Time flies...

Well I have been in Tanzania for a month now, and I have to say that the time has gone by very quickly. Compared to the four weeks I spent in Ontario at training school in the summer, this month has seemed incredibly short. From what I have heard from people, it sounds like the first few months in a new country can go by in a flash, with the time afterwards slowing to a normal pace (presumably because one has become used to the new surroundings and life style). We have only one week of language school left and while my vocabulary still needs a great deal of work, I can hold a very basic conversation in Swahili and usually understand most of what is being said, provided that the context is evident.

You have to learn to laugh at yourself when learning a new language. For example, the verb “elewa” means “to understand,” which is useful when you begin speaking because often you will want to say “I don’t understand.” To change a verb to first person negative in Swahili one adds “si” and changes the last vowel to an “i”. Thus, for the first few weeks we were saying “silewi” (see-lay-wee) for “I don’t understand.” This was usually met by confused looks and/or laughter. It wasn’t until later we sound out that the verb “lewa” (without the “e”) is to be drunk. Since we had dropped the “e” from the negative version of to understand, we had been telling people “I am not drunk!” I don’t know why we dropped the “e”, but it illustrates how important one letter can be.

Many of you may have seen the picture of my classroom in the yard of our teacher’s home. Essentially it is just a small wooden shack, but it works and I rather like spending the day outside in the open air. The only problem is that our teacher has a crazy neighbor, an old woman who is convinced that she owns all the houses in the neighborhood and that the tenants should thus pay her the rent. Sometimes she likes to throw rocks at our classroom, and today she told us that we had not paid the rent for a year so she was kicking us out to find a new tenet who will pay up. She was also carrying a big stick so we didn’t want to argue. Luckily Betty, our teacher, knows the woman’s daughter and just calls her up when these things happen, which is much nicer then what some of the other neighbors do to her.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot that since I last wrote I have traveled on daladalas (small minibuses used for local transporation) a number of times. I had read about some pretty crazy experiences from other expats, so I was excited to see what all the fuss was about. Basically they look like miniature Volkswagon buses, and they are named things like “James Bond” and “Death Star 2000.” Most of them would not be legal to drive on the roads in Canada or any other Western country, but that doesn’t stop the driver and his bus boy (the guy who recruits passengers, collects money, and comes closer to death by road rash each day than I care to know) from fitting as many people as possible into the things. There are particular stops that you can wait at but you can also wave the things down anytime they pass you (actually they are constantly honking and yelling at you as they pass, trying to get more passengers). I am sad to say that my rides so far, albeit being rather squishy, have been rather uneventful; the only point of interest was the surprise of the Tanzanians on board when 8 wazungu invaded their minibus, outnumbering the locals. This might not seem that substantial but when you consider that they only ever see one or two white people, which whom are usually completely outnumbered and surrounded by Africans, it would be quite overwhelming to suddenly be surrounded by us. The surprise was evident by the way that they called out “Look at all the wazungu on here!” to the other locals each time we were stopped. Anyways, after this week I should be starting my placement, which is exciting, but I still do not know where I will be living yet. This is why being “flexible” is a necessary attribute for a cross-cultural worker, particularly in Africa.