Ninajaribu kusema Kiswahili (…I think this means, I try to speak Swahili)

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.

Almasi and I after class. Please don't judge my appearance... half the time I don't even have power...

Update

So, just as a brief update to the microwave panties post, yesterday I put my underwear in the microwave and they CAUGHT on FIRE and the elastic melted and my apartment smelled like burnt rubber. Sometimes I hate Africa.

Microwave Panties

So I feel the need to qualify my last post before everyone assumes I am living a life of luxury and can’t really claim to be having an African experience with amenities like satellite TV. Yes, I have satellite, but seeing as the power goes out for extended periods about 3 times a week, I’m not really watching satellite television most of the time. Plus, most of the channels are in Hindi and Afrikaans. As proof of this, I once watched the same Ellen episode three times in two days. Luxury schmluxury.

My first night at the new apartment I was woken up in the middle of the night by the strangest and creepiest wailing sound I had ever heard and as per usual, curled up into a miserable ball wishing whatever it was would stop. Turns out I live near the local mosque and it was the (daily) 5am call to prayer.

And despite the fact that the maid picks up my dirty laundry and brings it back washed and pressed, for some unknown reason, they will not take my underwear. They take men’s boxers, since it is on the laundry list, but when I crossed out men’s and put women’s all I got was a pile of unwashed underwear back on the bed. Considering all of the other amenities I have it doesn’t really bother me to wash my own underwear, so I took it all in stride. I am slightly uncomfortable when all of the neighbours shamelessly watch me hang rows of panties on the clothesline, probably assuming I am some sort of western prostitute, but whatever.

The problem, however, is that apparently, when one hangs clothes to dry in Tanzania, there is some sort of insect that will lay eggs in them. Then, once the clothing comes into contact with the person, the heat from the body causes the eggs to hatch UNDER ONE’S SKIN. This is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever heard. The only solution is thus to expose one’s clothing to high heats which kills the eggs. So once a week or so the neighbours shamelessly watch me take in my underwear off the clothesline and then I stick it all in the microwave. What a place.

Arrival in Arusha

When I stepped onto the tarmac at Kilimanjaro International Airport the first thing I noticed was the smell. I had never smelled it before. It was like wood and earth and heavy air and will always be the smell that for me embodies Africa. (Soon after I discovered lots of other, less pleasant African smells, but for the moment that’s beside the point.)

Despite the images “International Airport” might conjure, KIA is basically two rooms: one for arrivals and the other for baggage. I made it past my fellow travellers to fill out my visa forms and thought I would be the first one through until I got in the wrong line and had to start all over again, but I somehow avoided paying any visa fees, so I was relatively pleased, mostly that I wouldn’t have to take any money out of the money belt mom made me wear and that made me look misshapen.

Considering I was on a direct flight from Amsterdam and my bags had successfully made six connections from the time I started my trip in Charlottetown about a week previous, it didn’t even occur to me they wouldn’t come until I heard the dreaded sound of the baggage belt coming to a stop and still didn’t have any of my luggage. A porter suggested I look around on the floor for my bags so I wandered around trying not to totally lose it and start bawling in the middle of the airport. All I had in my carryon were a few extra pairs of underwear and my malaria medication and I was about to spend three months in Africa. Soon after I got in the lost luggage line, resigned to the fact I would never see my possessions again, the belt came back on. Turns out they hadn’t unloaded everything because the plane was continuing on to Dar es Salaam. Hallelujah.

So I got my bags and tottered out to where all of the safari operators were standing with name cards looking anxiously for my own name or at least the familiar blue UN crest. Everyone knows how much I love the UN, but all of my dreams of the noble world government were shattered in that moment. They weren’t there. Soon I was surrounded by men saying “Taxi? Taxi?” and I was responding “No, ICTR, UN” and holding on uselessly to my “Intern Information Sheet” that indicated that the UN transport would pick me up at the airport. The taxi drivers or whoever they were started crowding around me, looking at my sheet and saying “Eye See Tee Are” and one even phoned the number of the internship coordinator, of course to no avail since it was 10pm. Despite the fact that they were all at worst harmless and at best helpful I was so overwhelmed I pretty much fled (as best I could with a luggage trolley) back into the airport and asked an airport staff/soldier (he really could have been either considering he had a rifle) where I could get a taxi. He pointed to one of his friends and told me he would take me for 50 USD and heard the voice of the guy on Unsolved Mysteries in my head saying “No one ever saw her again.”

As I slumped in the back of the taxi feeling sick, scared, and alone I looked out the window and realized that even the stars are different here. I had never been so depressed in my entire life. The cab driver Edward was nice and weirdly kept telling me “You are welcome” [which I later learned was because in Swahili, the word “karibu” means “welcome” but like the Quebec “bienvenue” can also mean “you’re welcome” (as in post-thank you)]. We arrived at my guesthouse in the pitch dark and I signed in, noting that I was the only non-African on the guest list and feeling this did not bode well, and went to my room with the gate person carrying my heavy suitcase on his back. It was actually quite decent even by Western standards, certainly not luxury, but functional. But after spending a week in pristine Bavaria with Miriam I felt like I had just been kicked out of the Garden of Eden and sent right to hell. They had turned on the TV for me to some Latin American soap opera dubbed into English and as I looked at the mosquito net hanging over the bed, the windows that didn’t quite close (thank goodness I was on the second floor), the Spartan furniture, and the drain in the floor that marked my shower, I really did cry. When I got into bed under the mosquito net I had my money belt and flashlight beside me and tried very hard to touch everything (including net, sheets, pillows, blankets, etc.) as little as possible. I curled up into a miserable ball and prayed that when I woke up I would be back in Montreal about a month previous when my life was still intact.