A Cool Million

I never thought I would hold a million in cash in my hands. Not only that, but the ATM machine here will give me a million! I am not talking about dollars though. I'm talking about Tanzanian Shillings /=. A million TZS is equal to $814 CAD at today's rates. The 10,000/= note is worth around $8.14 and is the largest bank note available.



I was rather shocked at first with these numbers. I couldn't imagine
paying 5,000 of anything for a plastic thermos or filling up the car for 50,000. I am getting used to it now. The following list shows the current prices of some everyday things I can buy at the market or at the store in town.

Zucchini 1 kg. 700/=
Oranges 10 600/=
Leeks 1 kg. 1,500/=
Bananas 12 800/=
Coke 1 bottle 400/=
Olive Oil 1 litre 15,000/=
Gasoline 1 litre 1,290/=
Tomatoes 16 2,000/=
Butter 1 lb. 4,800/=

Pinball

How long does it take for an eleven-year-old Maasai boy to learn to play Pinball? About 5 minutes! I had my computer on and was showing our friends some photos of themselves when I thought that Mathayo might enjoy trying Pinball. He loved it, of course. Within a few minutes he was playing really well and a short time later had beaten the high score of my two nieces (sorry girls). He hasn't beaten MY high score yet though! Mathayo has never seen a computer game. He has never even touched a computer before. He does go to school but it is very far from his home and there are 200 kids in his class. Mathayo can read and write and I showed him how to type his name onto his pinball score. He loved that!

I Like Swahili

Swahili is a nice language. I like it. Called Kiswahili by Kiswahili speakers, the language forces me to look at my world differently.

To pluralize a word, the change comes at the front of the word instead of at the end, as in English. A verb consists of the verb itself as well as the subject, the tense and the object all combined into one long word and it all has to "agree" with the class of the subject. Whew. For example, the one word "nitamsaidia" means "I will help him". "Tulimendesha (mjini)" means "We drove him (to town)". I won't even tell you how to make it into a negative statement! Some of these more difficult concepts are offset by the fact that Kiswahili is fairly easy to pronounce and very easy to spell.

Kiswahili has also turned my English-speaking sense of time into a tail-spin. 8 a.m. is the 2nd hour or more literally, the hour of 2 and 4 p.m. is the hour of 10. Kiswahili time is relative to sunrise, which is 6 a.m. If I want to meet a friend at 9 a.m. I must tell her to meet me at the 3 in the morning or I will be stood-up at 9 a.m. and she will be wondering where I am at 3 in the afternoon. Makes sense?

The English days of the week are irrelevant here too. In the West our calendars usually start with Sunday and end on Saturday. In East Africa the first day of the week is Saturday and Monday is day three. This is due to the Islamic influence with Friday being their holy day. Many things that we have somehow always accepted as facts are being revealed as mere concepts.

As I struggle to find the time for my language lessons and homework, I hope to be counted as a Kiswahili speaker some day. Soon would be good!!