15/8: Kiswahili

Today almost everyone got their own pictures. As I think I mentioned before I developed two portrays of each child, one to be in the day care and another they could take home with them. The one here hangs on the wall of the day care on a piece of cardboard each with drawings they made on the side and their names. Now other volunteers will not have as much trouble with the names, though many of them will go to school in the spring. Today I went to the office for the language social thing and it was really fun, I really like the teacher as well so that is really good as I will spend some 60 hours with her during the next two months or so. The dinner social had been moved to the next week. I have decided to have a stay at home day tomorrow and to the shopping on Saturday as I will then be able to go earlier in the day and have more time and the wedding won’t be before 6pm anyway. Victoria the language teacher taught us that saying ‘jambo’ is wrong it is like her students coming to school and only saying ‘morning’ instead of ‘good morning.’ You have to say ‘hujambo?’, then you can answer ‘si jambo, na wewe?’ ‘Na’ means ‘and’ and ‘wewe’ means you, I hear this all the time in the day care. Then the first person answers ‘si jambo pia.’

I have also talked about ‘habari’ before and I think this is the most important because you can add everything! Like ‘habari za asubuhi’ literally what news of the morning or something like that or just how’s your morning. You can add afternoon, evening, day, work, children, family – anything. You alsways answer the same thing: ‘nzuri.’ You never answer negatively. Victoria said this was to give the other person hope, but it also means that if you ask this question you have to look at them because otherwise you can’t interpret to what extent they mean it. So this makes it easier as I won’t have to know if they are asking about my day or my family, it will always be ‘nzuri’ I answer anyway. She also told us about the kanga or khanga, they material it different colors that many women wear as a skirt or dress. Many of them have a quote or saying in the bottom, so you have to be careful about it as not every one of them are good. For example if two women are having a row one of the might buy a kanga then pass slowly in front of the other women while wearing it so she can see precisely what the first women though of her. Then the second women might buy a kanga and do the same to the first women and so it goes.