Wednesday October 26th
I think I've started a craze, or rather Cliff has. Whilst in Dar es Salaam he used a phrase that
I had heard last year but had not yet added to my vocabulary, “Poa kichizi kama
ndizi”. I’m almost tempted not to translate
this because it does lose a little in translation and you would not get the
same effect in Leeds if your reply to “How ye doing mate” was “Cool like a
crazy banana”. As I've said before,
greeting someone in Tanzania is an important ritual and can include a variety
of questions and replies. One of these
is Mambo – Hi, which usually follows a more traditional greeting and the
expected reply is Poa – I’m cool, so the first time I added my new phrase in
school the students looked a little askance as they had never heard it before,
but very quickly they decided that this was funny and worth repeating. I can see quite a few crazy bananas
developing over the next few weeks.
The YMCA stands in about 2-3 acres of land, much of it covered
in a tidy grass ‘lawn’. I found out today
the work involved in keeping it tidy as I returned to find Mama Gladness, Vicky
and Deo, cutting the grass. This was
done using an implement called a Panga which is a curved, golf club like, blade serving the same
purpose as a sickle but without the need to bend as much.
 |
| A Panga |
The action is a truncated ‘golf swing’ to
either side of the body ensuring that you don’t take a divot at the bottom of
the swing or put too much into the back swing and lose an ear. Quite easy really and avoiding my toes I had
a go. Easy, did I say? Yes it was, for all of two minutes and then
you realise the energy expended in covering two acres like this. Even Vicky said at the end of the session, “nimechoka”,
and you don’t need a degree in linguistics to realise that she was knackered tired.
 |
| I would imagine the wellies are a safety precaution |
Vicky’s outburst as she finished a session of lawn mowing
brought back a discussion I had with my students during my daily Swahili
lesson, which is now becoming a necessity more than a game, as I realise how
poor the English is for some members of the group. I know the prefix ‘nina’ and had said
ninachoka, which as far as I was concerned was ‘I am tired’. “No!”, said Sylvester, “it’s not ninachoka,
it’s nimechoka!”. When I asked why as it
was ninawenda and nina everything else I knew, he said that when it is a
feeling about yourself you use ‘nime’ and not ‘nina’. “Ah, says I. Nimechoka, nimejoto (I am tired.
I am hot). Once again I was corrected,
as it should be the usual ninajotto. I
argued that this too was a feeling about myself but no it’s not the same. Confused? So was I, and don’t bother going back
and reading this paragraph again, I’ve just done that and it doesn't help.
Baadaye
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