School's Out

Today was our last day of formal Swahili classes, but ironically now is when the learning will really begin. In my placement there will be very little English spoken and I am required to teach my lessons in Swahili. The purpose of the classes was essentially to provide us with the building blocks of the language, and now it is our responsibility to put them into use. It was also a bit emotional, as we have spent the last month with our mwalimu (teacher), Betty, and have grown quite close to her and her family. During the lessons we often had to make up sentences in Swahili to demonstate that we understood the concepts taught. I always tried to add a bit of life into the lessons by creating really crazy (chizi) sentences to make Betty laugh. The final exercise was to look at a set of pictures and make a story about them. In true fashion, I ended with a story of a lazy fisherman who had his boat flipped by an irate fish. He then swam and found a piece of wood on which he rode for 5 years. Eventually he made friends with a crocodile and they were married. They died of hunger. As usual, I had the girls laughing pretty hard. Betty made sure that I knew she would miss my chizi Swahili and that we are “warmly welcome” to come visit her again any time.

To backtrack a bit, on Friday we had a cooking class, where we took the entire day to learn how to cook Tanzanian meals. There was quite a spread, including chapatis (flat bread), chai (tea), ndizi (plaintains), njegere (peas), ugali (stiff porridge), kuku (chicken), wali wa nazi (coconut rice), pilau na nyama (spiced rice with meat) and more. I had eaten most of the foods before, but until now I had not realized how much work went into cooking them. It took us over 6 hours to prepare everything. Before we came to Betty’s house we picked up the chicken from Mama Kiri’s (yes, live). I was the designated chicken carrier, and she was surprisingly well behaved in the car. We decided to name her Dorthy, as all live animals need a name don’t they? I kept thinking how strange it was that I was carrying around a living animal that would be on my plate in a few hours. Either way, Dorthy was delicious, prepared by the traditional TFC (Tanzanian Fried Chicken) method. Okay so I just made that up, but really, they simply fry the chicken in a pan full of oil, so it does quite resemble KFC, but these chickens have actually moved around of their own free will and eaten something resembling food, not just kept pinned down and pumped full of growth hormones; the down side is that they are not quite as tender.

Sorry Dorthy...........................................But your delicious!

On Saturday night, I went over to some British expats’ house to watch the World Cup of Rugby final game. The match was between England and South Africa, and it was the first time I had attempted to watch a full game of rugby. Up until then I had only seen random highlights and just assumed that it was like American football without pads. Rugby is a huge part of some countries culture, and I am always keen to learn what I can about such things. The football assumption wasn’t terrible, as there are some areas of the game, such as the way in which points are scored, which are similar. However, instead of a touchdown, it is called a “try”, which I really don’t understand, because a try usually means that you didn’t succeed. You can also score by kicking the equivalent of a field goal. If there are any rugby fans out there that take offense to this comparison, don’t worry, I know that rugby came first and that football stole its concepts, not the other way around. The main differences are that you cannot pass the ball forwards at any time, the play doesn’t end when the ball hits the ground, and the usage of “scrums” (which I don’t understand yet); I know there are quite a few other more subtle rule differences that weren’t evident just by watching one game, but you try asking a rabid England fan about the rules while they are trying to watch their team play in the World Cup final. It could be likened to a Brit asking a Canadian to explain the icing rule while Canada is playing for the Olympic Gold Medal in Hockey. Anyhow England lost to South Africa, which was a disappointment because 10 of the 12 people there were from England. I was pretty neutral, as I had recently heard the story of how South Africa was banned from the World Cup until apartheid ended, after which it was held in that country and they went on to win, scoring a decisive victory for unity in the country. I was of course very surprised to see that there were more black players on the England team then on the South African team, which made me think maybe things haven’t changed that much after all.

On Sunday there was a dedication for Andrew and Miriam’s son, Ben, and a potluck lunch held at their house afterwards. The food was great and it was nice to be able to speak English for a whole day, but I have to admit it was strange being around all of those white people at once. Amazing how fast being the minority becomes normal.