With my current lack of brain power, I expected my Swahili would take a hit, that the sluggishness I feel in English would mean remedial Swahili. Yet, the opposite has been true. I am unable to focus in English. (Posts like these ones which posted recently were written before Red […]
This awesome woman is our Swahili tutor Pendo. She’s doing a PhD in Swahili linguistics. In the picture, I’m holding a journal article in which she’s written an article. She’s published multiple articles. Fluency is about so much more than grammar and vocabulary. It’s about knowing the smoothest way to […]
Particularly among university students, there is a desire for self-, life-, and nation-improvement. Sometimes that can feel very overwhelming, whether it’s in the pressures of exams or the bigger picture of being one person trying to make a difference in their nation. These proverbs seem particularly relevant. Haba na haba […]
I’ve picked up my book of Tanzanian proverbs again recently, and here are a few about relationships. Damu ni nzito kuliko maji – Blood is heavier than water. This looks like the English proverb ‘Blood is thicker than water’ but it has an extra connotation. On top of the idea […]
This semester I am again studying in the Swahili department at St John’s University where we work. All the lectures are in Swahili so it’s a brilliant exercise for me in listening comprehension, which is appropriate because this time I’m doing a third year course ‘Theory and Traditions of Oral […]
Tutorials for my Swahili literature course have finished now as the semester draws to a close. They’ve been a highlight of the course. There are about 40 people in mine and everyone sits in rows on one half of the classroom, facing into the middle. The presenter stands in front […]
I feel like my Swahili is growing in leaps and bounds since I started my literature class at uni. One of my hopes with the class was that I would grow in my listening comprehension and this is definitely happening. I am picking up and understanding more of what is […]
