A Day in Our Life at Language School

We are humbled and honored to have heard some clamor for more info on what goes on for us here in Africa.  While there hasn't been much quite ready for Hollywood just yet, we are learning the language at a clipping pace.  Here are a couple of brief snapshots of what the daily life of a student at Mkoko Language School usually looks like.

7:00   Wake up!!   (much better than the standard at HPS, if I may be so bold).  Mass is celebrated at 7, so if we are to go, we usually arise about 15 minutes before seven, but, hey, who's counting?

7:30   Breakfast.   A light meal here, consisting of fruit, toast and an egg to order if one desires.  Fruits range from mango, papaya, pineapple, soursop, bananas, watermelon and lately oranges- all fresh from here on the grounds.  

Hamming it up between class!

8:00 Cram We usually eat quickly so that we can be back to our room by 8 for our 8 to 8:30 cram time.  Usually we are required to memorize mazungumzo  (conversations) or hadithi (stories) and these last precious moments help solidify those infixes and noun classes in our heads.


8:30 Mazungumzo Class
During our Mazungumzo class our teacher reads aloud a conversation between three fictional characters, Damas, Paskalia and Padri Robert (the American Missionary Priest who wants to know everything about everything) concerning topics such as land ownership laws, dowries and circumcision. The teacher also explains what all of the new vocabulary words mean and then they helps cement the sentences into our heads by making us repeat them outloud.  Then, usually, the next day we come in, recite the conversation from the previous day and then start the process over again. 


9:20 Hadithi Class

Damasi, Paskalia, na Padri Robert

A typical classroom with Mwalimu Joakim, Kim and Caitlin

In Hadithi class our teacher reads aloud a story about our friends Damas, Paskalia, and Padri Robert and then similar to the Mazungumzo class, they explain the meaning of the story and then painfully make us repeat each and every word after them. This has proven to be one of the harder classes for us because upon hearing a sentence like "Hapa kwetu, kulingana na kabila za wazazi, mtoto changa anapokelewa kwa furaha na anapewa jina lake"for the first time, the brain tends to shut down and only hear the voice of the parents from the Peanuts cartoons so when the teacher then looks at you and says "jaribu"(try), the only word you can get out is "Hapa...can you repeat that again?"Each time we are presented with a new story, we tend to get overwhelmed, but then after about a half hour of study we are able to memorize the stories and recite them perfectly in class the next day.

Walimu wa Mkoko:  L to R, Dismas, Sylvester and Joakim

10:10 Sarufi Class
Depending on who your teacher is, Sarufi or grammar class can either be an easy or more difficult class. If you have an experienced teacher light bulbs are turning on right and left and you can almost hear things clicking, but some teachers are still learning the ins and outs of explaining grammar in English and it takes a little cooperation to discern exactly how a new part of speech works. All in all, each teacher tries their best and we come to an understanding. During this class we have been introduced to all 12 of the noun classes and all the different tenses one could imagine, even some that don't exist in English.


10:50 Chai
If you ask the average 3rd grader what their favorite subject in school is, most will likely respond with "recess." Call me a 3rd grader, I think my favorite subject is Chai or tea time. Each day after our first 3 classes all of the students and teachers gather in the dining room to drink tea or coffee and eat homemade donuts, scones and occassionally left over pizza. While the refreshments are a bonus, what I honestly like the most about Chai time is that the teachers sit down with us like peers and chat with us. Sometimes we practice our Swahili and sometimes we just practice our English by talking about whatever burning questions the teachers have about America- everything from ice fishing to hip hop music. 


11:05 Mazoezi

For our last two periods of the day, we practice different exercises involving the vocab and grammar from the previous periods.  Depending on the day, this might involve a lot of the teacher saying (in a very distinct voice), "Tena?" (Again?) and hopefully a couple of "Sowas" (Okay, or good).


12:30-2  Lunch and Nap.  True to the warmer countries, a siesta is strictly enforced and appreciated (well, not really enforced, but nothing else is going on and it is terribly hot so the later is indeed true).


2:00-2:45   Language Lab.  All over again we listen to tapes of the teachers reading the Mazungumzo, Hadithi and Mazoezi as we follow along trying to anticipate the correct infixes and subject prefixes, or even the correct vocab word!   The machines are vintage Sony, but they serve their purpose faithfully unless the power is out.  Then, shida kubwa!  

3:00-3:45  Real Mazungumzo!   When we've had all we can of repeating, "Father has drank milk after eating bread," we head out to the benches under the tree where our teachers are leisurely waiting for us to engage in impromptu, meaningful conversation.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  Often the teachers are already deep in discourse on some topic and it takes all the muscles the ear has to just keep up with their electric chatter.  Finally a teacher will have mercy and ask us, in the equivalent of slow, southern drawl, "Caitlin, habari za mazoezi?" (if you guessed this means, how are your exercises, your ready for a visit).  The conversation to follow involves a lot of stumbling and looking to the sky on our part and patience and more "Tena?" on our teachers'!   Here's a short, somewhat staged clip of what typically ensues.   After five creative guesses in the comments section, we'll tell you what Dismas and David are actually talking about.  Guess away!

All in all, we are very grateful for our teachers and the patience and knowledge they give as we seek to learn Swahili!!

What happened when we asked Jerry and his Tanzanian friends if we could take pictures of them while they played soccer.  Needless to say, they went nuts.

A Walk Around Makoko

A view from the balcony of the school. If you look closely, you can see Lake Victoria in the background.

As per request, a picture of our "home".

After numerous requests by Caitlin’s dad to send pictures of our area, we finally set off on a picture taking expedition this afternoon. Little did we know, this walk would provide such a rich snapshot of Musoma and our experiences here.

As soon as we exited the gate of the language school, we ran into Father Art Willy engaged in his routine afternoon walk. The man is a Maryknoll legend. Rumor has it, he not only received language training from Nyerere (the first president of Tanzania- if you haven’t heard of him, look him up) but also spent the last two weeks of Nyerere’s life at his bedside in Great Britain and returned to Tanzania after Nyerere’s passing on a private jet with Nyerere’s family.

Next we walked to the Ephata Retreat center to take some pictures of Lake Victoria, as specifically requested by Caitlin’s dad. While sitting on the shore practicing the Swahili conversation that David has to recite tomorrow in class, we watched first one daring teenage boy swim out into the Bilharzia infested (look that up too) lake to dive off a rock followed by about 20 more naked and unashamed teenage boys. Bilharzia be damned they appeared to be having the time of their lives jumping in the waves. It sure made us wish we were oblivious to the skin-penetrating parasite that lives in the mud on the shores of the lake.

After realizing that we were being a little bit voyeuristic (clearly not intentionally), we decided to continue on our walk, shikamoo-ing every person who may or may not have been older than us and shouting “watoto” (children) at the nearly 20 small children that we walked past who screamed “wazungu” (white people) at us.  (Our other favorite thing to do when kids yell “wazungu” is to yell back “Wapi?” (where?) and look all around us. They usually don’t get it.) Our next stop was one of the places on our regular walking route that I have come to dislike the most, the corner where many men from the neighborhood hang out waiting for unsuspecting wazungus like us to walk by so they can start long and involved conversations with us in Swahili while watching us sweat.

Today’s contestant was fishermen who smelled like he had been drinking and who was very insistent on carrying on a conversation directed mostly at Caitlin alone. For about 10 minutes, which felt like ten hours, this fisherman talked to her in broken English and Swahili about learning Swahili, about America, Obama (the usual), her preschool job in Mwanza and about how poor people in Tanzania are.  At least Caitlin was pretty sure that is what he was talking about. She was pretty proud of herself for getting a few appropriate Swahili phrases in, but the one she probably said the most was the one he was not going to listen to” Sasa, tunarudi shuleni” (Now we are going to return to school). The man just kept on talking and we thought we were never going to get away, but then when he turned to grab something (God only knows what), we saw a familiar face, our teacher Joakim who we immediately ran to. Joakim must have known that the man had every intention of talking to us for the next couple of hours so he immediately told the man that we were going to his house and began walking us there. On our very short walk to his home, Joakim explained to us that he knew that man was very bright and had studied in Dar Es Salaam but in his words, had been “corrupted by alcohol.”

We were very greatful to Joakim for saving us and taking us to his home. There we met his wife, sister in law and two young children. As he knew that we had to be returning to school for dinner, after a very short visit with his family, Joakim walked with us a bit to show us an alternative route back to the school so that we wouldn’t have to walk past our new friend the fisherman again. While Joakim was walking with us, we walked up to a man lying on his side by the path. Immediately Caitlin’s heart jumped into her throat as she thought the man might be dead, but Jaokim quickly assuaged her fears by turning the man over, and then smacking him several times on the legs until he moaned and waved him away. Then as if it were just a normal thing Joakim looked at us and said “Drinking is a very bad problem with the fisherman. Maybe he didn’t eat today. I will come back and bring him water so he doesn’t die.” It was a very sad scene to witness, but it was very refreshing to hear Joakim without hesitation take responsibility for his fellow man.

After leaving Joakim we walked into a large field where about 10 boys were playing soccer. The boys immediately stopped what they were doing and started shouting, as you can probably guess by now, “WAZUNGU!!!” We responded with our usual and kept on walking but then amidst the random shouting in Swahili we heard one of the boys yell “Dawdi” the name everyone calls David in Tanzania. A boy ran from the crowd towards us and David immediately recognized him as Jerry the kid who had slid under the language school fence the other day to come play tennis with him.  David talked to Jerry for a second and then all of the boys ran over to talk with us too. We talked with the boys for a few minutes and juggled the ball with them a bit until we decided that it truly was time to “rudi shuleni” if we were going to make it back on time. The boys who all seemed very entertained to see a girl juggle a soccer ball told us to come again and we really hope to do so.

The rest of our walk was pretty uneventful. We saw some cows. Caitlin got called out by an old lady for not Shikamoo-ing her and we made it back just in time for dinner.