Kumi-Nane (10-8)

Hey everybody!
I have returned from Nane-Nane, which as it turns out, was like a nation-wide National Western Stock Show. The grounds were a little ways out of town on the road back to Dar es Salaam, and Edward, his sister Seleyon, and I took a minibus (dala-dala) out to the site. The whole thing was a giant mass of bodies, music, stuff to buy, and dust. There was a rumor that there was a lion in a cage, but as it turned out, it was only a rumor. The three of us wandered around looking at sunglasses, pots, and sandals, ate some ice cream, and listened to what I gather was a very good comedian on a big stage. The red dust rising up from under the thousands of feet was choking, and we stopped at an educational exhibit about goat stomachs to drink some water. Seleyon bought some cute little black flats that looked like plastic lace, and I bought the two of us some delicious candy- baobab nuts (ubuyu) coated in some kind of magenta sweet-spicy powder. You just suck the fuzzy coating off and spit out the nut. The picture to the left was taken by Edward. See if you can't spot the mzungu?

Before we went to Nane-Nane, the three of us ran some errands in town, and Edward took this nice picture of Seleyon and I. She is 16 years old, learning English and Swahili to some extent at secondary school in Morogoro. Her first language is Maasai (or Maa), so it's always interesting to communicate. Both of us sit with dictionaries and go at it. She is so friendly and helpful, but she speaks English shyly.

After Nane-Nane, we rested at a really beautiful hotel across the highway called Usambara lodge. The place was a big compound of manicured palm trees and grass with a bunch of clean, white-washed cottages with their own little gates. The bar was an open air thatch covered hut with a tiny tv showing the Manchester United- Chelsea soccer game to a crowd of rich locals and businessmen. There was even a man wearing a Terrell Davis football jersey! It's so funny to see what American clothes find their way over here. On the dala-dala trip out, I saw a young boy wearing a green shirt that said Johnson Family Reunion. The Usambara lodge also had a tiny little zoo of its own with cages of rabbits, guinea pigs, parrots, and some kind of small monkey. Edward snapped an awesome shot after waiting a long time for the monkey to get close to him.

The Swahili is coming along well, but I still need a lot of practice. Looking words up in my dictionary is not a straight forward process because there is a lot of modification that can be done to word stems. For example, the verb to go is -enda, but if you want to say 'I will go', it translates to 'nitakwenda'. I try to listen to the verb stems that people say to figure out the jist, but it's tricky. Also, you can't just listen to the ends of words because they can be modified by tense or subtle changes in meaning. For example, 'to steal' is -iba but 'you have stolen' is umekibwa. Oh well, practice makes perfect!

Sorry about the jumble of pictures at the top. Becky is going to have to explain how she fits them in to the text so nicely.
Later,
Kara