A Few Explanations and My Day Off

Hello! Hopefully you are all enjoying a nice Autumn day, I could go for some cooler temperatures right about now.  Though, mornings and evenings cool down quite, especially in the mountains where we are, during the afternoon however it gets hot!

Last night I was able to talk to my family on Skype (woohoo!) ,which was great other than apparently my voice sounded like Mickey Mouse’s.  I was telling my mom about some of the professors and our classes and she thought I should put some of that information up on the blog, just so everyone knows a little more about the program. 

One of my classes is Wildlife Ecology and is taught by our professor (mlimu is the Swahili word for teacher) who we call, Kioko.  Kioko is from Kenya and is one of the world’s top elephant researchers.  I don’t know the full extent of his research, but I know he has done a lot on elephant behavior.  Our Wildlife Management Techniques class is taught by Christian, who is from Germany. I’m not totally sure what he got his PhD in, however he got his undergrad in Forestry and his masters in Wildlife Management.  Our Environmental Policy class, which is really interesting as it deals with the ethics and policies East Africa has on environmental and wildlife issues, is taught by a Tanzanian professor named Mwamhanga (his name is my favorite to say).  Our Swahili class is taught by Cecilia, who is from the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania and has her masters.  Finally, our site coordinator who is also from Tanzania is named Kissui, and is one of the top lion researchers in the world.  He gave a lecture yesterday about lions and it was fascinating!

I also thought it would be interesting to tell you about the Swahili language since it is so different from English.  First of all, learning Swahili is really hard.  I definitely went into learning Swahili overconfident, thinking it would be like Spanish for some reason and that I would pick it quickly.  That has not been the case.  Swahili uses a completely different mindset when it comes to sentence structure, verbs, nouns, tenses, and really everything.  Even time in Swahili is different, their clock begins at 6 am instead of 12 am so at 8 am, they will say “Saa mbili kumili” (Its two o clock).   English is a bad language to compare Swahili to because English is weird as well, so I’m going to relate it to Spanish more. 

In Spanish, you conjugate verbs based on who is doing the action.  In Swahili, there are verb stems so “–kaa” means “to live, to stay”.  In order for the verb to mean anything, you have to attach a subject prefix and a tense.  If I wanted to say “I stay in Rhotia” I would attach “Ni” which essentially means “I” and “na” which is the present tense therefore “Nanikaa Rhotia” would mean “I stay in Rhotia”.  It gets really tricky when you want to add nouns because there are like 13 noun classes and in each noun class, the way you say “those” or “that” changes, the way you say “the” or “of/for” changes, and possessive agreements, like the way you you say “Mine” or “My” changes.  So essentially you don’t know how to form a sentence unless you know what noun class the nouns are in.  I don’t even want to think about if you ever have to use two nouns!  An example on the sentence structure, I was showing one of our drivers the present I bought for my younger brother and I said “yangu kaka midogo” which I thought meant “for my younger brother”, but he corrected me, telling me it is “ya kaka yangu midogo” which literally translates as “for brother my younger”.  Swahili is nuts! Like I said earlier, Swahili is a lot harder than it seems! I definitely wont be fluent in a semester!

So now that I have probably bored you all with a brief language lesson, Ill tell you what we did on our day off today!

This morning about fifteen of us students went into a town near Lake Manyara National Park called Mtu wa Mbu (this is probably one of my favorite words in Swahii to say) and went on a bike ride tour.  The tour took us through this grassland where herds of wildebeest and gazelles were grazing to Lake Manyara where there were probably thousands of flamingoes!  We watched the wildlife for a while then went back into town to this wood carving studio where we were treated to a song and dance and a history of the tribe that does these beautiful wood carvings.  I bought my mom a present here that I’m pretty excited about; I think she’ll like it! After the wood carving studio we went to a painting studio where the artists showed us how they knife paint. 

All the sights on the tour were great, the bike riding….not so much! Only the main roads in Tanzania are paved.  Riding on the other roads in our land rover/jeep vehicles are somewhat bumpy so imagine going on these roads on bikes.  It was essentially mountain biking the whole way.  And for some reason my seat kept falling down so my knees were hitting the handlebars and it made for a uncomfortable ride.  Needless to say, that’s the last time I choose a bike based solely on the color ( though it was a very nice seafoam green color). 

After the bike ride we walked around Mtu wa Mbu.  Once again, being a nzungu in a market place is hard.  All the merchants chase after you and today they were fighting over us with different merchants, trying to get us into their shops.  I did a lot better job at bargining, our student affairs manager even overheard one of my purchases and complimented me on my bargining skills!  Though they weren’t good enough for one store. 

I wanted to buy a Maasai blanket and everyone has told me to not spend more than 12,000 shillings on one. I went to a duka and found this really nice green “shuka” (that’s what the Maasai blankets are called) and asked the price. The man said 15,000 and I said “No way, 10,000”.  But he would not relent on 15,000.  I even tried saying “My friends bought the same blanket in Karatu last week for 10,000, I want it for 10,000”.  But he still didn’t budge.  Another girl with me jumped in offering to buy one as well so we could have two for the price of 20,000 (they lower prices when you buy more things).  But he said 15,000 for each.  Finally we told him we didn’t like that price and maybe we should go find another store to give us a better price, thinking for sure that this would be the way to change his mind.  Nope.  He let us leave.  I did end up finding another store to sell me a shuka for 12,000 finally. 

We learned later that because Mtu wa Mbu is more of a “touristy” town, they hike up the prices.  I also learned you can’t show interest in any item, touch them, or compliment items out loud unless you want to buy them because the merchants will take that as you’re interested in buying the item. This is difficult for me because I like to touch things, as my boyfriend can attest I have even gotten in trouble for almost touching artwork in art museums (I think I might have sat on some artwork as well, it was a chair but we’re not sure if it was part of the exhibit or not…)  It’s hard being in markets because you almost have to be rude to the merchants if you don’t want to look in their store or buy their goods.  A nice “hapana” (no) doesn’t do it a lot of the times.  This is hard for me because I don’t want to be rude or come off as arrogant, but the only way to get away from the merchants is if you are a firm. 

For lunch we went to a place that served pizza! My first American food in 15 days! It was delicious.  The food here is good, mostly rice, potatoes, lentils, beans, and veggies; but I definitely miss American food, especially junk food.  I could really go for some ice cream right about now. 

Well that’s pretty much it for today.  We are going to Tarangire National Park tomorrow for another field exercise disguised as a safari! But hey, I wont complain, Ill take a field exercise in a national park any day! 

Thank you for all your continued prayers and support.  I’ve settled in more, but that definitely doesn’t mean I don’t miss home.  I think by the time three months rolls around, I’ll be very ready to be home.  This week is hectic as far as schoolwork goes.  We have one scientific research paper due on Tuesday, another due on Wednesday, and a Swahili essay due on Thursday.  Fortunately, I started far enough in advance that I am pretty much done with all three assignments, but I can’t say the same for the other students.  Also, the power has been out for about twelve hours today, which means no charging computers or getting the Internet for research; which puts a damper on homework.  Well, I should probably finish my scientific paper on the diet and behaviors of baboons! Baadaye! (Later!)