So the first indication that my Swahili skills are not quite up to par is the fact that the name of my blog: muzungu diaries, should actually be spelled mzungu diaries. Oops. And apparently mzungu does not actually mean “white person,” but the literal translation is “traveller”. It just so happens that most of the noticeable travellers in Tanzania are white people, thus “white person” and “traveller” in Swahili have become synonymous.
Although most people here speak some English, I am surprised at how often I am misunderstood or feel unable to communicate. More than simply being frustrating, not understanding the language can also be scary. I noticed this soon after I arrived as my taxi driver Edward was stopped by armed soldiers on our way out of the airport. Of course they conversed in Swahili and while I’m sure they were probably just saying “Hey Edward, how was your day? You must make good money driving those mzungus who get abandoned by the UN to and from the airport” for all I knew they were saying “Drive the mzungu abandoned by the UN over there so we can slit her throat and take all the money from the money belt she is trying to hide under her pants.”
My next must-learn-Swahili moment occurred soon after I moved into my new apartment when I went to the “Stop and Shop: Convenient Store” next to my house to buy groceries. I asked the guy stocking the shelves if he knew where the matches were and he stared at me blankly. So then I start repeating the word “Matches. Matches? Matches!” and attempting to make a lighting a match hand gesture like the silly mzungu I am. Finally he referred me to the lady at the counter who said “He doesn’t speak English” and then asked him in Swahili to go get me some matches. I was totally embarrassed, and couldn’t wait to get out of there and curl up into a miserable ball of non-Swahili speaking shame, but when he came back with my matches and said something which to me was unintelligible, the lady who was at this point packing my groceries into bags said, “He told me to double bag it for you do it doesn’t break. You see you have made a new friend here.”
Even despite these thoughts, I did intend to learn Swahili before I arrived, so I signed up for the free classes offered by the UN at lunch time. Our teacher, Almasi, is a very cute person and very patient with our complete inability to pronounce anything because despite the fact that Swahili is a phonetic language, basically every second letter is an m or a w or a string of consonants. It’s also a language where the pronoun, the negative and all sorts of other things, rather than being expressed by a different word, are just strung along onto what is called the verb stem. So while “kwenda” means “to go” “ninakwenda” means “I go” or “I am going”. I think the best example of why this makes Swahili difficult to learn and makes me feel rather ridiculous is the word “kumbuke” which means to remember and by itself does not make me feel so ridiculous, but if I want to say “I did not remember you” it becomes “sikukukumbuke.” Yeah.
Our second favourite taxi driver, Peter, has also become our surrogate Swahili teacher and is somewhat obsessed with forcing us to speak Swahili and scolding us when we speak to him in English. We later discovered that he is actually a teacher who took up cab driving because it was more lucrative, which might explain the no-English rule and scolding. I nearly lost it at one point when I got in the cab tired and late for work and said “Hello” to him in English, to which he replied “I think you are not so serious about learning Swahili.” It did the trick, however, and so I made a point of learning to say “You are late” in Swahili as my private revenge.
Despite my regular attendance in class, I have to admit my conversation has not progressed much past general greetings. Lucky for me, however, Almasi informed us that in Tanzania, people will often greet each other for approximately one-half hour, so I actually have a half-hour’s worth of conversation under my belt. I have also mastered useful words like "wikendi" (weekend) and "checki" (check). And at the very least, I can now enter the Stop and Shop with pride and ask my new friend “Habari?” (How are you?”) and respond “Nzuri” (Good) when he asks me the same thing. I still, however, do not know how to ask for matches.
Although most people here speak some English, I am surprised at how often I am misunderstood or feel unable to communicate. More than simply being frustrating, not understanding the language can also be scary. I noticed this soon after I arrived as my taxi driver Edward was stopped by armed soldiers on our way out of the airport. Of course they conversed in Swahili and while I’m sure they were probably just saying “Hey Edward, how was your day? You must make good money driving those mzungus who get abandoned by the UN to and from the airport” for all I knew they were saying “Drive the mzungu abandoned by the UN over there so we can slit her throat and take all the money from the money belt she is trying to hide under her pants.”
My next must-learn-Swahili moment occurred soon after I moved into my new apartment when I went to the “Stop and Shop: Convenient Store” next to my house to buy groceries. I asked the guy stocking the shelves if he knew where the matches were and he stared at me blankly. So then I start repeating the word “Matches. Matches? Matches!” and attempting to make a lighting a match hand gesture like the silly mzungu I am. Finally he referred me to the lady at the counter who said “He doesn’t speak English” and then asked him in Swahili to go get me some matches. I was totally embarrassed, and couldn’t wait to get out of there and curl up into a miserable ball of non-Swahili speaking shame, but when he came back with my matches and said something which to me was unintelligible, the lady who was at this point packing my groceries into bags said, “He told me to double bag it for you do it doesn’t break. You see you have made a new friend here.”
Even despite these thoughts, I did intend to learn Swahili before I arrived, so I signed up for the free classes offered by the UN at lunch time. Our teacher, Almasi, is a very cute person and very patient with our complete inability to pronounce anything because despite the fact that Swahili is a phonetic language, basically every second letter is an m or a w or a string of consonants. It’s also a language where the pronoun, the negative and all sorts of other things, rather than being expressed by a different word, are just strung along onto what is called the verb stem. So while “kwenda” means “to go” “ninakwenda” means “I go” or “I am going”. I think the best example of why this makes Swahili difficult to learn and makes me feel rather ridiculous is the word “kumbuke” which means to remember and by itself does not make me feel so ridiculous, but if I want to say “I did not remember you” it becomes “sikukukumbuke.” Yeah.
Our second favourite taxi driver, Peter, has also become our surrogate Swahili teacher and is somewhat obsessed with forcing us to speak Swahili and scolding us when we speak to him in English. We later discovered that he is actually a teacher who took up cab driving because it was more lucrative, which might explain the no-English rule and scolding. I nearly lost it at one point when I got in the cab tired and late for work and said “Hello” to him in English, to which he replied “I think you are not so serious about learning Swahili.” It did the trick, however, and so I made a point of learning to say “You are late” in Swahili as my private revenge.
Despite my regular attendance in class, I have to admit my conversation has not progressed much past general greetings. Lucky for me, however, Almasi informed us that in Tanzania, people will often greet each other for approximately one-half hour, so I actually have a half-hour’s worth of conversation under my belt. I have also mastered useful words like "wikendi" (weekend) and "checki" (check). And at the very least, I can now enter the Stop and Shop with pride and ask my new friend “Habari?” (How are you?”) and respond “Nzuri” (Good) when he asks me the same thing. I still, however, do not know how to ask for matches.
Almasi and I after class. Please don't judge my appearance... half the time I don't even have power...
Jeanine, I need to send you a book called. "Sometimes I like to Curl up in a Ball".If you can email me your address.Mine is rawork02@yahoo.com. Love you. YOu're doing great things and you should be proud of yourself, we all are.
ReplyDeleteYou're Swahili lessons sound like my Spanish classes, although I find that I am the only person who can actually get an A in the class and not speak pr understand a lick of it, except for the stuff I learned from Dora! ;) Beuna trabaja mis amiga!