Learning swahili

Last Autumn when we had just decided to make a big trip to Tanzania,  Peter noticed the university was offering classes in Swahili. I had been regretting that I spoke nearly no words of it, in spite of growing up in Tanzania with parents and a brother who were all fluent. So, on a whim really, I signed up.

Well, of course I wondered if I would drop out almost at once. I've always loved trying to speak what I can of the language of any country I am in - but formal lessons are another thing altogether. Languages (French, Latin) were always far and away my worst subjects at school. What's more I am now getting old and even English words and names elude me from time to time. What hope was there of learning a new language? Mind you, I am working much harder at remembering words than I ever did at school.

What a good decision. I'm still there, turning up every week, and we are now in our third term. It's been enormous fun. We have a great teacher. We are a friendly, motley lot of students. 'Motley' is good because nobody need feel like the odd one out. Since Christmas we have even had a baby join us - to every one's delight.

We laugh all the time, even though the grammar is fiendish. For instance, I had thought that having two or three genders in a language like French or German was bad enough to remember. Swahili calls the categories 'noun classes' rather than 'gender' - and there are 10 main ones and a few extra. (Though, interestingly it doesn't classify by gender: there isn't a word for 'she' or 'he', just 'yeye' which can mean either.) Yet in spite of all that, somebody from the evenng class next door asked one of us what we were learning that we could be heard laughing so much.

 One highlight was an optional extra evening learning to cook Kenyan food - in Swahili of course. Yes it was delicious, and yes I now know the words for cooking spoon, coriander, fried, boiled, grilled, and so on. Could be useful.

Then yesterday I had to phone up Dar es Salaam to book an overnight train. It's always a bit nerve-racking phoning to a foreign country even if you know they will speak English. And of course, the nice man who answered did speak good English. But on a not-very-good line, when I said 'fifteenth' he hesitated. I said, without thinking 'kumi na tano', he said (with relief?), 'Ah, kumi na tano'. Oh wow! I am ridiculously pleased with myself. And now hoping that when I'm actually there, I'll be able to bring out the right words at the right time.