Throughout East Africa, particularly where tourists are to be found, visitors are confronted with brightly coloured paintings of birds, animals, urban and village scenes. Its an art form that, while not exactly traditional, is certainly part and parcel of contemporary East African culture and an important element of the tourist industry.
And, extraordinarily, its provenance can be traced to one artist - Tingatinga.
Edward Saidi Tingatinga was thought to have been born in 1932 in a small village called Mindu, near Nakapanya in Tunduru District, in southern Tanzania, close by the Mozambique border.
In 1957 he left his village to seek his fortune, first travelling to the Tanga district and working on a sisal plantations before trying his luck in 1959 in the big city - Dar es Salaam.
He was fortunate enough to have a cousin, Salum Muussa aka Mzee Lumumba working as a cook for an expatriate European who was living in Msasani in the up-market suburb of Oyster Bay, north of Dar es Salaam's city centre.