Swahili Greetings

6/7/09
Wow! This place is amazing! I’m happy to say that my whole homesick/nervous attitude has changed from last night to today…I mean I still miss everyone but I love it here already. It’s a totally different world over here…just driving or walking down the street is an incredible experience. I am going to have to work hard to take it all in over the next four weeks.
Today we had our initial tour of Moshi, the town we are living just outside of, which included stopping by some artist’s shops and the local market. It’s interesting because the people here are so nice and friendly but many of them chat and are super friendly and then in the end ask you to buy something…even “Baba” (our house “Dad”) said that some people will be genuinely friendly, some dubious friendly and some a bit of both. My experience with that was in the market, a kid (probably 16-17) started talking to me and he was practicing his English while I practiced my Swahili. He walked along with me for about 5-10 minutes just talking, not trying to sell me anything and then at the very end when we were about to get back on the bus to leave he pulled out his crafts and asked me to buy some. I didn’t give in, but I felt totally guilty about it the whole time and he “pretended” (or wasn’t pretending…that’s still the part I don’t know) to be hurt and upset and that we weren’t “friends” anymore. We got back on the bus and almost everyone had had an experience just like mine!
One of the best parts of my day was when a small group of us decided to take a walk along the road by our house. Everything here is so novel and different from what we are used to that just walking we were all constantly like “whoh look at that!” talking about everything from the houses to the trees/plants, to the goats walking down the road. Little kids were playing soccer in the road and were all eager to wave, say “humjambo” or “mambo” and get high fives. Walking down the road is the best way to practice all the Swahili greetings: “Hujambo” – “Sijambo” for one person, “Hatujambo” – “Hamjambo” for more than one, “Shikamoo”- “Marahaba” to an elder and of course “Mambo” since we are obviously already up on the cool kid lingo :-)
Amani,
Valerie