Every day as part of our Swahili homework, we write a journal entry about what we did that day. I thought I’d post an English translation here as a way of giving a window on what an average day looks like at the moment. Plus, it should give an idea […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
I watched Captain Planet growing up. I participated in the KESAB campaign (Keep South Australia Beautiful) like most primary school students did. I put my rubbish in the small bin and the recycling in the large bin. We bought recycled paper and toilet paper. In more recent years, I’ve chosen […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
The other day, we bought the wrong bananas. There are cooking bananas (which you can’t eat raw) and eating bananas. We bought the former when we meant to buy the latter. No big deal as far as we were concerned – it’s all part of learning about life in a […]
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Walking through the market, two men called out to me ‘mvivu’. It sounds a lot like ‘mbivu’ which means ‘ripe’ (often overripe), a common word in such a setting. But we couldn’t work out why it was directed at me. Arthur wondered if it had some sort of sexual innuendo. […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
At the end of our first week of language learning, there’s a lot to like about Swahili. It’s way more phonetic than English (goodbye diphthongs!) and the grammar structure is more like Hebrew, except the verb stems are long enough that they don’t disappear. Plus, there are no gendered pronouns […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
1. Culture shock is a weird term. I associate shock with surprise. There have been things I’ve been surprised by but not upset by and things I expected that I have still been upset by. When I have a negative feeling, I have this conversation with myself: ‘I don’t like […]
Estimated reading time: 1 minute
I recently reviewed The Gospel-Centered Woman. Much of its content was developed on Wendy Alsup’s blog Practical Theology of Women. In this post I want to zoom in on one discussion I’ve been following pretty closely. It’s about Genesis 3:16 ‘Your desire will be for your husband and he will […]
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes