Tutaonana

Today was our last day of Swahili class. It's hard to believe that we have already been in Tanzania for three weeks. Richard gave us an exam which was a little bit of a surprise. Eleuthera was quite sure that we were going to have one but the rest of us didn't believe her. Richard promised he wouldn't put any vocabulary on it that he "was sure we didn't know," and he was true to his word, although there were definitely some conjunctions that weren't particularly familar.

In some ways, my Swahili is improving. I can read ads now and sometimes understand the focus of other people's conversations. I used to struggle because the Swahili 'r' is not at all like an American 'r' and whenever I tried to roll my 'r's I wound up with a French 'r.' Although Eleuthera assured me it would be cute if I spoke Swahili with a French 'r,' I'm subbing in 'l's instead as some Swahili speakers (mainly ones from the Northwest?) seem to do. If anyone asks, I learned Swahili up near Lake Victoria.

Eleuthera can communicate almost anything in Swahili at this point as long as she has the vocabulary. Last night, she had a long conversation with our security guard about what we could do for his sick mother using the subjunctive. She makes up for it by consistently talking about which teams she is 'voting for' in the World Cup instead of 'supporting.'

Along with the rest of Dar es Salaam, we were pretty excited for the USA Ghana match yesterday. As far as I could tell, we were the only ones at the restaurant who cheered when the U.S. scored (and Eleuthera abandoned us to cheer for Ghana, the traitor). A Canadian woman sitting near us felt bad and bought us drinks. Although we were all a little disappointed to see the U.S. lose (especially Tim, who intially picked the U.S. as one of his teams), everyone here is so excited about Ghana that it is contagious. When Ghana won, they started playing 'One Love' in the bar which was cute.

Tomorrow, we are taking a six am bus ride to Arusha, a city in Northern Tanzania where most safaris start. From there, we are going on a five day safari to Lake Manyara, the Serengeti, and Ngorogoro Crater. Being me, I'm secretly more excited to see Arusha, which is the seat of the East African Economic Community, the city in which the Burundi peace accords are being negotiated, and the place the Rwandan genocide tribunal is being held than I am to see Ngorogoro Crater. However, seeing (baby) elephants, lions, giraffes and zebras sounds amazing, even if they aren't the epicenter of East African conflict resolution. Caitlin has never been camping before, which certainly adds to the excitement.

After that, we are spending a few days in Arusha before heading back to Dar and starting our internships. We will be interning at the Economic and Social Research Foundation of Tanzania (www.esrftz.org). During our time in Arusha, we are probably not going to be able to check email but we will write very exciting posts about the safari when we get back, I promise.

Bagamoyo and Bongo

I'm writing this post with a little frusteration, because I already wrote it once but it got deleted when I tried to post it. Serves me right for not saving in Microsoft Word. You are all probably tired of hearing about our technology troubles by now, but I just don't seem to be able to escape computers that erase my stuff!

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Saturday, we took a trip to Bagamoyo, which is about an hour north of Dar es Salaam. Bagamoyo was the German capital of Tanzania under colonialism and was also a major point in the East African slave trade. Slaves from mainland Tanzania and Kenya were held in Bagamoyo before they were sent to work on plantations on Zanzibar, the Middle East, and islands in the Indian Ocean.

After eating lunch in Bagamoyo, we visited an old Catholic church that had been converted into a museum on the slave trade. Outside the museum was a tower were Dr. Livingstone's body rested for a night before it was shipped back to England. As we were leaving the museum, we saw about a hundred and fifty school children in white and marroon uniforms, waiting to go in. They were very excited to see us, and wanted to kiss our hands. I'm making a connection that isn't really there, but it was sad to leave a museum on slavery to see students who wanted to kiss our hands just because we were white Americans.

The bad condition of museums here also makes me sad. The museums we have visited all have very good content, and the staff seem very knowledgeable, but the displays themselves are falling apart. The text is peeling off the faded construction paper it was mounted on, and the English translations are sometimes too convulted to understand. It would be irresponsible to spend a lot on museums in such a poor country, but it's still sad that the children of Tanzania see such a run-down version of their history.

After the museum, we went to a crocodile zoo, and then to Kaole. At Kaole, there are ruins of two mosques dating back to the 13th century. By this point, Musa's eight year old niece, Anita, was getting bored, so I taught her how to take pictures with my camera. She was much better at it then I am. If you see any photos from my trip that aren't blurry, she's probably the one who took them. To her credit, she was very patient for most of the trip, although I expect her 'fall' in a puddle at the end was more of a 'jump.' Luckily Eleuthera had an extra towel.

———

Sunday, Inno took us to have lunch with his colleague, Joseph. Joseph lives in one of Dar's many poorer neighborhoods. (Can you still call them slums when that's where most people live?) He and his wife and three younger children all live in a two room cement house with a tin roof. Inno says that when it rains (an everyday occurance here in June) their house floods because there is nowhere for the water to go, so they have to bail it out.

They were so happy to have us over, and cooked us a delicious lunch of wali and stew. They didn't eat with us, but just watched us eat. They insisted that we drink bottled water and beer with our meals, expenses that must have used up a fair portion of their monthly earning. Joseph's brother spoke very good English, and told us how excited everyone in the neighborhood was that Joseph was having Americans over for lunch. He said America was a good friend to Tanzania. (Tim asked Inno about this later, because such a pro-American attitude surprised us. Inno said that most Christians in Dar were very pro-American although there was more diversity of attitude among Muslims.)

Earlier that day, Inno had told us that bongo was local slang for Dar. Bongo means brains, and people use the term because you have to have brains to survive in Dar. Joseph's brother echoed this sentiment. "To survive here is very, very, very difficult," he said. "Life is very, very, very difficult. And yet, indeed, we do survive."

When Joseph first recieved a cell phone for the work he does with WILMA, Inno was frustrated because Joseph never charged his phone. Later he found out this was because Joseph didn't have power in his home, and was ashamed of his frustration. Since then, he and Paul Armington have given Joseph seven hundred dollars to buy a plot of land and build his own house. Inno says Joseph cried when he gave it to him. Right now, they are working on the roof.

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I wanted to write more about Swahili class, Kuinduchi Beach, and the National Village Museum, but I'm almost out of time. Hopefully, we will post again soon.

Vyura vidogo

We've noticed that we're much closer to nature here in Tanzania than we were back home–there are animals everywhere. When we leave Dar es Salaam, we sometimes find the road blocked by goats, which come in all different colors and sizes here. The smallest ones, which must be babies, are two feet tall or shorter. Eleuthera and I are very fond of them. (I particularly like the way their ears flop when they move.) There's actually a goat living in Inno's yard as well, which we think belongs to the landlady. Sometimes we see it running around.

We also find tiny lizards living along the walls and Inno's balcony. I saw a relatively huge one the other day in the bathroom–it was about six inches long. It was a pleasant change from the roaches that I've already complained about (which are either all dead or scared to come out). Closest to home for me, though, are the two tiny frogs that took up residence in my room the other day. Neither was bigger than a cubic inch, and I only noticed them because when I got too close, they jumped about a foot off the ground and landed with a soft plop. At first, I tried to get them to leave, since I was worried that they wouldn't be able to get out and might get stepped on. Eventually I realized they weren't going to leave and they didn't seem to be in any danger of being squashed–they'd just jump out of the way. So I went to bed and listened to them jump around. I haven't seen them since then. It's possible that they're gone, but they also blend in, so it's hard to tell. I think one was under my bed for a while.

And to add to our adventures in malapropism: I wasn't feeling well the other day, and normally I would have just mimed having a sore throat, but my phrasebook specified how to say "I have a sore throat": "Ninauma roho." As a lifelong Monty Python fan, I should have known better than to trust a phrasebook, but I memorized the phrase and said it to a few people throughout the day. They looked confused, and one woman put her hand over my heart and said something serious-sounding (I told her I didn't understand), but I figured my pronunciation was just a little off. When I went to school yesterday morning, I said the same thing to Richard, our teacher, who laughed at me. He told me I should be saying, "Ninaumwa koo."

Okay, I said. "So what does 'roho' mean?"

He hesitated. "It means 'spirit.'"

I had been telling everyone that I had a pain in my soul.

~Caitlin

Kombe la Dunia

The latest news is that we have all become World Cup fanatics, probably to the surprise of many of you. On Thursday night Tim, Bree and I placed dibs on our preferred teams, with Caitlin getting the leftovers since she wasn't there. (Sorry Caitlin. Again.) My teams are Costa Rica, England, Cote d'Ivoire, Angola, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Spain. Caitlin got some of the unwanted colonial powers because we are sensitive to that sort of thing right now and tried to avoid them. So far, I have one win and three losses, but I'm optimistic that my underdogs will prevail in the end.

On Friday Musa and Denis took us to a big restaurant-bar where they were showing the first game (Germany v. Costa Rica — am I writing that like a court case instead of a game?) on big screens. Unfortunately, the screen closest to us was delayed by about three seconds, so every time there was a shot or a goal the other half of the room erupted in glee or disappointment. Eventually another screen came on even closer to us and we could watch in suspense again, but I admit I did enjoy the excitement of knowing when something was about to happen. 

A lot of people were rooting for Germany, including Musa and Bree (it's one of her picks), and there seemed to be lots of Germans in the crowd. We had wondered if people here felt any resentment towards Germany because it was the original colonial power in Tanzania (England took over during WWI), but they assure us all that matters is how the team plays soccer. Which is fair enough. 

Swahili is kind of difficult

Note: this was supposed to be posted several days ago, but our internet connection died, and I've edited it in spots since then, so in some places "yesterday" means yesterday and in some places it means last week. Sorry. 

Every weekday morning from 9 to 12, we have Swahili class with Richard, our teacher. We meet alongside a secondary school in a Catholic church in Posta, or central Dar es Salaam. The whole secondary school has about fifty kids and maybe half a dozen teachers, and everyone meets in one large room. Each class sits around a whiteboard, and the teachers rotate. We have a whiteboard too, although our teacher stays where he is. Sometimes we glance over at other groups to discover they are learning about algebra, hydrogen chemistry, or the symptoms and transmission of syphilis. (I think that was yesterday.) It's a very different environment than we're used to for school.

Our class is intense. It's just the four of us (Tim is here now), and I've never been in a language class that moved so quickly. I got here speaking almost no Swahili, and I can now put together sentences like, "Do you have the key to my room?" That doesn't mean I can always make myself understood–the words come slowly and my pronunciation is shaky–but I'm amazed at how rapidly we're all progressing. We're much, much better than we were a little while ago. And we've started to almost automatically refer to certain nouns, particularly food, by their Swahili names. So if you ask us what we had for dinner, we might say we had ndizi, nyama, and wali.

That said, we do still make some interesting mistakes. (See Bree's entry for today.) I think we sound pretty demented on a regular basis—I’m reminded of David Sedaris, who has described trying to buy calves’ brains in French and ending up saying, “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” It's easy to make mistakes in Swahili, actually, because of the way the language is structured. It's a regular language with few exceptions, so once you learn the rules, you're okay. However, there are a lot of rules to learn. There are about eight classes of nouns, like declensions in Latin, and while the nouns themselves don't change, everything else has to agree with them. And when I say everything, I mean the adjectives, the demonstrative pronouns, and even the verbs, which must agree with the class, person, and number of the subject as well as occasionally agreeing with the direct object. You wind up with a lot of alliteration. (“My books are bad” in Swahili is “Vitabu vyangu ni vibaya.”)

All the agreements mean that when you're starting to learn the language, as we are, you're likely to misuse words all the time. For example, one of the first words we learned was "nzuri," which means "good." If someone asks you how you're doing, you say "Nzuri." So for a while, we figured that we could say things like, "Chakula ni nzuri," when we meant, "The food is good." Unforunately, that's not how you say that. Chakula is in a different class than a person is, and so we should really have been saying "Chakula ni kizuri." It's not the biggest mistake in the world, but I'm pretty sure it made it even more difficult for people to understand us when we tried to talk. And of course, we make some simple vocabulary mistakes. The other day, I told the people who had us over for lunch that their books were delicious, and Bree, trying to say she was tired, accidentally told our teacher that she was hateful.

Swahili is also different from other languages I've learned in that everything goes on the front of the verb. If you wanted to say, "I taught myself," you would say "Nilijifundisha," in which "ni" indicates that the subject is "I," "li" shows that it's past tense, "ji" makes it reflexive, and "fundisha" is the stem of the verb meaning to teach. This isn't exactly hard, but it takes some getting used to. I think verbs are actually our strong suit–we can make positive and negative statements in four or so tenses, and we can also form imperatives and what I think are called hortatory forms (as in, "Let's go"). I'm very impressed by us. I won’t speak for the others, but for me, I don’t feel like I understand Swahili as a language yet. It’s more like a code that I can sometimes decipher. But it gets easier every day. 

On a more personal note: I moved out of Mikocheni B and into the homestay house a couple of nights ago. I think we're going to switch off staying there, although I'm not sure when. The water seems to work more regularly than at Inno's, where there have been some problems, and I have my own space in a sort of small guest house across the yard from the main house. It's not bad at all–the biggest drawback is that there were cockroaches in the bathroom. I sprayed them with Raid and I think they're all gone now. It's different in other ways. There's satellite TV, and I wound up watching part of The Italian Job with the host family. The family watches Nigerian movies, which deserve their own blog, and we also wound up watching Girls of the Playboy Mansion on E!. Monica and her family asked me if the show was supposed to be real. (For those not familiar with the show, it's a reality show about Hugh Hefner's girlfriends.) I also think that the cook is a bit more adventurous than Mary is, since she's cooking for real Tanzanians. I'm not sure exactly what was in the stew we had last night, but I think I saw intestines. (I ate around that part.) I like Monica and her family very much, and I'm having a nice time, although I miss everyone back at Inno's.

Bree seems to be updating everyone on her reading, so I'll do the same: I finished Beloved, which I thought was good but probably not the greatest book of the last 25 years, as well as both Rabbit Redux and Rabbit is Rich. I liked Rabbit is Rich best; actually, it’s my favorite of John Updike’s books that I’ve read so far. I think I need to read the fourth book in the series now.

Kwa herini and keep calling and e-mailing!

~Caitlin 

Samahani na chakula

Hi everyone, (It’s terribly presumptious of me to assume an audience after we’ve gone so long without posting, I know. We will try not to abuse you so in the future, dear audience.)

I’m sorry that we haven’t posted in a few days. There was an internet outage which started in the middle of our session last Thursday and continued through the weekend that prevented us from updating. We’ll try to make up for it this week. Today, I'm posting an entry from last Thursday.

June 8^th, 2006

As of last night, Eleuthera, Caitlin and I have been in Tanzania for week. I can already tell that our stay is going to go by too quickly. Since we last posted, we've gotten into a routine of going to Swahili class in the morning, and exploring Dar in the afternoon. In between, Musa (a university student here who is our guide) takes us to canteens to eat lunch.

Lunch consists of a protein portion and a carbohydrate portion. The protein options are chicken, fish, nyama, and beans and we eat them with chapati, wali (which is boiled rice, but is somehow much tastier than rice in the United States), and ugali. It may sound like there is not a lot of variety, but there are actually twelve different combinations and I've never been much for culinary variety. Chapati is my favorite in terms of taste, but ugali is definitely the most fun to eat. It's a thick rice-like porridge that you roll into a ball with your right hand and then dip in stew or pick up beans with. As you can imagine, the novelty of food you are supposed to play with is going to take a while to wear off. The first time I ordered ugali, I needed a spoon to eat the stew with and the waitress laughed at me. I thought I was getting good at it today at lunch, but then Caitlin found a chunk of ugali in my hair. Thank you, Caitlin.

Swahili classes are going well. See Caitlin's entry for more general information on our classes. Tim is catching up very quickly even though he came in late. Even though Swahili is supposed to be a perfectly phonetic language, I still manage to pronounce things wrong. The other day, the professor picked up my Swahili text and asked me if it was his book. "No,” I said, "That book is not your toilet. That book is my toilet." This mistake is remotely understandable because the word for toilet, university, and a common preposition all sound very similar. However (and I'm only pointing this out because Eleuthera would otherwise), I didn't actually need to use any of these words in my sentence. On the bright side, I think I'm making progress.

After class today, we went to look at the University of Dar es Salaam. It had a very beautiful campus. It rained a little today, and it was so green there. I had fantasies about doing a post-graduate year there, which shows just how much I like Tanzania so far.

In the evenings, we usually hang out at Inno's place and talk about Tanzanian politics and history, economic development, Swarthmore gossip (reheated from freshman year when everything was more dramatic), or the Amazing Life of Innocent Bash. The capitalization isn’t hyperbole; the topic deserves its own post, so stay tuned.

I am continuously surprised by how cheap labor costs are here. Goods are a lot cheaper than the U.S., but the biggest difference seems to be in wages. I should have been able to predict this after taking International Economics, but I'm still struck by how stark the contrast is. Caitlin broke her shoe a few days ago, and our security guard took it to be fixed for about 200 shillings (15 cents). In Dar, a good salary for maids and security guards is about sixty dollars a month, and seventy five for private drivers. Although the costs of living are lower, the fact remains that the number of people in poverty here is very dramatic. I'd seen all the numbers before, but am just begining to understand what they truly mean.

I'm reading Africa Unchained right now, which is very critical of the efforts of early African leaders to industrialize. I'm a little skeptical of the author's assertion that there is something inherently good and African in the peasant that is lost in conventional industrialization/modernization processes, but it's a very interesting book.

As a side note: During a brief water outage, I learned to take a bucket shower! It was actually very refreshing and made me feel like a character in an adventure novel. Happily, our water is working again now, although I think Inno had to destroy any working relationship he had with the landlady in the process.

Huu (?) weekendi, we are going on a day trip to Bagamoyo, the old German capital of Tanzania.

 

Wanafunzi

Before the beach, we had our first Swahili class Friday morning. We mostly reviewed things we had done back at Swarthmore. It seems like the class is going to move fairly quickly, which is exciting because we would like to know as much Swahili as possible. On Friday we did greetings, counting, days of the week, telling time, and introductions, so we are very good at saying things like,

Mambo! Jina langu ni Caitlin. Nina miaka ishirini. Sijaolewa.

Which means "Hey! My name is Caitlin. I am twenty. I am not married." Except that Bree accidentally said "Sijalewa," which means, "I'm not drunk yet." We make these kinds of mistakes sometimes.

We also learned that Swahili time is different from our time. (There was a minor struggle over the word "our" in the preceding setence; Caitlin points out that this is only true in East Africa, but Bree and Eleuthera maintain that other places may use different time as well. For instance, Canada is on a 20-hour clock.) The day starts at 7 AM, so that's 1. For any given hour on the clock, Swahili time is the number opposite that. So 9 is 3, 10 is 4, etc. Caitlin inadvertantly insulted the instructor by saying that the US has illogical measuring systems as well–like not using the metric system. People here seem to know both systems, since they are always able to tell us what time it is in a way that we understand.

Kwa herini! 

~B,C,&E 

Kipepeo Beach

We just got back from a lovely (albeit brief) weekend at the beach. It was incredibly gorgeous–we have photos but haven't yet figured out how to post them. Be patient as we learn. Right, but anyway, it was beautiful. It was the first place we (i.e., Bree) had ever seen where the place was as nice as the photos in the brochure. It was the first time in the Indian Ocean for all of us, and it was perfect weather, clear but with pleasantly chilly water. (Bree and Eleuthera point out that the water was actually warm and Caitlin is just used to exceptionally warm water.) There were also harmless, tiny clear (E. says "adorable") jellyfish that kept nudging up against us. We also saw creatures on the beach, including a camel, a horse, and a herd of small cattle. Seriously.

We slept in a banda, a small hut on the beach with three beds, mosquito netting, a fan that didn't plug in, and not much else. It was kind of perfect. (Parents: it also locked and we were totally safe.) The banda also cost $30 total for the three of us. We're going back. We swam, lay on the beach, and hung out at the bar eating chips and drinking (not much) Tusker, an award-winning East African beer with an elephant on the label. (Caitlin wonders why it was award-winning, Eleuthera likes the elephant, and Bree likes tasteless beer.) The whole experience was surprising, because we thought we were going to a public beach and camping out, without a lock on the door or anything. Instead, we wound up in this paradise, thanks to the planning of our hosts, Inno and Musa. We recommend Kipepeo for anyone who is thinking of honeymooning on the cheap, assuming you can get there.

Until we manage to post our own photos, check out the ones at http://www.kipepeovillage.com/gallery.htm. The pictures online are mostly of luxury suites, which were further from the beach than our banda was.

~B,C,&E 

Hamjambo!

Hey everyone! Welcome to our blog from Tanzania. Feel free to give yourself a username and post comments. We thought this would be an easy way to let you all know what's happening in Mikocheni B, Tanzania. If you're wondering about our blog name, "ndizi" means "banana," and it's our favorite word in Swahili. "Hamjambo" is essentially "How are you?" and is a common greeting around here.

There's not much of a post today because we are going to the beach this evening and probably spending the night there. We'll let you know later how it went. Wikendi njema! (We think that means, "Have a nice weekend.")

~Caitlin