15/11: Kiswahili in Kenyan

Today I am going to Nairobi to spend the weekend there with Camille, Freja and Laura.  They won’t be there before 7 pm at the earliest so I could sleep in. then I got everything packed and ready so that I could leave right after lunch. I had been hoping it would be ready at 12. But when I got down there, a bit before nothing was ready, so I needed to wait a little bit longer. But it turned out that after five minutes later it was ready. A little while later I was on my way to town to catch a matatu for Nairobi. In the first matatu I heard a classic example of the way Kenyans speak Swahili: a lady sitting next to me was speaking on the phone she started out with a lot of Swahili, then all of a sudden she said: “no, I have not changed my phone number,” Swahili Swahili “good” Swahili Swahili “yes, he is performing very well in school” Swahili Swahili (something about being happy) “his grades are very good” Swahili Swahili “I imagine” Swahili Swahili. That is how most conversations go, all of a sudden they use English words like they have forgotten or don’t know the Swahili word for it. Tanzanians would never do that: they always have to speak perfect or near perfect Swahili to each other. If two Tanzanians speak English to each other it is considered strange and like they are trying to be better than the others. It was Victoria who told me that Swahili was born in Tanzania, got sick in Kenya and died in Uganda. I got to Nairobi without much trouble. Once I was at the matatu stand in Nairobi I was at a bit of a loss. I wanted to take a taxi to Upper Hill Campsite and Backpackers, where we will be staying, but I couldn’t see any. I just had to walk ten steps and there was one. Once there I got our key to the cabin with two bunk beds so that all four of us can be there at once. It is a very nice place, but as Freja pointed out later there are rules everywhere. I waited a couple of hours and then they acme. I could just hear them out front. It was really good to see them all again. We ate dinner there and talked until we were politely told to move elsewhere. We continued talking after we were all in bed, but we were so tired that we soon fell asleep.