Tanzanian English

Swahili is a most adaptable language, originating in Zanzibar and along the Indian Ocean coast from a blend of Arabic and the many Bantu languages of Tanzania. Over the past hundred years (and especially since WWII) Swahili has adopted many words from English.

As a teacher of English as a foreign language, I have total empathy for those trying to learn the rules of English, which are as nonsensical as the rantings of the Mad Hatter. As if our grammar rules weren’t confusing enough, our pronunciation and non-phonetic spelling are simply diabolical. For example, why are rough and through pronounced differently? And what about the obsolete silent “K” at the beginning of so many words, like knock, know, knee, etc? I could go on, but you can find further examples in many different books and websites.

Tanzanians have modified many English words for the Bantu tongue by spelling them phonetically. For many words, they have changed the final “er” or “or” to an “a.” Therefore, I am Mwalimu Alexanda and my father would be Christopha. So, can you guess what a meneja is? A manager. How about a dereva? Driver. We also have kompyuta, opereta, kondakta, vocha, trekta, pancha, mota, and bia for computer, operator, conductor, voucher, tractor, puncture, motor, and beer.

Anette and I have a good laugh each time we encounter a new word and scratch our heads for several minutes trying to figure out what it means, until it dawns on us that it’s just phonetic Tanzanian English masquerading as Swahili. One we couldn’t figure out by ourselves was “Kariakoo,” Dar es Salaam’s central market, named after the WWII-era British Carrier Corps station. Carrier Corps = Kariakoo.

However, the most comical feature of Tanzanian English must be its use in business brochures, which attempt to advertise the quality of a certain product or service. As an ESL teacher, I always scan such brochures for ESLisms such as “Chicken in sweat and sour sauce,” that we were once served in a Dar hotel.

This morning I found two brochures lying around the house and I burst into laughter upon reading them, so I thought I’d share them with you. Anette thought it would be insensitive of me to publicize these mistakes, but my colleague from New Zealand asked her, “Well, what do you all do for a good laugh, then?” For Norwegians, I submit that it is watching foreigners (like me) flailing about in skis for the first time. For us native English speakers, as we are in the unique position of watching every other culture in the world try to learn our language, pardon us for our mirth.

Example #1: A brochure for a game park on the coast. It reads, “Imagine a confusion of nature of such intensity that crocodiles vie with coral reefs and lions roar at lionfish.” And later, “visitors can explore a surprising confusion of ecosystems.” The confusion is obviously that the author meant to use “profusion,” but must have been scared by the lionfish.

Example #2: A new guesthouse has just been built across the street from our compound. It is immaculate from the outside, and the rooms are exquisitely clean and tastefully decorated. Anette and I realized that we’ve been here a long time when we planned a trip just to see the new rooms, and then talked excitedly for an hour afterwards about how clean they were.

Unfortunately, the English on the brochure for the guesthouse doesn’t quite match the physical standards of the building:
“Our guestrooms feature comforting appointments such as color TV with many channels to choose.”
“Our toilets are well cleaned. This shows how we do care for your health.”
“No water shortage. We have big water tanks to make sure no water problems.”
OK, no big mistakes here, just endearing syntax. But here is the piece de resistance:

“Cloth washing machine is here to make sure your clothes, bedshits and blankets are clean all the time.” Bedshits?!! Well, at least they’re trying to keep them clean!

Stranded in Mafinga

Good roads are supposed to be a sign of “development.” Tanzania has great roads; they were the first thing I noticed when I arrived here ten months ago. “This is incredible, nothing like the giant pothole catastrophe of Senegal and The Gambia!”

But last night as I was hurtling along in the passenger seat of a beat-up old taxi at 110 km per hour, straining to make out potential obstacles in the dim yellow beams being eaten up by the blackness beyond, I had an epiphany: good roads, which allow people to drive faster and get places quicker, must be accompanied by good lighting and good signage, neither of which are features of the Tanzanian “barabara.”

Now why was I going so fast in a taxi at 9pm driving away from my home, Iringa? Because my friend Andy Hart got a puncture (apologies for all the British English I’m picking up here) and was stranded somewhere outside of Mafinga, 86 kilometers to the southwest.

His cell phone battery lasted just long enough for him to tell his wife his approximate location, that his spare tire was locked to the back of his car, and that the key had broken off in the lock. Rather than panic, Susie called a cab and asked me to accompany her on the long trip.

Our driver, with his chronic hacking cough, was hunching over the wheel with a torch (flashlight) every ten minutes or so to check the dials on his darkened dashboard. My stomach touched the roof of my mouth every time he floored it on the straightaways and downhills, and I thanked God for my seatbelt as I stared out at the enormous black night.
(Most vehicles here don’t have seat belts, and when you do find one it almost never buckles).

It is bitterly cold in the Southern Highlands now, and at an altitude of 5,000 feet Iringa gets constant gusts of 15-25 knots or more. Fortunately Andy’s car has heating, and he was waiting inside when we found him by the side of the road. Having had no luck flagging down cars after his puncture (no one likes to stop after dark) he was hoping we had come with a spare tyre. We, however, had no luck in getting a spare so late at night.

Although the tyre was deflated and mangled almost beyond recognition as a circular object, Andy resolved to drive his car as slowly as possible to a friend’s house and leave it there for the night so it wouldn’t get looted. I switched cars to keep him company as we crawled and bumped our way at 2km per hour for 45 minutes until we reached his friend’s house.

We pounded on the gate to wake the guard, whose distinctive white sandals I soon saw under the rusty iron gate as he came to let us in. White sandals mean Masai, but this particular Masai was also wearing…a bow and arrow slung around his shoulder! Something about the sight of the blood-colored robes draped so easily about his body, and the bow and arrow hanging there as they have for millennia, made it the perfect African ending to our evening adventure.

For Andy and Susie, last night doesn’t rank anywhere near their top 100 adventurous moments in Africa. Among other harrowing events, Susie has been shot at by drunk policemen in Uganda, Andy has walked for miles in the dark, starving, sick and lost, through Central African jungles, and together they drove away at dawn in a caravan to escape the post-election violence of Nairobi. For us, I’d say last night makes the top 40.

Flamenco in Iringa: A first?

Dear readers, please forgive the self-indulgence, but this post will not give you any further insight into Tanzanian culture – I simply want to talk about my first solo guitar performance, which was tonight.

Organized by Susie Hart of Neema Crafts (one of the greatest development projects on the planet) the evening featured five amateur acts: two pianists, two guitarists and a gospel choir. It was held in a tiny church that was tastefully decorated and lit with candles, and there were about 75 people in attendance (yes, it was almost the entire white community of Iringa, but hey, this is where we live).

The night began with a young pianist from the UK, followed by a German classical guitarist, and then a German pianist. After a short intermission for cake and sodas, I was up. I had already gone through all the stages of nervousness that are so familiar to me from my years of swimming – the butterflies, the bad stomach, the cold sweaty hands, etc. – so all that was left to do was to play. Problem is that cold, sweaty hands go away when you hit the water and your body takes over, but this time I had to rely solely on my freezing fingers.

Somehow, I made it through my four pieces (Sevillanas, Siguiriyas, and two Alegrias) without any major mistakes and I was quite loose and happy when I reached the finale: the (in)famous mariachi song from Desperado, which I played and sang at Susie’s request. I was grateful for the warm applause, and felt downright giddy as I took my seat next to Anette in the audience.

Egotistically, I’m wondering if this is the first flamenco performance Iringa has ever seen. We know that there are, and have been, plenty of Spanish NGO workers and missionaries here, but classical music nights in Iringa are as rare as Africans who don’t pick their noses in public, so maybe just maybe, this is some kind of a first.

Anyway, I’d like to close by thanking my three flamenco teachers – Juan Jose Socorro de Ayamonte, Torcuato Zamora de Washington DC, and David Gutierrez de Berkeley. I also have to mention Jake Thomsen, who’s been teaching me about music ever since the days of Meridian, and my voice teacher and choir director from St. Mary’s, Michael Ryan and Larry Vote, respectively.

What I want to express by mentioning all these people is that we really can’t do anything alone in this life. I derive the deepest pleasure from learning from other people, being inspired by them, emulating them, and then putting my own twist on it until it rings with the sound of my own voice. I’d like to think that all of my teachers were here with me tonight, helping my fingers on their way across the fretboard.

Idodi: A Village Film Show

Yesterday Anette and I squished into a cab after work with our three flatmates (all teachers at my school) to ride out to Idodi for a village film show. For several years now, Friends of Ruaha Society (FORS) has been showing environmental films in their 24 villages – at the primary schools during the day and outside for the whole village at night.

As always, we were greeted with incredible generosity and kindness – sodas to start, then a steaming pot of the Tanzanian staple ugali accompanied by perfectly done beans. Scooping out big portions onto our plates, we all dug in with our hands - some (yours truly) more messily than others - and thanked our hosts, two friends of ours who teach at the secondary school, for their hospitality.

After eating we walked through the school compound to the sports fields, which were glimmering green and gold in the late afternoon sunshine. Hundreds of students were gathered at the various pitches, running about cheering and wearing their colorful school uniforms, different colors for each class. The setting is incredible; the fields are on a plateau above the school with a panoramic view of the valley below ringed by green mountains, and Ruaha National Park just on the other side.

All week at the school they’ve been having an inter-class competition; the winning team will be presented with a cow which they will then slaughter themselves and enjoy eating. With this incentive, the teams were engaged in the most serious of friendly competitions: netball (the Tanzanian schoolgirl’s sport) volleyball, and of course, football. As the football match ended 2-2, the sun slipped behind the mountains and dusk was gathering in the long grass. We walked down from the fields to the center of the village, where the film show was just beginning under the starlit sky.

The projector, laptop and speakers were hooked up to the battery of the FORS Land Rover, and the screen was the side of a whitewashed, thatch-roofed building. Three hundred or so people encircled the screen, children sitting on the ground in front, an elderly man in a white robe and white kofia given a chair of honor at the front of the crowd, the rest standing.

Our Tanzanian colleague stood up in front of the crowd to say “karibuni,” and to explain that the film shows are a part of FORS’ environmental education program - more than just an evening of entertainment. We showed two films in Kiswahili produced by the African Environmental Film Foundation, the first about the elephants of Kenya’s Tsavo National Park and the second about the recent drying of the Great Ruaha River. For people who’ve grown up without electricity, TV and movies, it was a spellbinding two hours, and for us, it was a joy to stand there with them and share in their reactions to the films.

“EEH, EEH, EEH!” uttered the villagers each time they saw a lion, hyena, buffalo, hippo or crocodile.
“TSSSCH” a collective sucking of teeth signaled their disapproval whenever slain elephants appeared on the screen.
“EEEEEEH!” a cry of amazement upon seeing the thousands of tusks collected by park rangers.

One of our teacher friends asked me, “Is there still poaching in Ruaha National Park?” Another asked me, “Do you have elephants in America?” A little girl in front of us exclaimed, “All the fish are DEAD…no good.” A man to our left saw the river sweep away earth and grass from the banks and said, “Erosion. Hmm.”

Contagious bursts of laughter accompanied scenes of a baby elephant being covered with a blanket by its keeper, an orange-headed agama lizard hopping bravely across rocks in the river, storks and herons stealing fish from the crocodiles. In such moments, the power of these film shows was evident.

Although these people live on the border of Ruaha, many of them have never had a chance to visit the park and see these animals. Whenever the smallest children saw a lion on the screen, they grabbed each other and pointed at the screen while saying excitedly, “Simba, Simba!”

Seeing their joy and fascination during the film shows, we can imagine how happy these children will be when they see these animals in real life. This is why FORS conducts educational safaris: so the children and teachers of the primary schools in these villages can experience the spectacular wilderness and wildlife of Ruaha with their own eyes.

Last year FORS took 3,500 students and almost 200 teachers into the park, and this year we hope to take even more. Starting in September, Anette and I will be joining the schools on these safaris, and we’re looking forward to sharing an even more intimate experience of Ruaha with the people of Idodi and Pawaga.