Ugandan Children Singing "Welcome Visitors" (with lyrics)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This post presents a video of Ugandan children singing a delightful English language welcome song. The lyrics of that song are also included in this post.

The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

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SHOWCASE VIDEO - 'Welcome Visitors' song | Iganga | Uganda | Africa



Send a Cow, Uploaded on Jan 9, 2012

A group of pupils in Iganga, Uganda, sing a song to welcome visitors. It would be fun to welcome parents or visitors at your school with this song and video it. If you do this, please send us a video link to education@sendacow.org.uk and we'll send it to this school.
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SONG LYRICS - WELCOME VISITORS*

Lead singer - I’m so excited at the top of the mountain. **
I feel joy down in my heart.
That’s why I’m singing and dancing.
You are welcome.
We love you, visitors.***
You are welcome.****
We love you, visitors.

Lead & Group:
Oh, I’m so excited at the top of the mountain. **
I feel joy down in my heart.
That’s why I’m singing and dancing.
You are welcome.
We love you, visitors.
You are welcome.
We love you, visitors.

[Repeat the entire verse without the word "Oh"]

Lead Singer - My name is ___ [singer gives his or her first name or nickname]
I feel joy [continue the verse as given above].

[Group & lead sing together]
I’m so excited [continue the verse as given above one time]

[Repeat this verse with a new lead singer who says his or her first name. Continue this pattern with new lead singers. End the song with the group and lead singing the verse together as given above. 2x]
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Transcription by Azizi Powell from this video. Additions and corrections are welcome.

*I'm not sure if this is the song's title or not.

**Thanks, Steve K for your suggestion about the word "visitor" for the last word in this line. That makes a lot of sense. I was unsure of this word, and thought that it might be "mister" which wouldn't be correct English if there were male visitors and female visitors.

***Comment revised May 1, 2016 - Previously I wrote that adding the English word "at" would result in this sentence making more sense in English. However, it occurs to me that "I'm so excited the top of the mountain" may mean that "My excitement is as high as the top of the mountain".

**** The sentence "You are welcome" is used two ways in English: 1. to let a person know that you are glad that he or she has come to visit and 2. as a response to the sentence "Thank you". Therefore, it may be better to add the word "here" to the end of "You are welcome" in this song as a way of making the meaning of those words clearer.

An alternative version of those lines in that song is:

We love you, welcome.
You are welcome here.
We love you, welcome.

-snip-
One more suggestion is to change the word "down" in "down in my heart" to the word "deep". I make that suggestion because "deep in my heart" is the more commonly found usage in American English. However, "down in my heart" may be common in other types of English, and it's meaning is clear either way.

I think it would be great if this English language song was translated into Swahili or another traditional language spoken in Uganda, East Africa. Hopefully, someone will do that and post those words in that video's YouTube viewer comment thread or here.

For instance, according to the Google translate feature "we love you" is "tunakupenda". I think that word is pronounced "too-nah-koo-PEN-dah). Also, according to the Google translate feature the word "welcome" is "kuwakaribisha". I think that word is pronounced "koo-wah-kah-re-BE-shah".

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND THANKS
Thanks to all those children who are featured in this video. My thanks also to the composer of this song, the children's instructors, the producer & YouTube publisher of this video.

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Visitor comments are welcome.