hodi hodi

this is what you say instead of knocking. As in, I'm here, I'm coming in the house. The response is "karibu". Welcome. Oh, which reminds me of something else that I like. As an example of literal translations that aren't quite right: you meet someone, they say hi, you say hi, they say you're welcome. It's awesome.

The election is over. I didn't mention it earlier because you know how mom worries. I was mostly blissfully unaware of the issues of the election but here's the gist. CCM (The Party of the Revolution) has been in power since '62 when Tanganyika (which eventually became Tanzania when Zanzibar joined the party) achieved independence. They were communist and single party until other parties were allowed in '94. The different parties send trucks with loud speakers out to the neighbourhoods. I'm not that hot with the language so I don't know if there was mudslinging or the stereophonic equivalent of kissing babies.


I do know that a couple of days before the election one of the parties said they were going to kick all the white people out if they won. CCM said, umm, I know why you feel that's a good idea, but they will take their money with them when they go.* The day before the election we were out and about when we got the call and told to be home by 4pm. There were going to be demonstrations in the city and it would not be ideal to be wandering around should one of these crowds work itself into a lather. We went home and we weren't allowed to go out for Halloween. Fine with me, I'm old. I have had exactly one good costume in about the last 30 years (it was pretty awesome). But Josey was disappointed.

The next day, Sunday, was the election. It occurred without incident (here). Eventually we heard that Kikwete was re-elected. That irritated the hell out of some people. Our friend went to some other city for work that night and he could here shots fired etc. But he's been here for eight years so he knows how to stay out of trouble (which is stay in your hotel room -- which I could have figured out upon hearing gunfire. I'm just saying).

The results took a week to come in. I had some friends that were acting as observers. They got sequestered and wrote reports but still got to leave at night and do karaoke.

* none of these statements are based on newspaper reporting but just what I've heard. Must all be true.

Hey, Motherf*cker

We all know the adorable story of first generation immigrant Mom who learns English by watching Sesame Street. Well, there is a new generation of people learning English by watching HBO apparently. We were taking our Swahili lesson this afternoon in a bar on the beach. There are a ton of locals about and we met many. Our teacher is from the West but has been in Tanzania since 1988. He knows everyone at the bar. One in particular met our greeting with “hey, motherfucker”. Then our teacher explained that he had learned English from watching American tv (side note: at least before 1995, when average folk couldn't get a tv, the kids weren't walking around with their "pants on the ground").

The language class was good. Soon after I used my first full sentence on an unsuspecting local. She laughed but understood. I’m so money and I don’t even know it. And the bill came. Which is what I asked for, I think. Ninaomba bili. Bili is one of those words that arrived late to the language. Like "everybody's working for the wikendi" (hint: week is wiki).

Since we had our class at the beach I noticed that even though there where many locals frolicking in the surf none were pulling any round-off, cartwheel full back flip madness like they were in Stone Town. In Stone Town, the kids were doing this in the hour before sunset (I cringed at every wrench). Now, it wasn’t before sunset when we had our lesson, so maybe they sparked this here in Dar. I will have to check if they do it here or not. If not, why not. Our Swahili teacher will know.

Also, we got some cultural background at our lesson (I had heard part of this before). The Tanzanians put family first, long before country but not tribe at all. Other Africans put family then tribe then country. Tanzanians don’t have much bond to their tribes anymore. When the first, and immensely popular leader, Nyerere came to power in the 1960’s he was a communist idealogue. One of the policies that he implemented completely devastated the economy. He forced most Tanzanians to move to small, rural communities that we’re not based on the traditional lands of the tribes. The creation of these artificial communities made the economy struggle but it also removed the tribal loyalties and rivalries that have so harmed other African nations (like all of them surrounding Tanzania). Rather than tribal languages, the official language was Swahili. And while you could speak your tribal language in your home, it was illegal to speak it in public. Further, because the economy was so terrible, it built a common bond in these newly created communities that had been thrown together.

Of course, if none of the above is accurate, well, I'm not really going to look it up. I'm just repeating what I'm told.

usiku mwema