No Worries!

It’s cold. 

Cold enough that I sleep with a scarf and socks under a blanket like an anemic grandma. 

If I’m outside for more than a few minutes during the day, I’m usually dreaming of a fan (unless it’s raining), but all the tank tops and shorts I brought to sleep in may have to be slowly burned in order for me to see the golden light of each dawn. 

But something that never fails to warm my icy soul is the focus on God here.  At the beginning of our work day, we pray together; I imagine the lack of this will be the most difficult of my adjustments when I return to Canada.  Our boss shares a small devotion, mentions some items of prayer with a general theme, and then we all pray out loud.  Together.  And then he picks different theme and off we go again.  There is lots of Hallelujah-ing and Amen??  Amen!!-ing

We also sing together. 

In Swahili and French.

I think this is punishment for the one time I went to a Pentecostal Bible study with a friend and stood in silent Anglican horror as people burst into tongues/songs/prayer.  But now I really think I would have handled meetings at my previous job better if we’d prayed together beforehand.  I don't pretend to think that this organization or its workers are perfect because they pray, but I trust that God's word will never come back empty. 

Until our various projects begin at the end of the month, I think I will mostly be focusing on language study and understanding my partner organization.  My new French teacher is a chaplain at the hospital behind which I work – he is the father of Captain (one of our co-facilitators), and I think I’m supposed to call him Papa (because every older man is Papa here, including our cook – as awkward as that is, it was even harder to get used to calling a regally turbaned black woman Maman).  He is an excitable soul with an angelic smile that seems too big for his small face, calls me only by my last name (which I have realized at an awkwardly late juncture), and once slapped my shoulder and cackled with glee when I finished a Bible verse that he’d begun.  He spent most of our first lesson creating a timetable in various colours of ink, and began by introducing the verbs Avoir and Etre (which, along with a song detailing that I was a pizza with various toppings and much sauce, are the only things I remember from nine years of French in school).  

I suppose I could hardly be more desperate than the prisoners or the sick whom he saw on a daily basis, so he was perfectly happy to ignore my attempts to hurry him along – finishing each sentence with a blissful smile, including the one where he told me a rat had died in his office and we would need to find another place to study. 

So my concept of conversations has changed.  I have a hard time with small talk – overhearing conversations at work would sometimes make me squint with pain and a sense of my own immense validity and intelligence.   

Here, probably due to the language barrier, we talk right past each other sometimes.  After having attempted to convince a teammate for almost an entire month (after a hilarious conversation wherein our American teammate discovered that her long braids did not actually grow out of her head) that going through pain to do her hair is a vanity of vanities and it makes me hurt inside, she finally seemed to give in.   

“I will be simple-like-[Kermit]!” she proclaimed one night. 

‘Simple,’ in this case, can probably be translated as ‘slovenly old bag.’  Which is a valid truth about me, but as my life’s aims are to ride motorcycles, love God, love people, and consume as much chocolate and cheesy pasta as I can – this doesn’t leave much room for thoughts about style.

Anyway, the next day, she did her hair again, so I chalked it up as another conversation lost in the Negaverse (Sailor Moon – move on). 

Speaking of hair, mine is growing like a dry, choking weed.  This is partially due to my now twice-daily moto rides, which I should explain in greater detail as my mother recently told me she assumed a moto was a van with four wheels (this is known as a sotrama in Mali, and a bus here).  Daily motorcycle rides are frying my hair to a crisp, even though I bundle up in a bandhani dupatta and must resemble Cousin It on a trip to find himself in Varanasi.  The rides themselves are wonderful, though I have had cause to worry about my life and my legs more than once.  It’s only when some drivers, trying to be more friendly than strictly necessary, turns his head to ask me my name that I get a bit frustrated.  The first time this happened, I literally goggled at the street in front of us because one of us had to.   

“somethingsomethingwally. Toi?”

“Hmm, oui.  Ha-ha-ho-ho look in front please.”

“somethingmoreinsistentPaule.  Etoile?”

“Je ne comprends pas.  Ha-ha we’re going to die.”

“Moi-je-ma-ppelle-Paule.  Et-toi?”

I turned this into a clever joke about driving paule-paule (carefully) after he had to swerve to avoid a car after the little speech he had just made over his shoulder.  He laughed and then left me alone, which is sad, but on the plus side: both our spinal cords are still functioning.  Due to this and other factors (such as possibly having to conduct research or practice counselling in villages), I’ve decided to seriously pursue Swahili.  I had been obviously been open to the idea of picking up the language, but the first time I approached a smiling local woman at her house, had her kiss me three times and call me a caribou, I decided I should probably wait a while.

Another thing that held me back (other than the three kisses, which is usually three kisses too many for me and quite often just three bumps on my unsuspecting head), was that…  I was tired.  Just tired.  Tired of memorizing Bambara greetings, Korean letters, and French verbs.  I didn’t know any of these languages with precision, and the thought of picking up and discarding another one like so much trash sears like a match burned too close.  I don’t try to be a native – I never will be, and I hate to do a culture the disservice of being just interested enough to parrot certain words to impress people.  I realize that I then swing to the other direction of knowing nothing, but in my twisted mind, this is meant to indicate respect.  A language is the result of centuries of history; I’m not going to understand it by learning that this verb has to have a compliment instead of a direct object.  But I hope that with a timeline of two years, I’ll be able to focus on Swahili enough to appreciate instead of mimic.   

I now know that Karibu! means Welcome! 

Karibu tena! means something like Welcome so hard it hurts! 

The standard greeting is Jambo! and a normal response is Jambo sana! 

After we sit at the table and say grace, it’s a race against time to be the first to say Bon appetit!  I never win, though I have tried to say it back and been gently rebuked and reminded to say Merci like a civilized human being. 

And finally, dear friends, I have led you astray.  Hakuna matata is a big, fat, hairy lie Tanzanian Swahili. 

Hakuna shida!