I wish this story wasn’t true but…
…yesterday one of the girls was in a taxi when it got pulled over by the police. The problem? The policeman was thirsty and wanted the mzungu to buy him a soda. Considering they carry semi automatics she obliged – well what would you do?
Okay you would think saying “hello” would be easy wouldn’t you? Not so.
In fact it takes about 10 minutes to properly say hello to someone – no wonder everything takes an age here!
There are countless different ways to say hello. The usual mzungu greeting is “jambo” to which the response is (rather conveniently) “jambo” and that’s where the easy bit ends. If they say “hujambo” then you have to reply “sijambo”. Then you get to the whole “habari” nonsense. “Habari” means “how are you” so they say “habari” or “habari gani” and you reply “nzuri” (good) or “nzuri sana” (very good). But then they can also say “habari za…asibuhi, jioni, usiko” (morning, afternoon, night). After you’ve said “nzuri” you’re also meant to say “habari” back to them but then comes the opportunity to liven things up a bit with “habari za nyumbani” (how’s things at home” or “habari za watoto” (how are the children). Good lord, you can see why it takes forever.
Then you come to manners…a younger person is meant to say “shikamoo” to an older person (which means respectful greetings) and the older person is then meant to reply “marahaba”. I get shikamooed every now and then and it always takes me ages to remember what to say!
In addition to these traditional greetings the Tanzanians seem to be coming up with new ones every day (I swear they do it just to confuse us). The cool greeting on the street is “mambo” to which you are supposed to respond “poa” (cool) or “safi” (clean – I kid you not).
And you thought this Swahili lark was easy!
