bright eyes + blue eyes

You All Right?

As we’ve been getting things organized and set up for ourselves in England, I’ve walked into a lot of stores or offices with a particular look on my face. It’s that look of: I’ve come here for a reason and I’m expecting something to happen. In America, this type of look would cue a clerk or salesperson to ask, “May I help you?”

Here, they tend to say, “You all right.”

Pretty nonchalant. Spoken as more of a statement than a question. I didn’t really understand that it was their way of asking how they could help. But I caught on pretty quickly, and the salespeople etc. have, indeed, helped us quite a lot. Up to a point that I would declare ourselves: All Right.

Tiny Amount of Carrots

Before Abbie and I decided to start this blog together, I had been thinking about blogging for a while. I recently found a test post that I wrote for an imaginary blog I was considering creating. I still think the story is funny, so I’m going to put it up here. I wrote it about two years ago, around the time when we were moving out of our apartment in Berlin.

Gewürze vs. Wurzeln

I like the adventure and newness that a move provides, but I am not especially fond of the activities that the physical act of moving entails, (i.e. throwing stuff away, packing, and cleaning). In light of our upcoming move, I've been pondering the things that I'll need to get rid of. I was talking to H about this the other day, and we were speaking in German.

I was describing how I hate to throw away perfectly good pantry staples, such as spices and seasonings. He doesn't cook that much, so I was elaborating to explain how even if I buy a small jar of a spice, it really can take months, even years to use up that spice. I described how you just use a tiny amount for most recipes.

H stopped me there to clarify what I was trying to say. I had been using the word "Wurzeln" for spices. Turns out, Wurzeln is actually a word for carrots, and the word I should have been using is "Gewürze." He might not be a chef, but he knew something was off when I was describing how it can take years to use up some types of carrots and how you only add a tiny little fingertip amount of carrots to a recipe.

Ah, the joys of learning another language… and moving!

Some Call it a Leak

…others consider it a modern art installation.

 

Everything is reusable/recyclable here. I don’t mean that you can take things to an actual recycling center. Are you kidding? We don’t even have a waste water or trash collection authority.

No, what I mean to say is that folks here try to eek every last use out of every single resource they can access. Every last plastic water bottle is fully utilized. It’s reused endless times until it gets too crumpled or springs a hole.

One of the guys who comes in handy in keeping people’s stuff in action is a Fundi Plastiki. Fundi is a word to describe any skilled handworker. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters – they’re all fundis. And you make many words into Swahili by just adding “i” to the phonetic spelling of an English word. So a Fundi Plastiki is someone who repairs plastic.

Someone suggested that we have a Fundi Plastiki come to repair our water tank. Some previous tenant had removed an outlet from the tank and hadn’t closed the hole very well. So the weak points around the base of the tank were leaking. We took the advice and called the Fundi Plastiki, curious about what kind of magic he could work.

The Fundi Plastiki showed up with some strips of plastic and some metal rods. Then he started a small fire. He melted some of the plastic, then used the metal rods to rub the melted plastic on the leaks. He repeated the process a few times. And then he said it was fixed.

It was fixed for a few hours. And then it wasn’t anymore. Two thousand liters puts a lot of pressure on a weakness, and we weren’t surprised that a few strips of melted plastic didn’t produce a lasting solution.

So we decided we’d just rig something to let the leaking water drain away from the tank’s foundation. And thus, the above structure was created.

An Excellent Product That Money Can Buy

Check out this bruiser of a water delivery truck.

It’s owned by a Benedictine mission in the district.  The mission supplies most of the fresh water for the area, though generally through pipelines.  However, if you so desire, you can pay the brothers to come and deliver water direct to your door.  Then this leaky beast pulls up, leaving a wet trail in its wake. 

If you’re German, and you see this truck, you’ll immediately double over with laughter, because the truck is emblazoned with this motto:

“Die Milch macht’s” was the German Dairy Council’s slogan from way back when.  I’d translate it “The milk can [get things done]”… sort of like an early fluid foreshadowing of Yes, we can!

For us, it’d be kind of like seeing a Milk – it does a body good! truck driving around in the year 2030 in a most unlikely locale.

Meanwhile, English-speakers will give a little chuckle/snort when they notice the marketing line for the bottled water they sell commercially: “Ndanda Springs: An Excellent Product That Money Can Buy.”

Restaurant Food in Rural Tanzania

This is typical of “restaurant” food in Mupudi. The food is usually fairly tasty and well-seasoned, but it’s not really much to write home about. (Except that’s what I am doing right now…)  It’s cheap, though. A plate like this costs $1 for a mound of rice, vegetable sauce, beans, greens, and a piece of chicken. 

The service and ambiance are quite variable. Restaurants outside of the big cities (Dar, Arusha, Stone Town, etc.) are almost always outdoors.  Sometimes you feel like you’re eating in the middle of a four square court.  Other times, you have a nice shady spot under a grass roof.  Sometimes you’ll wait two hours for your food, and they’ll bring rehydrated dried fish even though you ordered chicken.  Then another time, a friendly owner will bring you piping hot food within minutes of ordering.

All in all, eating out in rural Tanzania can range from fine to annoying to refreshingly pleasant.  It just depends.

Or, they say in Swahili: Inategemea - which to me is a word that just sounds right, like onomatopoeia for "it depends".

Worry Not, I Shall Do the Needful

Living in Tanzania has been an education, and we’ve definitely learned new vocabulary as part of the process.  It hasn’t just been new words in Swahili that correspond to our English vocabulary.  We are learning entirely new concepts along with the words to express them.  Kesho is a great example of this.

One of our favorite Tanzanian phrases was given to us by a colleague.  She speaks English, and H had e-mailed her asking her to follow up on something.  Her one-line reply came back: Worry not.  I shall do the needful.

How great is that? H and I say this to each other about five times a day now. Worry not, I shall do the needful.

 

This picture has nothing to do with the phrase.  But isn’t she a pretty little girl? I think she understands the concept of Worry not, I shall do the needful.

Good Morning, Teacher!

This is what you’re bound to hear if you walk around in Masasi.

Anyway, back to Masasi, the “town where I live”.

If you walk around Masasi and you’re white, you stick out.  In a good way.  Most of the time. People notice you and generally want to know who you are and what you are doing. 

A few times a week we go for an afternoon walk, and we always pass by groups of children.  Usually, when the kids see us, they stop playing and look at us.  A brave child says, “Shikamo” in a quiet, sincere voice.  That’s the word to show respect to older/more important people.  We respond, “Marahaba”, meaning that we are pleased to accept the respect.  The rest of the children let loose a chorus of Shikamos. 

We continue with our walk, and then we hear a little voice behind us saying, “Good morning, teacher!”  That’s the cheeky, gutsy child, who is trying to live out his respect by greeting us in English.

“Good morning, teacher” or “Good morning, madam” -- That’s what kids in Masasi associate with English greetings.  How cute is that?  At least we can guess pretty reliably the time of the school day when the English lesson takes place!  

Changei

A lot of words in modern Swahili are pretty much just English words pronounced in a Kiswahili way.  One of the most popular ways to “Swahili-ize” a word is to add a vowel to the end.  The long e sound (which is the letter i in Swahili pronunciation) is heavily utilized.  So what do you think this word in the title is? 

It’s change, as in the money you get back at a store.

That’s what I spend a lot of my time waiting for at the market: change.  The largest denomination of Tanzanian currency is a 10,000 Shilling bill.  It’s worth about $7.50.  At the market, they don’t use cash registers, obviously.  So the stall owners have their money tucked away in their clothes or hidden somewhere in the clutter of their stall.  It’s really the luck of the draw if they have the right bills to make change for a 10,000 bill.  If they don’t have the right change, then they take two 5,000 bills or whatever they have and start moving along the market aisles, asking their neighbor vendors if they have change.  It can take quite a while, but it always works out in the end.  If I am in a hurry at the market, though, I make sure that I take small bills with me so that I don’t have to stand around waiting for changei.

Our local market (photo courtesy of my father-in-law) 

 

Sharp Sun

Yesterday we had our first rainfall in about six months.  The rain lasted for about ten minutes and I sensed everything - the birds, the grass, the people - sighing in welcome relief.  All I can say is what everyone else around town is saying, too: "Karibu, mvua - Welcome, rainy season!" The last few days have been really hot.  Once the short rainy season gets underway, the heat should be tempered somewhat.

I find it interesting that Tanzanians don't talk much about the air temperature being hot or humid.  The most common weather remark (other than encouraging the rains to get their party started) is that that it's "jua kali - the sun is sharp".  I love that phrasing because it is so accurate; the tropical sun is very sharp.

I took this picture when we were going for a walk this weekend.  You can see how dry and dusty it is.

Charades

This post isn't so much about words as the lack of words. I often feel like my communication attempts here are like one big word game. It's some combination of charades, Pictionary, and Taboo. But since the other people don't really know what the game is, it's a bit of a head-scratcher for them.

It happened again during our plumbing upheaval. We were at a shop, trying to buy the right parts. I wanted to ask if they had a fitting made of strong metal. Except I forgot the word for metal. So I went around the shop tapping on all the metal things I could find and saying, "like this [doorknob]…like this [washer]…see, not wood, like this [a wrench]…like this [chair legs]…" You get the idea. Still, I don't think the shopkeeper ever really understood what I was getting at. We ended up with a part made out of PVC.

It's not very funny when you're in the situation and your yard is probably flooding at home. Scenes like this are probably pretty comical, though, if I can take a step back and try looking at it from a third-person perspective.