Learning Swahili

I love it.  I’ve always loved learning languages and Swahili is no different.  I’m enjoying the classes every morning and the rhythm of nightly homework exercises.  And even nicer, our lessons are tailored towards our needs as engineers and hospital volunteers.  The teachers are being very efficient about the vocabulary they teach us.  We will learn words to use with family around the home, to greet others, to bargain at the market, and most of all, to work in a hospital.

I love grammar, so that’s my favorite part of learning the language.  Swahili grammar seems similar to Spanish in the way we string subject and object prefixes onto verbs, but the verb conjugation is much easier.

The other day we learned about the noun classes.  Swahili has seven noun classes, but we will focus mostly on the “person” noun class.  This will help us to be polite and to avoid faux pas.  If we use the “person” noun class to describe things, we might sound silly but people will understand.  However, if we use a “thing” noun class to describe people, we might seriously offend someone.

There are a few aspects of Swahili that I find quite difficult, because they depart from anything I’ve seen previously in a language. They don’t feel intuitive or come to me naturally when speaking.

1. The singularity of plurality of a word is indicated at the beginning of the word rather than the end.  Ex: one engineer is “mhandisi” and multiple engineers are “wahandisi”. 
2. All adjectives must be given a specific prefix, depending on the noun it modifies.  The prefix corresponds directly to the noun class of the noun being modified.  Ex: to describe a small person we’d use the adjective “mdogo”, but to describe a small thing we’d use “kidogo”.

Because these two concepts are applied at the beginning of each word, I must really be sure of what I’m saying before I even begin to speak.

What is most remarkable is how much the language serves the culture.  There are many features embedded in Swahili that reflect the way of life here.  For example, there’s a “fruit” noun class.  Of the seven noun classes, one of them functions entirely to talk exclusively about fruit.  Also, they do not have a word to refer to husbands, plural.  The culture here accepts polygamy, and in some tribes men may have as many as forty wives.  So there is a word to describe wives, plural, but not husbands.  If we want to talk about a group of husbands, we would just refer to them as “men”.

In any case, I’ve really enjoyed learning about the culture through the language, since they very much go hand-in-hand.

Ninapenda Tanzania

A collection of notes from my first week

The Schoolday

In Lab

In the afternoons, we have an hour lecture on medical equipment and then a lab that addresses situations we might see next month.  The lectures introduce a breadth of common medical equipment, like autoclaves, oxygen concentrators, and suction machines.  We should eventually become familiar with a variety of equipment and their related problems.  In developing countries, the 2 most common problems are user error and power supply.

In lab, we work in the pairs with the person we will be working with next month.   I think this is a great idea, because it gives us time to learn to work together before we must live and work together 24/7 next month.  My partner, Allison, is from the University of Michigan and is also a rising junior majoring in biomedical engineering.  Allison is a go-getter, so I’m excited for next month.  I think we’ll take full advantage of our time at Marangu Hospital.

We built an extension cord during our first lab.  In future labs, we’ll build a power supply, a temperature alarm, a flashlight, and other tools that might be useful to us next month.  The goal is to

Staying Active

We’ve found quite a few things to do after school.  Of course we can’t help but find extra-curriculars wherever we go.  There’s an aerobics class every Tuesday/Thursday, so I’ve been going with a group of girls, and it’s a ton of fun.  The instructor is a small Tanzanian man, who’s always shouting above the never-ending ABBA soundtrack.  It’s really entertaining.

The walk to school is becoming easier and more familiar.  Kristen and I actually made a friend, Erike, whom we walk past every day.  He started by just greeting us and shaking our hands, but slowly we’ve been getting to know him.  He goes to the nearby Makumira University and is studying to be a tour guide.  We’re wary that he might try to sell safari tours to us, but so far he’s been friendly and will point out local wildlife that he’s learning about in college.

At Home

Swahili doesn’t sound like jibberish anymore.  The sounds of conversation I hear around town are starting to sound more comforting than strange.  Kristen and I are both eager to learn Swahili and to practice at home.  We’ve decided that Swahili is a nice-sounding language; it has a soothing sound.

Mama’s house is very centrally located in Makumira.  There’s always loud music coming from the street behind our house in the evenings.  The music is infectious.  Kristen and I can’t help but nod our heads to the pulse of the radio during dinner.  But the rest of the family doesn’t at all!  How are they so immune?!  It’s remarkable.

Kristen asked the kids what they’d like to be when they grow up.  They promptly answered.  Ruth wants to be an accountant and Johnny wants to be a civil engineer. It was the sweetest thing.  Their confidence was impressive.

Ruth taught us a few simple dances, like the kind you would play with in the schoolyard.  In exchange, we taught her the Macarena.  Sometimes she mixes up the numbers, but she thinks it’s a lot of fun.

Johnny is warming up to us.  On Thursday night, he came to our door to say goodnight to us.  As soon as he left, Kristen yelled “WE’RE IN!”  It was such a delight.  Stella and Neema are warming up, too.  It mostly consists of saying hello, but we finally convinced Stella to let us help with the dishes.  We wash them outside in the dark, which probably isn’t good for our eyes, but then again it let me see the full moon the other night.

I love the way Mama speaks.  She has a habit of saying “maybe” to make polite suggestions.  “Maybe we pray now?”  “Maybe you a shower after dinner?”  It’s very reflective of the characteristic Tanzanian politeness.  Tanzanians are so polite they never say no.  A Tanzanian “no” sounds something like “Well…yeah…maybe…”

Mama & the Third World

I can’t emphasize enough how much I love our home.  It really doesn’t feel like I’m in the developing world, because Mama has created an atmosphere that is rich with happiness and warmth.

Mama actually brought up the topic of the “third world” and made some interesting remarks.  It surprised me that she would describe her own home as part of the third world.  She said she hosted some girls who brought all this candy in their luggage, thinking they wouldn’t have enough to eat in Tanzania.  At the end of their stay, they had so much candy left over, they asked the family to help eat it.  How silly, how could they think that candy would sustain them if they didn’t have enough food? (Note: Mama gives us more food than we can handle.  It’s overwhelming.)

You see, the third world is not as bad as some think.

She blamed the news. They only show the bad things.  We told her we agreed.  We assured her that her home here is very different than what we usually see on the news.  I continue to be amazed by her perceptiveness.

Ninamkumbuka

When we were learning verbs in Swahili class, someone asked the teacher how to say “to miss”.  Her response was:

We do not have a word for “to miss”.  In Swahili, we do not miss people.  We remember them.

So, ninamkumbuka – I remember you.

Pole

Pole means sorry.  And I’m sorry I’ve neglected this blog for so long.

The truth is that I’ve been keeping a steady journal of my experiences and I quickly became overwhelmed with the amount of material I am generating.  The result is a diligent and highly detailed account of my time here, which has been great for my own reflection, but I realize it doesn’t do you much good until I condense all my scribbles into blog posts.

Also, the internet is awful.  I’ve avoided spending time wrestling with the spotty connection, because I don’t like to be pulled away from my commitments here.  At the same time, I made a commitment to this blog.  I’m determined to see this project through and to share my experiences with you as promised.

As for the word pole, it’s probably the second-most common word I hear, right after karibu (welcome).  Like karibu, the word pole is applicable to an astonishing variety of situations.  Tanzanians say pole at any time we would normally say sorry in English.  But pole is also used at the most unexpected times.  Tanzanians say pole to each other at the end of the day, as if to say, “sorry that you’ve had a long day of work”.  Tanzanians say pole when they see another carrying a large load.  They say pole when they see others doing work.  Even the simple feeling of a mid-afternoon slump on any ordinary day is enough to warrant a pole.

At first glance, this custom makes Tanzanians seem lazy, but after hearing the word applied so frequently and liberally, I have the impression that pole carries more empathy than our word sorry.  I can also support this by having heard the word used to express condolences.  During funerals and memorial services, friends come to say pole—literally say pole—to the family.  It seems like such a simple word to describe the loss of a loved one, so I believe the word pole has more depth than I fully understand.

Now the phrase pole pole is something entirely different.  Pole pole means slow or slowly.  On a tourist level, climbers are told by their guides to hike Kili pole pole.  Signs in the national parks remind drivers to drive pole pole.  So you can imagine how much actual Tanzanians use it.  The phrase permeates the way of life here, ubiquitously applied to approach any situation.  I think it best captures the slow-paced lifestyle and the laid-back attitudes of Tanzanians.

In order to work within the structure of the culture, we must accept the slow pace and learn to live pole pole.  It can be extremely frustrating at times, so I realize how patient you must be to be reading this post or still following this blog after a month of silence on my end.  I appreciate it.

Really though, pole for taking this blog so pole pole.