa, so it was a very vibrant scene in mombasa. we were playing mostly congolese stuff and kenyan music, or whatever, but when we realised that we could make more money and play for less time for tourists, we switched to play these cover versions of chart music from europe and from america. one night, i think it was late 1979, i was sitting at the pool bar after a performance, and there were these tourists in the pool, played around and joking, trying to speak swahili. and i got this idea, maybe we should write a song with the simplest words in swahili and get the tourists to learn swahili while they sang along and danced to our music. #jambo,jambo bwana # habari gani, mzuri sana... # it means, hello, mister. how are you? mzuri sana is a reply.