Learning Kiswahili

Mugeene Market outside our compound

A lot of my time lately has been attempting to learn kiswahili. so far i have only learned a little bit of kimeru, which is only spoken by the meru tribe, and while it is funny to see merus shocked at my minimal grasp of their language, kiswahili is really the lingua franca of kenya. Every kenyan, unless really rural (not so much schooling), or really urban (so many tribes together they just speak kiswahili) , grows up learning three languages. Their mother tongue, or tribal language, is what they speak from birth. Once they hit primary school they begin speaking english and kiswahili. (when you put ki- at the beginning of a word it means language) And while they might not begin speaking kiswahili until primary school, they language itself is much closer to their mother tongue's so they are more comfortable with it. My plans for the upcoming year are to begin working in the schools, and maybe working with a women's group doing some sewing. Kiswahili would make communication with these people a lot easier. Even when someone speaks english, they way the pronounce things can be so different that it doesn't even sound like the same language. There is an awesome line in, "The Innocent Anthropologist" by Nigel Barley,  talking about if the African country you are in was previously occupied by the English, and the locals are speaking a language you cannot understand, but can recognize it as not the native tongue, then it is probably english. This is so true. While they do speak the language, they pronounce thing as they would in kiswahili. they pronounce every vowel, and consent, so if you are unfamiliar with it, it is pretty much a foreign language. 

I am God's wheat ground fine by the lion's teeth to be made the purest bread for Christ. 

Ignatius of Antioch