Swahili lesson

My affinity for languages continues.

I'm not going to pretend I've absorbed a whole lot of Swahili since I've been here, but my twice-a-week lessons are definitely helping and I've gained an appreciation for the general structure of the language.

• First, compared with Chinese: No tones, no characters = so much easier! But somehow this does make the language lose a bit of its personality. Example: The word for "tomorrow" in Swahili is "kesho." I'm pretty sure it has a nice history - rooted in Bantu? - but aside from that it means exactly the same thing as "tomorrow". In Chinese, tomorrow is 明天, or míngtiān in pinyin. The character 明 is actually made up of two characters, sun and moon, and by itself it means "bright." 天 means "day" but can also mean "heaven" and "sky" a slew of other things. So yes, the day after today is a pretty simple translation, but in Chinese the character component gives it additional underlying implications. Tomorrow is a bright day.

• Names are quite formulaic here. I'm not exactly clear on how it works, but a portion of each name is a time word indicating when the person was born. One of our field staff gave me the name "Nafula" (which gets a good laugh when I introduce myself, as it's a standard Bukusu name and I am not a standard Bukusu) which is the name given to girls born in the rainy season. Apparently it also means "fertile". Makes sense?

• Greetings here are not for the impatient. (Or maybe Africa is just not a good place for the impatient...?) Conversations generally begin with a handshake and "habari"? (How are you?) The response is "mzuri" (good) - even if you are bad; you can address that later. Swahili books will tell you "nzuri" but apparently Western Kenya does its own thing. From there, you ask "habari za..." followed by any noun. (How are the kids? How is work? How is the morning? How is the day?) These greetings are often translated directly into English for conversations with mzungu, which is actually quite charming. It's pretty rare to get such interest in your well-being from strangers in the US!
  

Side: This also explains why in China, people yell "HALLO" at foreigners, while here it's "HOW-ARE-YOU!" - sometimes strung directly in as "How-are-you-I'm-fine!" Just a direct translation of what they'd be yelling in their native tongues.

• Grammar. Woo hoo! This part will be brief. Subject clauses are sort of jammed all together into one word. For example, "I am going" is ninaenda: ni is the prefix for first person speech, na indicates present tense, and enda is the verb root that means "to go". You will go, similarly, is utaenda. Can you guess what "u" and "ta" mean....? Nouns are pluralized by changing the prefix, also. Mzungu is what people yell when I run alone; wazungu is the shout when I'm running with the (white) guys.
  

Well now that I've gotten the language post out of my system: if you want more, I'll be more than happy to give you lessons at home. And for those of you who can't believe you just voluntarily took a mini Swahili lesson, I promise to make my next entry about something a little less school-like.

more of the same

Farm photos taken by Shravan, a professional photographer who visited last Thurs-Sat:

Side: Shravan photographed the Real World characters in NYC and kept raving about what a great documentary OAF life would be - sort of like a Real World set, but in rural Kenya and with a great underlying purpose. I'm pretty sure he meant that as a compliment...

Plowing.
Calling for rain.
Dancing with the kids at the orphanage.
Boy at the orphanage with undoubtedly the coolest glasses I've ever seen.

I've passed the one-month mark, and all the things that kept me blogging every couple days have become normal. Yet it occurs to me that the backdrop of my life now is what sets it apart from life at home, and although it is easy to see the Kenyan countryside as farmland, workspace, residences, it is still worth taking notes to preserve these memories.

So here is a now-unexciting list of what I've been up to since my last post:

1. Work

• Radio advertising: I trained survey officers in a couple of new districts. I also visited the ones in Kakamega to collect their surveys, make sure we are getting the desired results, and troubleshoot during a couple farmer visits. Next Thursday evening I'm giving a "Fireside" - a weekly informal hour-long talk on any OAF-related topic, given by one of the expat staff - to see what kind of ideas and connections we can generate as a group to move the project forward.
• Cost cutting: This project has been moving unexpectedly quickly, as I'm approaching the $100,000 goal of budget cuts in one month rather than four. I've been in touch with about five Kenyan staff members to get data since the beginning of our passion fruit program in order to analyze which farmers and sites are, or have the potential to be, profitable. I've also been looking at other unprofitable segments of our organization; for example, visiting to our nursery to see if we can silo off that part of OAF into a profitable enterprise, and standardizing airtime (phone) and transport expenses for all staff. Andrew Youn, OAF's founder, led a meeting with field managers yesterday to institute some of the changes we've been discussing. He did a great job - pretty much a textbook example of "how to implement change in your organization" - and I am hopeful that our less-than-positive changes will not create too much resistance.
  
• I'm slowing finishing up - or hitting a lull - on my other two projects and have requested another. I've already been informed of three potential projects and can more or less choose the most interesting. More to come on that!
  

2. Everything else

• We threw a huge party in our compound on Saturday night, and pretty much all the wazungu who know in a 100 mile radius came. (Okay, so that isn't actually that many people...) We spent the evening at Good Friends, the only passable nightclub in Bungoma, which was - as always - a surprisingly fun time.
• Frisbee. After a 4 am Saturday night return to the compound, the alarm sounded at 8 am for a frisbee game. We've been playing twice a week for an hour or two at a time and I'm actually starting to learn strategy and (*gasp*) really look forward to our games.
• Sickness. I've been feeling intermittently sick lately, and two weeks ago - the night of the farmer homestay - went to the doctor. I was diagnosed with malaria, which is the standard diagnosis for white people who test negative for everything else. Since I don't feel that badly I'm not going to get treated. Almost everyone here has had malaria, and judging by my conversations with them, I don't. -- On that note, sicknesses here are very common - we actually have a scoreboard with point values assigned to typhoid, burscellosis, malaria, etc. where we keep tracking of who is "winning" in the disease race.
  
• The stars. After a month here, the night sky is still totally remarkable. You would never believe there are so many stars, or so many shades of light, woven into the night sky. I understand why there are so many stories to explain them. Once you look up at night it is hard to look back down.
  

orphanage visit

An especially picturesque farm from this week's survey training.

This week :

• Lukas, Matt, and I have arranged to begin Swahili lessons twice a week. We had our first lesson on Tuesday and will have another tonight. I'm glad we're doing it, but questionable of our tutor's methods: he insists that we should learn all words with "a" in them before moving onto "e", "i", "o" - and by the time we get to "u", we will know so much Swahili! Good idea, but how about first we learn "My name is..."?
  
• My housemate Anushka requested that I call our plumber, Oliver, to get our shower fixed. He stopped by later the same afternoon and I accompanied him to get a cost estimate to hook up the water line to our already-installed shower head. He turned the first knob, and water came pouring out of the lower spout. I was surprised - I have been carrying water in from outside every day and had no idea the spout worked. Oliver turned two other knobs, and water came out of the showerhead. He looked at me questioningly, and I started laughing and couldn't stop. It turns out we have always had a working shower. I was just told that we didn't, and so I never tried to turn it on. (Maybe there is a moral in this story somewhere...?)
• One of my best "Obama runs" so far. I was coming down the hill toward our compound and picked up a huge group of kids. One started chanting, "O-BA-MA!" and the rest joined in. For the next ten minutes, I ran in a group of fist-pumping kids to the cheer of the US President, as the farmers on the side of the road looked on and laughed.
• To contrast the joy of this experience was an exploratory run with Matt, where we ended up going farther than intended and didn't get back until after dark. A group of kids followed us this time too, but they were bigger and more aggressive - pulling on my arms and hair as I ran by. I didn't blame them; if I had never seen straight blonde hair I would probably pull it too. But the experience was a bit alarming and reminded me it's probably best to keep runs to daylight hours.
• Finally: I did another radio survey training in a new district - Webuye - and added to the usual joy of seeing farmers' homes and being warmly welcomed, I left the day with several long sticks of sugarcane, four eggs, and a free Swahili lesson from my survey officer.

Mercyline, the Webuye survey officer, surveys one of the area farmers about her radio listening habits.

And the highlight of my week so far: An visit to the orphanage where our German friends Felix and Hannes work (all the wazungu in town sort of become acquainted by default).

Melissa, me (with Kevin, in his pink "Princess" tee), and Veronica - feeling maternal

What started as a small excursion ended up as nearly the entire OAF group visiting a local orphanage, home to 34 kids between the ages of 8 months and 20 years - although we didn't meet the eldest, as she's currently away at university but comes home to the orphanage during breaks.

The orphanage seemed amazingly well-run and accommodating: although some kids must share beds because there aren't enough, local groceries provide free food (bread, milk, meat, etc) every day and German sponsors even pay school fees, including university tuition for those who choose to further their education. One great success story: the child health manager for One Acre Fund (sort of a free side program run by OAF for its farmers), named Margaret, grew up the orphanage, attended university, and now works in the community and continues regular visits her childhood home.

A few of our new friends. On the right is sleeping baby John. Clothing gender rules are a bit less strict when the supply is limited.

Evidently the kids were pretty excited about our presence, but I think we were equally happy to be there. They were bursting with positive energy - teaching us new dances, wrestling, singing songs - and we all left still glowing with the experience. ("Glowing" here refers to both our happy aura and our sweatiness after playing with kids for a few hours.) By the time we got home, it was so late that we didn't have dinner until 10:30 pm. Definitely worth it.