Morogoro - Week 1

These two weeks in Morogoro are devoted to learning to understand, speak and read KiSwahili and to know a little more of KiSwahili culture.  The Tanzanian people are very conservative so showing respect by correct greeting is very important.  We have learned traditional greetings as well as the more modern forms and have practiced them on our daily walks to and from town as well as on the other residents in the Amabilis Centre, the convent where are staying.  Some rather forward youths have tried the sloppy Kenyan form of greeting "Jambo" on us but we have corrected them and indicated we know it should be "Hamjambo"!  Little children, excited by seeing Wazungu have wanted to try their english on us and we have been greeted with "Good evening, ladies" by infant school girls who then dissolve into giggles. 

I am enjoying finding the patterns in grammar in the language as we move through the various tenses but I struggle with the vocabulary - if I could only remember the nouns and verbs I wouldn't have trouble putting them into grammatically correct sentences!  I will just have to practice, and I'm sure when I have to use it seriously the words will come.  Our teachers, Benjamin and Perpetual, are very good.  They use a variety of teaching strategies, including, today, peer teaching where we had each to learn the use of one or two interrogatives and explain it to the class.  I had nini (what) and kwanini (why); Steve had the far more challenging ngapi (how many, how much) that is modified with prefixes depending on the noun class it is describing.  And all this on Day 4!!  I have especially enjoyed dictation.  KiSwahili is a totally phonetic language - nothing as ridiculous as 'ph' when an 'f' would do - so I just scribble it down and translate later.  You don't have to know what it means in order to spell it correctly!

Our day starts with chai (breakfast) at 7:00am and then the first lesson from 8:00 until 10:00.  Morning tea (chakula cha asubuhi) follows, then lesson two from 10:30 until 12:30.  We have an hour for lunch, which again we all eat together in the dining hall, then the third and least formal lesson runs from 1:30 until 3:30.  After that we are free to roam the town practising until dinner at 7:00.  The local beer, Kilimanjaro (It\s Kili time!) is available from the nuns and is very welcome at around 5:00 pm.  Steve has to fit his birding in around the KiSwahili lessons and homework, which we mostly do after dinner.  We fall into bed under our mosquito nets exhausted each evening and wake with the call to prayer from the mosque down the road at 5:15 am.  Now I'm over the initial jet lag I can usually get back to sleep until 6:30am. 

We are staying at the Amabilis Centre, a convent and conference centre with an associated boys' secondary school, on the edge of the town of Morogoro.  Some of the nuns seem so very young but they are always smiling and seem to have a great life - it is nothing to come around a corner and find one flirting with a workman or chatting on her mobile phone!  Everything here is fresh and clean but there is only flywire in the internal 'windows' and every sound travels and reverberates so there is no privacy!  We would rather not hear the voices of the Scottish Catholics, who share our corridor, planning their next day's proselytizing;  but then we hear the gentle, peaceful sung offices of the nuns in the morning and at night and everything seems much better.  The food here is wonderful - fresh and tasty though limited in variety.  Most days we get fish or chicken, chips, beans, rice, a mild meat curry, plantain and greens.  We get fruit for dessert - oranges, mandarines, bananas or watermelon.  Today we will revise the vocabulary for shopping learned over the last three days and go to the market to use it to buy produce for tomorrow's lunch.  Tomorrow we will learn to cook Tanzanian style using the kind of basic equipment and utensils we are likely to find at our placements.  Zoe has volunteered to kill the chicken!  These days' lessons will be very important for Steve and Mark (Michelle's partner) who will be the chief cooks when we get to Bukoba.    Saturday I am planning an early night as the current plan is to depart Morogoro at 5 am Sunday for a day's Safari at Mikuri National Park.  It will be wonderful to see giraffes again.  I hope you enjoy the pictures - I think my 'blogging' is getting more coherent. 

More soon, Jenny 

PS. Keep the comments coming.