How to speak Swahili in a few mildly complicated steps.

One of my goals for my time here in Tanzania is to study and practice the language of KiSwahili. This process is different than my previous language experience with Spanish. Swahili is completely new for me, and is actually quite new in the world of modern languages.

Swahili was created around the time of independence for East Africa, mainly Kenya and Tanzania, in the 1960s. It was created in order to unite tribes and to instill a sense of unity and new national identity. Many words have Arabic roots, but the foundation for Swahili lies in the Bantu tribal language.  Absorbing such a new language is both fun and challenging. Our school translator Herman has been teaching me three times a week for the last month or so. Here is what I have gathered from his lessons so far:

Let’s start with the easy stuff. Luckily, there are many cognates and borrowed words from English in Swahili. Some of my favorites are glassi, bili, voucha, kompyuta, baiskeli.

Words are rhythmic and melodic. They almost always end in vowels and each syllable has a vowel (which I usually mix up). Words tend to be long, and the subject becomes a part of the verb word, adding to its length.

            Ninakula chakula chamchana—I eat lunch

            Tutaonana baadaye—See you later

Then there are the six different noun classes. We think of nouns as person, place, or thing. Swahili speakers have nouns divided into categories (in theory) by their spelling or word origin. It ends up really being more of a guessing game.  So the prefix or the linking words change depending on the class of the noun.

    My student--Mwanafunzi wangu 

    My pen--Kalamu yangu 

    My chair-- Kiti changu 
    My chairs—Viti vyangu

Pluralization is also dependent on the noun class. Some nouns stay the same in plural and some change the first letters.

            Mtu/Watu—person/people

            Uso/Nyuso—face/faces

Perhaps because Swahili developed so recently, there are fewer words to choose from when describing things. Nearly everything can be described using big (kubwa), small (kidogo), good (nzuri) or bad (baya).

With this lack of word choice and the cultural norms of how Tanzanians express themselves, literal translations from English to Swahili are much harder. For example, to say “Nice to meet you” is “Nimefurahi kukutana na wewe.” –literally, I have been made happy to meet (each other) with you.

There are also multiple ways to say yes and no depending on the context. Ndiyo translates to yes, but is actually "indeed!" Once you get to know the indirect, overly polite way Tanzanians answer questions and requests, it's not surprising that the language would reflect this mentality. We joke that we have to ask our students questions three times, three different ways to figure out what the actual answer is!

Hopefully my lessons are starting to pay off. I can successfully talk to children under the age of 8 and order food at a restaurant. Both necessities in my book. There is much more I could say about this crazy and beautiful language, but for now… Asante kwa kusoma blog yangu.

Chakula!

I travel to experience new cultures and learn new things. I live to eat. It’s only fitting that I dedicate a full post to Tanzanian food.

Local food to the Kilimanjaro Region is fairly basic but overall delicious. Many Tanzanians are still subsistence farmers, so they eat what they can grow or sometimes trade with neighbors. Residents of Moshi are less likely to have farming as their main job, so there are lots of local restaurants and single women over a fire on the street that serve traditional lunch and dinners for a few dollars a plate.

Makande- beans with corn cooked in coconut milk.
Served with rice and greens.

We volunteers are fortunate to have a cook, Margaret, who makes us authentic Tanzanian food six nights a week for dinner. She makes traditional Tanzanian food, but vegetarian! (On a side note, it hasn’t been a problem being a vegetarian here at all. Meat is not found at every meal because it is expensive, and word from other volunteers is that the quality is not that great.) Here are some of the staples Margaret has made us:

Chapati- a mix between a flour tortilla and naan bread. Its fried on the stove and often eaten for breakfast with tea.

Ugali- corn mush. Corn is grown even in front lawns in Moshi neighborhoods. Instead of eating it on the cob, most Tanzanians make corn flour and cook it with water to make Ugali. This is easier and cheaper than rice and is usually eaten with beans or vegetables. Pictured here with greens and squash in a marsala sauce. 

Samaki- fried fish. This is one of the most common protein sources. The fish come from nearby lakes and are fried pretty much as is. To eat it, you pull the meat off the bones with your hands. It’s served with rice or fries and sells for about $4 lunch. Four students from last year’s class have just opened their own restaurant. We go there a few times a week for the Samaki. (I usually break the head off before I dive in.)

Like any culture, Tanzanian food has been influenced by many other places. In Moshi, the most dominate transplant culture is Indian. Nearly every restaurant in town is an Indian Restaurant. (As a vegetarian, I scored again!) I’ve tried more new Indian dishes here than I ever have at home and the quality is usually excellent. You can also find pizza at nearly every restaurant. Yes, even the Indian places. One of our favorite places is called Indo-Italiano. You guessed it; it has both Italian and Indian menus.

Avocadoes, Mangoes, and bananas are in abundance. Coffee and tea are grown locally. Dairy is found here but most Tanzanians do not have refrigerators, so cheese and yogurt are not common in most diets. Related to this, I have yet to see a Tanzanian enjoy cold water. They drink water at room temperature which usually means about 85 degrees. They think the Wazungu (Westerners) are crazy for liking ice water and some even believe it makes you sick. I’ve made multiple Tanzanian friends laugh out loud when I ask for an iced tea!

Moshi is a city with a steady flow of Eastern and Western influences but is small enough to retain its local “flava” as they say. Tonight we are having one of my favorite dishes—potato and chickpea curry with chapati. A delicious hybrid. 

Home Visits

How different would our schools be in the US if our teachers regularly visited their students’ homes? The concept is not so out of the ordinary here, because Tanzanians have a strong sense of communal living. “It takes a village to raise a child” is quite literal here, so it’s not strange for school representatives to want to know the family and for the family to want to know the school. All of our students are women between the ages of 23 and 53. Most of them are mothers; many of them are single parents. Moshi is a town of about 100,000 people so its culture is somewhere in between the traditions of village life and urban life. Many of our students have moved from the surrounding villages to Moshi for better economic opportunities. Few of them have seen this move actually pay off.

Each Friday morning, the current volunteers travel to the home of one of our students for tea and snacks. We always bring bread, sugar, tea and a little toy if she has children. Usually we meet the kids, but I have yet to meet a husband. (Sometimes they are working, sometimes they are just absent.) The three homes I have visited so far have all been very different:

Zaina set the bar high. She showed off her Henna artist skills and we were the models. Her business plan for GHTA is to expand her Henna clientele. Zaina is from the predominantly Muslim island of Zanzibar where Henna is very common. Moshi seems to have about a 50/50 split between Muslims and Christians, so Henna is popular here as well. Zaina is also an excellent cook and made us a feast for lunch. She caters some local events and sells embroidery to supplement her income. She is an entrepreneur in every sense of the word.

Zaina served chai, curry, chapati, and mandazi!

The artist in action

That was not a typical home visit. The following week we met Agnes. Agnes is in her forties and one of our more quiet students. Her home was spacious and lovely and had an endless stream of children coming through. Agnes has two kids of her own, but she has also taken in many children of relatives that have passed away. Her husband had a good job as an accountant in the 1990s, but passed away suddenly from a heart attack ten years ago. Since then, her lifestyle has drastically changed. Her family was as close to middle class as you can get in a developing economy like Tanzania, but now she is close to the standard Tanzanian life of a little more than a $1 a day. She now rents out rooms in her home for income and has recently started hair braiding. (A skill she learned in my vocations class!) She is optimistic that things will turn around with her GHTA education.

And finally-- Margaret. Margaret is 26 years old and lives in one small room with her six year old son Brian, two year old daughter Miriam, and her fifteen year old sister Paulina. I have seen many American closets bigger than this room they all share. There is nowhere for five people to sit in her home, so we went to a neighbor’s room that was slightly bigger and can fit a couch. Margaret told us that she had a restaurant job for four years, but had to quit with the birth of Miriam. She worked from 6am until 10pm, six days a week, cooking chapati (flatbread like tortillas) over a smoky and oily charcoal grill. She made about $43 per month. 

She had a second baby. Her second husband left her, and she was forced to leave that job to raise the children alone. Give a Heart to Africa is her new chance to find a job again. She would like to run her own food stand. She would like to have the money for school fees for her children and for her sister. At 26 years old, she has a lot of life ahead of her and hopefully lots of opportunities to make her life better.

The collection of rooms that make up Margaret's neighborhood. 

Margaret in her home with Monika, GHTA Director

The home visits make a huge impact on our relationships with our students. They get to know us better and we learn to understand why homework doesn't always get done and why some women seem so tired each morning. The one thing that is consistent with each student is their desire and eagerness to learn. When asked what she wanted to learn more of and what her favorite subject was, Agnes said that everything she learns at GHTA is useful. Just the simple act of learning, for her, makes a difference.  

From Left to Right: Monika, Molly, Yelena, me, Margaret, and Miriam