Swahinglish (II) - Blog Reader Challenge!

Yesterday I felt good about my Swahili. First of all, I was able to carry a simple conversation with the house-help for a few minutes, even though it was challenging for me to understand her. It still takes me some ten seconds to register and understand what someone has said, and most people here have never learned a foreign language and do not know what it means to speak slowly to a foreigner. Even when I ask them to speak “pole pole”, they just keep going at the same pace!

Secondly, Rinna (the elder daughter) said something yesterday which made me laugh. Because the language at home is English, she does not speak Swahili very well, which is why the parents want the house-help to speak Swahili to the kids. When she doesn’t know a word in Swahili, she will resort to Swahinglish. Here’s what she said yesterday: “Wapi headi ya fishi?” (Where is the head of the fish – in proper Swahili: Kichwa ya samaki wapi?)
I cannot speak better Swahili than she does, but I can also speak Swahinglish (which is what many young people her do – e.g. nimekumiss – I have missed you).

Speaking of Swahinglish: Proper Swahili has many words that have come from other languages, Arabic, Portuguese, German and recently of course from English. Some of them may not look recognisable at first glance, but you may be able to figure them out. Many of them will add an “i” at the end (sheet turns into shiti, blanket into blanketi) or they take the way the words sounds in British-Kenyan pronunciation and transcribe it into Swahili (Swahili uses the same vowel sounds as German, so shiti is pronounced shee-tee).

Here’s the challenge: I have selected some words of foreign origin for you to figure out. If you think you know the English or German equivalent, post your answers as a comment. I will let you know who has gotten the most correct answers.

Level 1
Disemba
sukari
kompyuta
milionea
oksijeni (I love this one!)
operesheni
stempu
shule (especially for you German-speakers!)
plasta
buluu
gazeti


Level 2 – public transport and vehicles
baiskeli
stesheni
gari
motokaa
boti
dereva
gereji
mota
petroli
teksi
tiketi

Levels 3 and 4 to follow! Have fun!

P.S. Copyright by Cornelia; however, idea was taken from a certain travelling and blog-writing brother (though at that time there were no blogs, the quiz came in one of the very lengthy newsletters).

P.P.S. Sarah Nimo – don’t even try, you are excluded from this contest!!! Hope you had a good flight, though!

“Birth-week”

For the most part, I had a good birthday. On the negative side, my birthday was overshadowed by the sad news of two friends being robbed at gunpoint on a bus the evening before (note to self: stay away from citi hoppa buses!). On the bright side, I got to celebrate my birthday for at least three days. Wednesday was a regular working day, but I got phone calls from the important people in my life, and in the evening I was surprised by my Kenyan family and the neighbours with a small party! We had cake and soda and crisps (chips) and popcorn and some more cake. The kids (Rinna and Tanielle and the neighbours’ kids) sang for me and then proceeded to run and jump around like crazy because of all the sugar! It is a custom here to “wash” people on their birthday, meaning that you pour water on them. I was able to avoid that, but was face-painted with cake icing instead by the kids.

On Thursday I went out for Ethiopian lunch with two friends, then in the evening I went to a concert at the Carnivore, a well-known restaurant and club serving mostly meat. Because of my birthday, I was given a CD for free! (In case you are worried about what I wrote earlier on about my friends being robbed: I am rarely out after dark here, and then not on public transport. That night we took a taxi to the restaurant and back.)

On Friday, we went for an evening service and then had a movie night and sleep over at a friend’s house. Since one is restricted by the safety issues here and since we are usually too busy to spend a lot of time with friends, it was fun to have a reason to celebrate and go out. By the time we got to Saturday, however, I was rather tired!

Toilet Philosophies

If you live in North America or Europe, there are many things you will take for granted when it comes to toilets. I have gotten used to all kinds of toilets here, but I realised that I unconsciously still compare the washrooms I visit with the standards I have from places back home. I noticed it when I was using the toilet at another church and found myself commenting to a friend on the two positive facts of toilet paper and cleanliness – and then realising that the door would not shut or lock properly. “Two out of three is not bad,” was my evaluation. Since then I have come up with a number of criteria for the grading of toilets. Please let me know if I am missing certain criteria or whether the ones I have chosen are internationally useful.

Toilet paper
This is not a uniquely African problem – even in Switzerland I will often check public toilets for toilet paper, but here it is especially useful to carry some toilet paper in your pocket or purse when travelling.

Clean toilet/flushing
A toilet that can’t be flushed will not stay clean very long. Because of issues with running water or with water pressure, toilets will not always flush (probably also because it takes a long time for the tank to fill, and when there are many people using the toilet there is no time for the tank to fill properly).

Door/Lock
You may have never thought of this as an issue, but you would be surprised at how many doors here will not close properly. Even at our church, there are some toilet doors that you have to push very hard for them to close. Another thing is the lock – you will often find (even with hotel room doors) that there are multiple signs of locks that had once been there. Sometimes there is only a bent nail on the door jamb which you can turn towards the door to keep it from opening.

Running water
As mentioned above, running water can be a luxury item. If there is water to wash your hands, be thankful (even if the water is coming out of a canister or a tap outside the washroom facilities).

Soap
If there is soap to wash your hands with, even better! If there is liquid soap out of a soap dispenser, you have found luxury toilets!!!

Mirror
Some people go to the bathroom just for the reason of checking on their hair, make-up, teeth etc., but just remember that this presumes that you have a mirror available. In our office, only the toilet on the ground floor has a mirror – it is even a full-length mirror!

Drying your hands
The issue of drying your hands was one of the last items to come my mind. I guess I have already gotten used to the fact that you often have to go without drying your hands here. The really fancy bathrooms here have the automatic blow-drying machines for drying your hands – complete with the sticker assuring you that this appliance is “energiesparend” and “umweltschonend” (saving energy and taking care of the environment). It reminds me of the recycled toilet paper that was used in Swiss public schools which also had that signet (anyone remember that paper?).

Toilet seat
I have saved the most interesting for last: toilet seats. Just yesterday I used a public toilet in a nice shopping area that fulfilled all the other criteria – except the toilet seat. Even the Lonely Planet guide comments on the fact that many of the hotels or public toilets do not have toilet seats. Even after four months I do not understand the reason for it. The best explanation I have gotten is that people might want to squat (hocken, kauern) on the toilets, therefore the seats have broken or have not been installed in the first place. Or maybe there is a secret association for the liberation of toilet seats…

Nairobi Chapel Family Day

On Thursday we had a meeting with all the Nairobi Chapel churches (just the staff). About three years ago, Nairobi Chapel split up into five different churches with the aim of multiplying and planting churches. Now there are eight churches – and more to come. It was amazing to hear about what the other churches are up to and to see all the staff – about 80-90 people! About half of them are interns; that is an average of seven or eight interns per church. Just imagine what you could do in your church with all those interns!

What I do all day...

I am two weeks into the second half of my stay here, and it suddenly seems like time is going to fly. Things have changed at work, partially because Msafara is over and everyone is doing their "normal" job again. We also had an evaluation two weeks ago in which we were given new job descriptions and tasks. When the guys from the worship department came back from Msafara, I was suddenly out of work, as they took over service planning and bulletin work (which I had been involved in) and I had finished baptism class and baptism. With everything being different, I thought I could give you an overview of what I do all day or all week - as that is usually hard to see anyway in ministry.

Just to remind you, I am in the Pastoral Care department which involves pastoral care (weddings, funerals, births, illnesses, visitation etc.), adult education, small groups, visitors, and helping the Worship department with the worship service on Sundays. Here are my tasks:

• organise and co-facilitate discipleship classes
• put together a baptism class manual with the material I developed and with the information I gathered
• organise visitation one week a month ("Amtswoche")
• organise visits for our pastoral care team to the spinal injury clinic, lead our team
• take care of administration for the Pre-Marital Counselling Class, sit in on the class
• develop two study guides for small groups on two sermon series ("burn-out" and "the names of God")
• research on how volunteers at Nairobi Chapel are recruited, trained and appreciated; speak to staff team about possible problems or areas that need strengthening
• interview pastors in other departments about their work to get an overview of what the church does and how it does it

If you are thinking that this is a lot to get done in two more months, then yes, I agree. Especially because I sit in meeting half of the week! The senior pastor and the associate pastors have become very intentional about equipping me as much as possible in these last months, so I now sit in on meetings with the pastoral team. Right now they are discussing their vision and the strategies for getting there, so it is a very interesting discussion to be a part of. However, it also means an additional all-day meeting:
Tuesday: departmental meeting in the morning, service planning in the afternoon
Wednesday: "library day" (which means you can actually get work or research done with out being interrupted)
Thursday: pastoral team meeting
Friday: class in the morning, admin or visitation in the afternoon
Saturday: admin, visitation or service preparation as necessary
Sunday: discipleship class, service, pre-marital counselling class (Sunday is my longest day!)
Monday: off-day!

Political Update

Yesterday, President Kibaki finally announced the new cabinet. Now, you may not even have been aware of it, but since the signing of the national peace accord, Kibaki and Raila have been fighting over how to share power - how to divide up the various ministries and the seats in the cabinet. Here's a time-line as a reminder:

December 27th, 2007 - Elections
December 30th, 2007 - Results are announced
December 31st, 2007 - Post-election violence and riots begin
January 22nd, 2008 - Kofi Annan arrives in Kenya to mediate between the government party and the opposition
February 28th, 2008 - National Peace Accord is signed by President Mwai Kibaki and Honorable Raila Odinga
April 13th, 2008 - President Kibaki announces his cabinet

For the last two or three weeks (I can't even remember anymore), Raila and Kibaki have been meeting to determine the cabinet (after the parliament had worked out the details of the of the peace agreement). It was supposed to be announced last weekend, but they were not able to agree. At that point, it looked like the coalition was about to collapse, and there were people talking about a new vote etc. Many people here were just getting annoyed and fed up with politics. Others started rioting again in protest of the proposal of an enlarged (or inflated) cabinet - or whatever it was they were rioting about.

Now they have finally agreed on what the coalition government should look like, which means that we can hopefully move on to more important things: resettling the displaced people who have been waiting all this time, getting the economy back on track and reworking the constitution (which has been the plan since 2005, I think). Resettling the IDPs (internally displaced persons) is a matter of urgency for two reasons. The rain makes living in camps miserable, not just because of the mud, but because there is the danger of diseases (cholera, typhoid etc.) and sicknesses because of the rain and the cold. Many of the people depend on being able to plant and farm for a living, and if they do not plant before the rains start, it will be too late. Even though this is supposed to be the rainy season, we have not had a large amount of rainy days yet (which I am glad for), but there is also fear of drought (Dürre).

Swahinglish (I)

As some of you may know, I am fascinated by language and the diversity of how language is used. It is especially interesting to see how the same language can be used so differently! Since coming here, I have been listening to people speak English and have sometimes been puzzled, surprised or amused by what people will say here – because their English has been influenced by Swahili or their mother tongue. To demonstrate this, I will tell you a story using as many “Swahinglish” phrases as possible.

Last week but one, one of the chicks from Msafara invited some of the interns to her house for a bash. I met Njeri and Gedion at the bus stage to catch a citi hoppa to Karen. As we entered the bus, we happened to find another intern there who had come straight from town. Gedion, always eager to get the best option, had worked out a way to save money: take the bus to the first junction after the Karen round-about and then catch a mat, but his plans were crossed by the fact that the bus conductor came to complain after passing the round-about that we had not paid enough since we were supposed to get off there. Gedion started causing and actually succeeded in not having us pay more.

Last week but one – two weeks ago
chick – girl, gal
bash – party, get-together
stage – station
citi hoppa – a local bus company
to enter the bus – to get on the bus
town – downtown
mat – matatu, a Nissan minivan for public transport
to cause – to cause trouble, to give someone trouble, to complain or rant

When we reached, we alighted from the bus and looked for a mat. The matatu tout finally agreed to take us to where we were going for ten shillings, so we entered the mat and were soon on our way. The matatu was full when we left, but on the way, we kept stopping to add more people. When we stopped for the third time, Gedion started protesting, as he was to make room for an old mama. They made room in the first row and we continued with the tout and the mama hanging out the side of the open van. When we stopped again, Gedion really started causing, threatening come out of the mat and walk – which the four of us actually did, leaving just enough seats for the extra people. We hadn't paid yet, so we actually saved money, but then again, what service can you expect if you are only willing to pay ten shillings?!

to reach – meaning: to reach a certain point or destination (verbs here are often used without objects)
to alight – to get off a bus (sounds to me like getting out of a carriage like in Jane Austen’s day!)
a matatu tout – the guy who “advertises” for the matatu at the stations, shouting out the destination, enticing people to get on (rather than go to the competition), and who acts as a conductor
to add more people – to let more people on
mama – pronounce mamá: an older lady
to come out of a bus or mat – alight, get off

Gedion supposedly knew where to go and told us that it was the next road, but when we got there, the road was Kufuga Road instead of Kuwinda Road. Strangely enough, the person we asked confirmed that this was Kuwinda Road, despite the sign that clearly said otherwise. We started walking down the road, but then decided to call Sarah (our host) to check. I would like to say that she did not pick her phone (just to use that phrase), but she actually did and explained to us that we would have to go farther down the main road to where her dad was waiting to pick us. We finally reached there after half an hour of walking and found Sarah’s dad patiently waiting. By that time we were quite annoyed with Gedion and his making us shuka way too early, but at the same time we had a story to tell and someone to blame for being late!

to pick your phone – to answer your phone
to pick someone – to pick someone up
shuka (Swahili) – to alight, get off