I am ostensibly from the mid-west. Unlike many places in the United States, when you are on the street, you generally wave or say hello to people, particularly if they are old. This sort of thing simply does not happen in other places in the U.S. particularly in big cities where if you greet someone they think you are panhandling, intending to mug them, or a Scientologist proselytizing or something. Even being used to greeting people you have absolutely no interest in talking to, I was not prepared for the East African greeting fetish. If you see someone you need to greet him or her. If you don’t, it’s, like, way impolite. Not only that, but you don’t just say a simple “hi.” There is an entire greeting lexicon of which you might need to say several. Each greeting has its own response and which greeting you use depends on the situation, for example:
Greeting
Response
Habari za asabuhi Nzuri (usually), safi*, salaama, (misspelled and not often used)
Habari za mchana
Habari za gioni
Habari gani
Habari yako
Habari za sacizi
Habari za kazi
Habari za kwamka
Habari zema
Habari na wewe
Habari leo
Mambo Poa, Shwali, Bomba Safi
* On a side note, safi can mean good or clean, so a literal translation for a greeting might be, “Matters of the Morning?” “Clean.” “Matters of yourself?” “Clean.” “Matters of the work?” “Very Clean.”
**So I really hate the use of this one, unlike the others which merely annoy me. Fr. Francis (who actually went to St. John’s for his masters) explained the origin of the greeting. Only children greet adults like this. So, students of American history know well the slave trade between West Africa and America and the Caribbean. What you might not know is that in East Africa, Arabic countries purchased the slaves. Fr. Francis indicated that these slaves received even worse treatment than their Western counterparts. Slaves would say shikamoo before kissing their masters’ feet. Few know the history of the greeting today, but it still leaves a pretty unsavory taste in my mouth.
*** Dada is Kiswahili for sister.
**** Ugali is sort of porridge/paste stuff. It’s more refined and much stiffer than corn meal porridge and has a consistency fairly similar to unfried polenta, but again much more fine.
***** So in reality, not too far from it.
*****Okey, so it’s not that dumb. When the government finally complete the highway though the (traditionally more poor) south, there will be a marked increase in tourism in the area. Also, a few conferences, usually religious or educator related, that have taken place there. There is a need for the guesthouse, but 30 rooms would have sufficed.
Habari za gioni
Habari gani
Habari yako
Habari za sacizi
Habari za kazi
Habari za kwamka
Habari zema
Habari na wewe
Habari leo
Mambo Poa, Shwali, Bomba Safi
Mambo Vepi
Hujambo Sijambo
Hujambo Sijambo
Jambo Jambo
Shikamo Marahaba**
Mnzema Mnzema
(there is one involving Jesus that you say Christi, but I don’t remember)
(there is one involving Jesus that you say Christi, but I don’t remember)
(I dunno, but I think it also involves Buddy Christ)
(On a side note, I made this nice table in Microsoft word that didn't transfer to the blog. Bupkiss.)
I’m sure I misspelled some of those. And these are just the ones I remember, there are certainly more. The usage of these greetings varies based upon the time of day, the status of the person you are talking to, which party said something first, etc. The next step in the process involves asking the person where they came from and/or are going, like the parent of some pubescent. This particularly annoys me, as sometime I would like to remain anonymous. I understand this is a friendly, welcoming cultural element, but it does, in fact, annoy the living shit out of me half the time. It especially irritates me because these greetings are all essentially variations on the exact same thing, and one greeting and answer would completely suffice. But, there you have it. As a cultural ambassador I have to do my dead-level best to be polite, understanding, and not a raging asshole to random people on the street. It is a major part of day to day life here, so for the most part I have become accustom.
For those of you who are not aware, and perhaps, think that I am just “somewhere in Africa,” I am, much more specifically living in Hanga village in Tanzania, near the city of Songea. Here comes the nuts and bolts explanation part that isn’t particularly interesting. There will be no witty quips or obscure cultural or historical references for the next few paragraphs. Sorry. I’m not that clever. So, the place itself, physically, consists of a village of around 500-600 permanent residents, Hanga abbey, the monastery I live next to, and four boarding schools, Hanga Seminary (where I spend the most time), St. Benedict’s Secondary School (where I teach also), Hanga Vocational School, and St. Lauret’s English Medium Primary School.
The monastery in its operation reminds me a bit of a medieval monastery in respect to its observance of Benedictine discipline and obedience (I also think the part about the vow of poverty is a little fuzzy), and its complete self-sufficiency. They have well maintained gardens and chickens, goats, and pigs walk around everywhere eating trash. There are a number of the monks who I have come to really like, though a few are rather more sketch. At first I always ate at the refectory at the monastery, but now I usually eat at the Seminary. When we eat at the refectory, it is usually us white folk, a couple brothers and a few sisters who are guests. Some of the sisters are incredibly warm and welcoming and help us learn Kiswahil, etc. Others are decidedly more aloof. One interesting cultural idiosyncrasy, Tanzanians consider getting fat a good thing. Obesity displays one’s status and demonstrates the fact that they have a good diet and implied wealth. When we tell them that every third advertisement in the U.S. involves losing weight, they have a hard time believing this. “What does it mean to be fat in the U.S.?” They have a hard time believing us when we say people think you are unhealthy and lazy. So if you have the means, you eat alotta food with the intent of getting huge. It is usually the aforementioned aloof nuns that have the epic waistline, and this case I feel okay about holding certain American opinions. At one point, I used the term “dada-zilla***.” As you all know, the budding foodie in me takes my cuisine very seriously. With that in mind, I really hate not having the capacity to cook for myself, especially when I eat the same thing every day (see freshman year of college for reference). I don’t know if it is all of Africa or just East Africa, but people do not have any problem eating the same thing every day. In fact, they view it as a good, stabilizing thing. So, every day our diet usually can be broken down as such:
Breakfast: Always bread, some days eggs and a pottage stew, and rarely mandazi (kinda like less sweet cake doughnut) and this sort of gross French toast stuff.
(Keep in mind that I don’t currently have a working alarm clock and I usually get to breakfast late so all there is left is bread)
Lunch and dinner: Always- Rice and ugali****
Boga (all greens are referred to as such, but usually there is something more similar to bitter collards or kale)
Meat (usually pork, but sometimes beef or chicken)
Sometimes- Beans, peas, cabbage, cooked banana, salad, and tomatoes
Occasionally (usually on Fridays) Fish
Always- either papaya or bananas
Having listed that, the quality of food at the seminary is much better, and the variety is a bit better. The merits of the food aside, we simply enjoy the company better (that is to say we love the people at the seminary). That, and there are never nunzilla incidents. I was not here for this one, I’d like to point out. Andrew and Julia, a volunteer from Austria, ate at the refectory one day, and at one side of the table four nuns passed around a dish of fried bananas. They proceeded to take every single one, leaving only a half. Instead of passing it down, the particularly heifer-esque one took the last half before she had finished consuming her three. I would liked to point out, now that we lhave learned more Kiswahili, they seem to like us much more. The other huge qualm I have relates to the waste of food. Usually food, and a decent amount gets thrown away after meals. You would think, in a country with so many starving, they would cook less, or, like, keep it out for a while for people who are late (like the do at the seminary). It does, very much, bother me when people around here (and certainly not primarily the monastics) have this sort of American-like sense of entitlement. At least the feed their animals with the food.
One of my favorite places in Hanga has to be Hanga Beach. When I first arrived, some of the German volunteers teased my startlement and said “oh, yes, and there is a beach where they serve cocktails…” During the dry season, one could hardly hazard to call Hanga Beach a proper sort of beach let alone something that rests upon some sort of body of water, though I am assured the water level climbs steeply during the rainy season. Hanga Beach consists of a stilted platform that stretches over a seasonal lake that overlooks the mountains and forest in the distance. From a reasonably comfortable gap in space the place looks really quite idyllic. However, every time I walk onto the thing I have premonitions of a swift, untimely death. Clearly built with out any sort of safety regulator measures, Hanga Beach is the most ramshackle, hobbled together structure I have ever set foot on. The bridge out to the platform looks like something conceived of by the set designer for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and built by the extras to cut down on overhead costs. Nobody seems to share the incredible apprehension I feel every time I go there. Keep in mind that due to poor childhood nutrition, my beer gut, and the fact that I usually have a backpack with books on, I usually have at least 30 pounds on anyone else who goes there. They basically took randomly shaped rough-hewn logs and nailed them together. I step every time with trepidation, some boards move, some creak, most threaten to crack any moment, and none are pressure treated. Large visible gaps commonly appear where a more stable structure would have wood, and the guard rails sag, broken to the side of the walkway in several places. There is one spot where it noticeably drops lower when you step on it. Having said that, it is peaceful and quite and altogether wonderful otherwise.
So, I suppose I need to clear up a bit of a misnomer. I do not actually live in a monastery, but in the monastery guesthouse*****. The guesthouse is this damn silly project. With this sort of “if you build it they will come” strategy, the monastery, somehow, thought it would be a good idea to build a 100 room guesthouse. To put this in perspective, Hanga, a place with zippo in the way of tourism and like 600 inhabitants, built a substantially larger guesthouse than St. John’s, a monastery that has hundreds of people come out of the woodwork for homecoming and stuff******. Only the first floor in four of the eight or so units is complete. Instead of building one section and following though to completion, they build the first step of the whole thing. So, instead of making sure an entire section of the building was completely functional, the finished it in a piecemeal fashion, not dissimilar with the long uncompleted houses along the road that never came to fruition. One of the monks commented, “you can tell it was made in a hurry. The builders really have no sense of craftsmanship and taking pride in their work. Coming from the American standard, you-work-your-ass-off-to-the-nub in construction. Here you might have half a dozen people standing around talking while one person works. My old foreman would have absolutely reamed their asses. I honestly could do a better job (and in some of the tasks, have done better) myself on a lot of the stuff. It’s often simple things like cutting PVC pipe (one of the easiest things to saw) to the correct size, or having some sort of checklist for every room. We have been making endless jokes about the place. I’ll probably have to write a completely new blog entry to cover how silly the place is. Luckily, also, Br. Polycarp is doing an excellent job of whipping the place into shape The finished parts are very nice.. I have my own room with a bed, a desk, and the extravagant luxury of my own western-style toilet. I did not expect this, but I am certainly most glad. The toilets here (or choo) consist of a dry hole in the ground surrounded by a porcelain bowl of sorts that one squats over. It connects directly to sewage pipes and never quite stops smelling like a portapottie. I have yet to see toilet paper in one of these contraptions, but there usually is a faucet with a plastic jar. I have yet to work up the courage to ask if they pull some sort of bide-esque maneuver, or they simply go without. But I digress. So the really weird thing, the shower and toilet are in the same room with no sort of divider. So when I take a shower the entire bathroom floor floods and remains wet for hours. This means I need to take of my sandals lest I spread mud everywhere.
I promise the next blog entry will contain more entertaining stories (and I’ll start it sooner). One thankful thing, there are fewer goodbyes to say then hellos. Kwaheri means goodbye but I’ve hardly ever heard someone say it. Usually people say aya or badi, or both. This leads to fairly uncomplicated exchanges. Hello. How is the morning. Good. How is the day. Clean. How is the work. Very Clean. I am going to study Kiswahili at the seminary. Yes, later.
(On a side note, I made this nice table in Microsoft word that didn't transfer to the blog. Bupkiss.)
I’m sure I misspelled some of those. And these are just the ones I remember, there are certainly more. The usage of these greetings varies based upon the time of day, the status of the person you are talking to, which party said something first, etc. The next step in the process involves asking the person where they came from and/or are going, like the parent of some pubescent. This particularly annoys me, as sometime I would like to remain anonymous. I understand this is a friendly, welcoming cultural element, but it does, in fact, annoy the living shit out of me half the time. It especially irritates me because these greetings are all essentially variations on the exact same thing, and one greeting and answer would completely suffice. But, there you have it. As a cultural ambassador I have to do my dead-level best to be polite, understanding, and not a raging asshole to random people on the street. It is a major part of day to day life here, so for the most part I have become accustom.
For those of you who are not aware, and perhaps, think that I am just “somewhere in Africa,” I am, much more specifically living in Hanga village in Tanzania, near the city of Songea. Here comes the nuts and bolts explanation part that isn’t particularly interesting. There will be no witty quips or obscure cultural or historical references for the next few paragraphs. Sorry. I’m not that clever. So, the place itself, physically, consists of a village of around 500-600 permanent residents, Hanga abbey, the monastery I live next to, and four boarding schools, Hanga Seminary (where I spend the most time), St. Benedict’s Secondary School (where I teach also), Hanga Vocational School, and St. Lauret’s English Medium Primary School.
The monastery in its operation reminds me a bit of a medieval monastery in respect to its observance of Benedictine discipline and obedience (I also think the part about the vow of poverty is a little fuzzy), and its complete self-sufficiency. They have well maintained gardens and chickens, goats, and pigs walk around everywhere eating trash. There are a number of the monks who I have come to really like, though a few are rather more sketch. At first I always ate at the refectory at the monastery, but now I usually eat at the Seminary. When we eat at the refectory, it is usually us white folk, a couple brothers and a few sisters who are guests. Some of the sisters are incredibly warm and welcoming and help us learn Kiswahil, etc. Others are decidedly more aloof. One interesting cultural idiosyncrasy, Tanzanians consider getting fat a good thing. Obesity displays one’s status and demonstrates the fact that they have a good diet and implied wealth. When we tell them that every third advertisement in the U.S. involves losing weight, they have a hard time believing this. “What does it mean to be fat in the U.S.?” They have a hard time believing us when we say people think you are unhealthy and lazy. So if you have the means, you eat alotta food with the intent of getting huge. It is usually the aforementioned aloof nuns that have the epic waistline, and this case I feel okay about holding certain American opinions. At one point, I used the term “dada-zilla***.” As you all know, the budding foodie in me takes my cuisine very seriously. With that in mind, I really hate not having the capacity to cook for myself, especially when I eat the same thing every day (see freshman year of college for reference). I don’t know if it is all of Africa or just East Africa, but people do not have any problem eating the same thing every day. In fact, they view it as a good, stabilizing thing. So, every day our diet usually can be broken down as such:
Breakfast: Always bread, some days eggs and a pottage stew, and rarely mandazi (kinda like less sweet cake doughnut) and this sort of gross French toast stuff.
(Keep in mind that I don’t currently have a working alarm clock and I usually get to breakfast late so all there is left is bread)
Lunch and dinner: Always- Rice and ugali****
Boga (all greens are referred to as such, but usually there is something more similar to bitter collards or kale)
Meat (usually pork, but sometimes beef or chicken)
Sometimes- Beans, peas, cabbage, cooked banana, salad, and tomatoes
Occasionally (usually on Fridays) Fish
Always- either papaya or bananas
Having listed that, the quality of food at the seminary is much better, and the variety is a bit better. The merits of the food aside, we simply enjoy the company better (that is to say we love the people at the seminary). That, and there are never nunzilla incidents. I was not here for this one, I’d like to point out. Andrew and Julia, a volunteer from Austria, ate at the refectory one day, and at one side of the table four nuns passed around a dish of fried bananas. They proceeded to take every single one, leaving only a half. Instead of passing it down, the particularly heifer-esque one took the last half before she had finished consuming her three. I would liked to point out, now that we lhave learned more Kiswahili, they seem to like us much more. The other huge qualm I have relates to the waste of food. Usually food, and a decent amount gets thrown away after meals. You would think, in a country with so many starving, they would cook less, or, like, keep it out for a while for people who are late (like the do at the seminary). It does, very much, bother me when people around here (and certainly not primarily the monastics) have this sort of American-like sense of entitlement. At least the feed their animals with the food.
One of my favorite places in Hanga has to be Hanga Beach. When I first arrived, some of the German volunteers teased my startlement and said “oh, yes, and there is a beach where they serve cocktails…” During the dry season, one could hardly hazard to call Hanga Beach a proper sort of beach let alone something that rests upon some sort of body of water, though I am assured the water level climbs steeply during the rainy season. Hanga Beach consists of a stilted platform that stretches over a seasonal lake that overlooks the mountains and forest in the distance. From a reasonably comfortable gap in space the place looks really quite idyllic. However, every time I walk onto the thing I have premonitions of a swift, untimely death. Clearly built with out any sort of safety regulator measures, Hanga Beach is the most ramshackle, hobbled together structure I have ever set foot on. The bridge out to the platform looks like something conceived of by the set designer for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and built by the extras to cut down on overhead costs. Nobody seems to share the incredible apprehension I feel every time I go there. Keep in mind that due to poor childhood nutrition, my beer gut, and the fact that I usually have a backpack with books on, I usually have at least 30 pounds on anyone else who goes there. They basically took randomly shaped rough-hewn logs and nailed them together. I step every time with trepidation, some boards move, some creak, most threaten to crack any moment, and none are pressure treated. Large visible gaps commonly appear where a more stable structure would have wood, and the guard rails sag, broken to the side of the walkway in several places. There is one spot where it noticeably drops lower when you step on it. Having said that, it is peaceful and quite and altogether wonderful otherwise.
So, I suppose I need to clear up a bit of a misnomer. I do not actually live in a monastery, but in the monastery guesthouse*****. The guesthouse is this damn silly project. With this sort of “if you build it they will come” strategy, the monastery, somehow, thought it would be a good idea to build a 100 room guesthouse. To put this in perspective, Hanga, a place with zippo in the way of tourism and like 600 inhabitants, built a substantially larger guesthouse than St. John’s, a monastery that has hundreds of people come out of the woodwork for homecoming and stuff******. Only the first floor in four of the eight or so units is complete. Instead of building one section and following though to completion, they build the first step of the whole thing. So, instead of making sure an entire section of the building was completely functional, the finished it in a piecemeal fashion, not dissimilar with the long uncompleted houses along the road that never came to fruition. One of the monks commented, “you can tell it was made in a hurry. The builders really have no sense of craftsmanship and taking pride in their work. Coming from the American standard, you-work-your-ass-off-to-the-nub in construction. Here you might have half a dozen people standing around talking while one person works. My old foreman would have absolutely reamed their asses. I honestly could do a better job (and in some of the tasks, have done better) myself on a lot of the stuff. It’s often simple things like cutting PVC pipe (one of the easiest things to saw) to the correct size, or having some sort of checklist for every room. We have been making endless jokes about the place. I’ll probably have to write a completely new blog entry to cover how silly the place is. Luckily, also, Br. Polycarp is doing an excellent job of whipping the place into shape The finished parts are very nice.. I have my own room with a bed, a desk, and the extravagant luxury of my own western-style toilet. I did not expect this, but I am certainly most glad. The toilets here (or choo) consist of a dry hole in the ground surrounded by a porcelain bowl of sorts that one squats over. It connects directly to sewage pipes and never quite stops smelling like a portapottie. I have yet to see toilet paper in one of these contraptions, but there usually is a faucet with a plastic jar. I have yet to work up the courage to ask if they pull some sort of bide-esque maneuver, or they simply go without. But I digress. So the really weird thing, the shower and toilet are in the same room with no sort of divider. So when I take a shower the entire bathroom floor floods and remains wet for hours. This means I need to take of my sandals lest I spread mud everywhere.
I promise the next blog entry will contain more entertaining stories (and I’ll start it sooner). One thankful thing, there are fewer goodbyes to say then hellos. Kwaheri means goodbye but I’ve hardly ever heard someone say it. Usually people say aya or badi, or both. This leads to fairly uncomplicated exchanges. Hello. How is the morning. Good. How is the day. Clean. How is the work. Very Clean. I am going to study Kiswahili at the seminary. Yes, later.
I'll have some pictures posted sometime in the next couple days.
* On a side note, safi can mean good or clean, so a literal translation for a greeting might be, “Matters of the Morning?” “Clean.” “Matters of yourself?” “Clean.” “Matters of the work?” “Very Clean.”
**So I really hate the use of this one, unlike the others which merely annoy me. Fr. Francis (who actually went to St. John’s for his masters) explained the origin of the greeting. Only children greet adults like this. So, students of American history know well the slave trade between West Africa and America and the Caribbean. What you might not know is that in East Africa, Arabic countries purchased the slaves. Fr. Francis indicated that these slaves received even worse treatment than their Western counterparts. Slaves would say shikamoo before kissing their masters’ feet. Few know the history of the greeting today, but it still leaves a pretty unsavory taste in my mouth.
*** Dada is Kiswahili for sister.
**** Ugali is sort of porridge/paste stuff. It’s more refined and much stiffer than corn meal porridge and has a consistency fairly similar to unfried polenta, but again much more fine.
***** So in reality, not too far from it.
*****Okey, so it’s not that dumb. When the government finally complete the highway though the (traditionally more poor) south, there will be a marked increase in tourism in the area. Also, a few conferences, usually religious or educator related, that have taken place there. There is a need for the guesthouse, but 30 rooms would have sufficed.
1 comment:
i lol'd so many times reading this. like realllly out loud.
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