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 […]
Earlier this week I shared some of the wonderful things about my Swahili literature course, but my lecturer deserves a post all of her own. Though I was introduced to her on a first name basis (since we are theoretically equals), I quickly began to call her Madam Sanga, as […]
The academic year has drawn to a close here in Dodoma, which means I’ve completed my first semester auditing a Swahili literature course. I was thrilled to be going back to uni and it’s been super beneficial so I thought I’d share my reasons for why I want to keep […]
Around the time when I published What am I doing here? I wrote to a friend of mine that this was compounded by feeling like I was in the wrong place. Weekly I get emails from various Australian women asking me about pastoral or theological issues. I love answering these […]
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 […]
It is a very humbling thing to be the one white person in a lecture about black literature. My cheeks burned as the shameful theology of the Sons of Ham was recounted to explain why westerners have looked down on African people for centuries. I felt my own presence questioned […]
