I’ve been thinking recently about language learning. It goes so quickly at the beginning. At the end of our four month course when we first got here, I wrote and gave my first talk in Swahili. A bit over a year later I could go off script during sermons, or […]
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 […]
I sprained my wrist cleaning a cupboard. I’m not normally one to clean cupboards but a layer of mould had permeated our house while we were in Australia. 4 days in to our return to Tanzania, I had a stress injury. And I say stress injury, not just because it’s […]
Elliot has started preschool at an English-medium school where there seems to be a whole lot of Swahili going on. We’re not sure of the exact balance or how much he’ll pick up of what. Since he started 2 or 3 weeks ago, we have been puzzling over the words […]
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 […]
