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!
It’s 35 degrees today – just a tad warm. In fact by the time I’ve done my 45 minute walk back home I will probably just be a small puddle.
Yesterday was obviously Tanzanian national be cruel to animals day as small children seemed fascinated by squashing birds, throwing birds, kicking kittens and tormenting lizards – lovely. As you can imagine the bird throwing was my least favourite thing.
Yesterday was also Moshi bad smell day. Every day I have to walk past a very large rubbish dump – it’s a joy I tell you but yesterday it surpassed itself with ickiness as the main downtown sewer burst right next to it so it was a choice between tiptoing around the sewage but having to get rather closer to the rubbish dump than I would have liked, or wading through the sewage. I chose the first option and amused many locals with my graceful leaps across puddles of goodness knows what!
Rather excitingly I have been invited to one of my ladies’ daughter’s secondary school graduation on Friday. Turns out it’s quite a big thing so I will wear my new Africa outfit (that my ladies made and is surprisingly lovely – I may even wear it at home). I also think I should probably get her a present but have no idea what. I did my first real bit of haggling yesterday which I was quite proud of and managed to get a rucksack for 11,000 TSh (about 4 quid) when the guy originally wanted 18. I even did it in Swahili!
Rather excitingly I am off to Zanzibar next week for a bit of lying around in the sun. Despite the ridiculous heat over here I remain fairly pale thanks to the generous application of factor 50 every morning. Well factor 50 on my face, factor 0 on my legs and have they gone the slightest bit brown? Oh no!
So did some more Maasai teaching this week and was looking after the beginners which seemed a relatively easy task – teaching weather and so on. Never have I spent such an exhausting 45 minutes! Not that there was anything wrong with my pupils they were perfectly charming but I hadn’t really appreciated that both the guys I was teaching didn’t know how to read or write AT ALL let alone in English.
There is something very strange about teaching two fully grown men (who have spears, knives and the occasional bow and arrow – and one of whom is a medicine man) s-u-n and r-a-i-n.
Luckily I think it went okay but we’ll have to see if they can remember yesterday’s lesson today…
I have finished my Swahili lessons which is something of a relief as the archaic teaching methods for two hours every day was doing my head in. Having said that I have learnt some Swahili. I’m not hugely proficient and would probably struggle to engage in a fully-fledged conversation but I can at least ask for things, order food and drinks and make the ladies I teach laugh (I like to think they are laughing with me, I suspect they may be laughing at me). It is quite amusing to try to speak Swahili to the people here as they really don’t expect it so it sort of sends them into a temporary shock which has the effect of everything going just that bit more polepole – not what is needed on most occasions.
My ladies’ English is improving and there are days when I think they’ve really made a breakthrough (these are known as hurrah moments). Then at other times they totally lose the plot (these are known as argh moments). We are currently running at about 2 argh moments for every hurrah moment but considering the ratio was about 5 to 1 a couple of weeks ago, we are moving in the right direction.
Modal verbs floored them this week so I’m going to have to try and find a less tricky way of explaining them (modal verbs are can, could, should, ought, must etc in case you were wondering). They have also told me they want to learn a song so I am frantically going through my ipod to find something suitable. A show tune or hymn would be ideal but I don’t have many of those (surprisingly I do have a few) so I’m hoping the Beatles or Abba will provide a solution. Also two of my better students want to have a debate about whether money is more important than education – phew! I am going to have to do some serious work with the rest this week to even grasp the whole debate concept.
I am really enjoying teaching although it is a real challenge and sometimes if you or one of the students is having a tough day the whole mood of the class goes downhill very quickly. I think I’ll be going back to PR quite quickly, it’s much easier!
Moja, mbili, tatu, nne, tano, sita, saba, nane, tisa, kumi…you’ll just have to believe me. You’ll also have to believe me that they tell the time in a very strange way because the day starts at 7am – so that’s 1 o’clock. Confused? You will be. Still it explains why one of my ladies was going to bed at 4 o’clock and waking up at 2 o’clock!
Okay not technically correct because I am usually with Deborah who is my right hand woman this first fortnight (before she runs off to climb Kilimanjaro – the fool). However, yesterday we took our mzunga-ness (it means stranger and gets shouted at you in the street everywhere you go – in a nice way, well most of the time) into the villages.
We went to a village further up in the foothills of Kili where apparently they may be get a mzunga once a year – and noone could actually remember the last time they’d seen one. Word soon got around and people were literally coming out of their houses to look at us. We ended up appearing like the Pied Pipers of Hamlyn with a huge line of children behind us! I’ve got some amazing pictures and we met one of the teacher’s we work with family which was lovely. Even learnt some Chagga which is a tribal language (well I can say thank you which I alwas think is the most important first word to learn in any language).
Once back in Moshi we decided to walk back to where we are staying (it’s not like we hadn’t been walking all day – I must be getting fitter) and really couldn’t make it all the way back without a beer stop so we decided to pop into one of the bars in the village/suburb areas which is about as far off the normal Mzungo track as you can get. There were a few double takes, in fact we should have got our beers for free for the crowd we drew at the beer! Everyone was very good-spirited though (although I suspect we were charged the infamous mzungo prices). Unlike tday when we went to a cafe right in the centre of town (you really would think they’re used to serving the odd white person) where we were treated really badly and hideously over-charged. Top tip if you are coming to Moshi: avoid the Central Gardens. It’s the first time I’ve come across it since I’ve been here and is a bit disappointing but then there’s nowt as queer as folk!
I start Swahili lessons tomorrow so will learn how to tell people it is unnecessary to be so flippin’ rude!
On a home-related note, I am really annoyed I changed my football predictions this week as the only score I changed was right in the original set – grrr! That’ll learn me.
So here I am in Tanzania and loving it!
Flights and everything were okay although I lost all sense of time on Friday/Saturday which meant I crashed out at about 8 o’clock Saturday night.
Met up with some lovely people – although there are a couple of girls where I am staying who are not doing the Africa experience and cannot stop moaning – luckily one of them is leaving on Wednesday the other one next week. My room is basic but clean and the bed is remarkably comfy. I’m hoping to swap to one of the moany girl’s rooms when she leaves as she has a better shower – mine’s a sort of tepid dribble so I have to do some interesting manouevres to actually get my hair washed.
It’s been raining this morning which is a bit of a downer especially as the wet weather gear was one of the first things to go in the great suitcase cull. Dare say it’ll brighten up though – hope so or I’m going to end up with very soggy sandals! The plus side of the rain is no need to smother myself in suncream – does anyone know if you’re meant to put the DEET on then the sunscreen, or the other way round?
Went to my project this morning and I can tell I am going to have SO MUCH FUN! I am teaching a group of eight women, their English is really basic but I reckon we can achieve a lot in the next eight weeks. They were so excited when I said how long I was here for. Off to do some lesson planning this afternoon.
Also need to do a bit more walking to get my bearings as it’s quite likely I’m going to get lost a few times. It’s not at all scary here though, the people are lovely and if they want to talk to you it’s because they want to practise their English. I will feel much happier though next week which is when I’m doing my Swahili lessons because at least then I’ll be able to ask for help if I get stuck or lost or anything.
So, I will blog more soon – I feel a bit of a routine coming on once I’ve got properly settled into my placement and stuff.
My Swahili is not going well. I’m having realy difficulties with the amount of consonants that it seems to put together. I’m really hoping that once I get there, it’ll get a bit easier (out of necessity rather than anything else).
I’m going to carry around the most important phrases and my phrasebook then I can at least point at the words if my pronunciation lets me down.
So far the most important phrases seem to be:
Unasema Kiingereza? (Do you speak English?) – thankfully easy
Tafadhali (please)
Asante (thank you)
glasi ya bia (a glass of beer)
Choo kiko wapi? (where’s the toilet?)
Nina mzio wa ndizi (I’m allergic to bananas) This will be very important on Wednesday nights as that is banana stew night – I think I’ll be going out!
Anyway, hopefully that’ll cover the basics along with habari (hello/how are you?) so hopefully they will take pity on me and speak English!
