Sunday 16 May 2010


The motorbike riding "thing" has been overshadowing all the other learning I should be doing before we leave for Bukoba. So last week, in addition to some more time confusing Mary & Phillip's dogs by riding pointessly around and around a paddock where there were no sheep, and arranging all the fiction books we own in piles alphabetically by author, I put some time into KiSwahali.

We have several different "teach yourself Swahili" resources and have covered Greetings and Being Polite. Steve has a phrase list that includes (under the general heading of "Flirting") such gems as "You are very beautiful", "I am a marine biologist" and "I am not a stalker". I think he needs to work on "That's too expensive" and "How do I cook that?"

I have been working on more prosaic vocabulary. I have learned how to count into the millions. What I need now is to know how language is used in mathematics. How do I translate two and one are three? I'll let you know what I can discover using the magic of the internet.

In the meantime if you'd like to learn some Swahili the picture below has the words of the Lord's Prayer = how many words can you translate?


ps. 7 weeks to go

Wednesday 5 May 2010



Honda CB250 - today's vehicle of choice.

Back to Hopper’s Crossing today to do the motor bike Learner’s Permit practical test and after several hours intensive training, a PASS! Hooray!!


I still have the Road Craft course to do , hopefully in Ballarat in a fortnight or so.

Definitely a red letter day!