Habari kwa Shuleni

Hamjambo!

Tunakaa shule ya Kiswahili. Tunahudhuria darasa kila siku. Darasa linaanza saa kumi na mbili na nusu mpaka saa kumi na nusu. Tunapumzika saa sita na nusu mpaka saa nane na tuna chai saa nne mpaka saa nne na nusu. Kila siku tunajifunza vitu vingi. Kila jioni tuna fanya kazi ya nymbani pia.

Watoto wetu wanapenda TCDC sana. Wanapenda kucheza kwa rafiki wao. Cameron anajifunza Kiswahili kwa muda saa mbili au tatu kila siku. Noah anajifunza Kiswahili kila siku pia, lakini kwa muda saa moja. Ava anacheza tu.

Chakula kipo kizuri sana. Tunakula mboga na matunda mbalimbali, na pia wali, supu, nyama, mkate, na vitindamlo. Watoto wote anakipenda chakula. Baada ya chakula cha jioni, kwa kwaida Cameron na Noah anacheza puli.

Tumechoka kila usiku kwa sababu tunafanya kazi bidii! Tutakapomaliza, tunafikiri kwamba tutahitaji likizo! Labda tutakwenda Nairobi—tutaona.
Kwaherini—tutaonana baadye!

(If there is anyone out there actually capable of giving me feedback on my Swahili—don’t.)

Hello!

We are at Swahili school. We attend class every day. Class starts at 8:30 until 4:30. We have a rest from 12:30 until 2:00 and tea from 10:00-10:30. Every day we learn a lot. Every evening we have homework, too.

Our children like TCDC a lot. They like to play with their friends. Cameron studies Swahili for 2-3 hours every day. Noah also studies Swahili every day, but only for 1 hour. Ava just plays!

The food here is very good. We eat different kinds of fruits and vegetables, and also rice, soup, meat, bread, and desserts. The children like the food. After dinner, Cameron and Noah usually play pool.

We are tired every night because we are working hard! When we are finished we think that we’ll need a vacation. Perhaps we’ll go to Nairobi—we’ll see.

Goodbye—see you later!

In rereading this, I’m seeing that everything I wrote I was taught in the beginning session, which means I might master some of this session’s lessons in the next 4 months! We are very blessed to be able to be here learning. The pace is exhausting, but we strongly feel that learning Swahili is such an important part of living here. People here are so pleased when you speak their language, even when you do it badly. Here in Arusha we can get by pretty easily basically speaking English, but we have had to rely on Yasini to translate for us a number of times with repairmen and it’s frustrating not to be able to understand or participate in those conversations. We’re also learning so much about how Tanzanians think and view the world by the way their language is structured. It’s interesting to hear them describe themselves as “people-oriented” or “relationship-driven” and then learn how certain aspects of the language support those views.

I suppose if we leave Tanzania in 3 years, we’ll be able to say goodbye to all our friends in Swahili, because that’s how long it’ll take us to master it!

I found this description of Swahili on another random blog...

"The rythmn of the voices here is like a synchronized melody. Each syllable flows off the tongue with an ambiotic drum like sound. Close your eyes and listen to the sounds of raindrops filling your ears and feel them melt upon your skin. The subtle, smooth, rise and fall of notes..."

Beautiful, isn't it? I love the imagery. But I have sneaking suspicion this person has not had to attempt to parlay these impressions into a functional conversation with a fundi to get their water tank fixed. Or tried to understand what the heck someone was explaining about their electric bill. Or wondered if they told their gardener to take tomorrow off or never come back to work again.
I'm not saying the language isn't beautiful. Hearing so many languages and accents here in one place, I actually love to hear people speaking their own language (I often wonder how American English sounds to people who aren't familiar with it). But in the circumstances I've mentioned above, when I close my eyes, I'm not feeling raindrops--it's more like a "deluge of sound, pelting the skin with a melody that fills the ear with seemingly random sounds, which are at times almost within one's grasp, before slipping away and pouring past in a torrent of confusion, leaving a sensation of bewilderment."