oh my, How the Swahili progresses...

How the Swahili progresses

In the longer gaps between formalized research, I am spending many hours trying to improve my Swahili. My American roommate Garret has a wonderful book called Simplified Swahili by a chap named Peter Wilson (ISBN 0-582-62358-8 for you ambitious Swahili learners out there). I spend a few hours plodding through a number of pages that are reminiscent of my early days of French. In my minutes of despair (particularly when I remember my first visit to France after only a year of French) I remind myself that a.) My French eventually did improve to the point of actually getting a major in it, and b.) For only of having had a month of Swahili back in P-town I am not doing half bad. People are pretty forgiving of this Mgeni (guest) who is fanya bidii (making an effort). I in fact learned those most important phrases first. Mimi ni mgeni hapa mwezi moja. (I am a guest here for one month.) Kiswahili changu ni kibaya, lakini ninafanya bidii. (My Swahili is bad, but I am making an effort). I love how my effort to explain what I am researching, since many people have not even heard of the Swahili phrase describing it, is to say I am studying religion and culture, or more specifically how African culture and Christianity can become one. I then pull out my rosary and point to my bracelet that is part of the Masaai tradition of honoring the ancestors and I say “hapa ninaomba mhenga wa ukristo, Mary, hapa ninaomba wahenga wa undugu. Mary si mungu, wahenga si mungu, lakini wasaidia.” Which is probably terrible Swahili, but it means that here I pray to the ancestor of Christianity, Mary and here I prayer to the ancestors of the family. Mary isn’t god and the ancestors aren’t god, but they help.

The other day I also explained to my masaai friend Bahati (which means luck in Swahili) how I am in a lot of debt (nina deni) because of school and how we make big salaries in the us (msharara mkubwa) but that life is really expensive (maisha ni ghali!). Well, it turns out that for him to rent his room here, he pays 5000 shillings a month, which is about 5 dollars. Crazy, huh? Now, where we are staying it is some 150,000 a month, so maybe it is just a shack with 15 other masaai guys, but who knows.

Today I also sported my kata mbuga, which literally means cut through the bush. These are the masaai sandals made out of tires. I had to duct tape some of the straps so they wouldn’t tear up my feet, and at the end of the day, they really do the trick.

In the meantime, I just finished a book that touches on vocation called Let your life Speak by Phillip Palmer. It is an excellent book that would make a good Christmas present to anyone. I think my favorite section was when he deals with metaphors of life. We have a tendency to treat life in metaphor through the lens of industry and mechanism. Life is a battle; life is a game of chance. He however reworks the metaphor of life through the seasons. Rather than a Pollyannaish spirituality, his focuses on recognizing both the shadows and light in our life. Being fully aware of our strengths and weaknesses. Easy to say, harder to do. His emphasis is also that while this journey of discovering our inner vocation or what Thomas Merton calls the true self is a personal one, it is not necessarily a private one. As we share our dark and light, our joy and loneliness with others in community we in fact have greater opportunities for growth and discover.

The one line I really loved though was a saying that came from the Midwest that says: the winters here will drive you crazy, until you learn to get out into them.

Winter is a time where we confront our fears and our disappointments, but becoming familiar with them, braving the frostbite, we gain a better appreciation for ourselves. We come to realize the gifts around us and we learn from our very fears. Our departure point, however, isn’t our fear, but the hope for the future. What I thought would be some cheesy pop-theology turned out to be a wonderful blessing. Gets the mike le chevallier two thumbs up.

This past week has been leading up to the Jubilee celebration at St. Francis Xavier church here in Nyakahoja. The priest got special dispensation from the bishop to reopen the cases for marriage and baptisms. Often people do not get married in the church because of some irregularity, real or perceived. This is also the case for baptisms. Because baptism is perceived to be a commitment on behalf of parents to raise children in the catholic faith, if there are irregularities in the marriage (i.e. people were never married in the church, as in with the sacrament) then the kids are not allowed to be baptized. Well, this past week over 260 kids were baptized in one mass and over 40 couples were married. I wish I had my camera, but I thought I was just going to a normal daily mass. Can you imagine at the end though when 40 brides and grooms came walking down the aisle!! It was something else.

Well, time to fry up some mashed potatoes!!

Kwaheri friends