fun (?) with swahili

Warning: this is going to be one of the dorkiest blog entries that I write all summer, so if you don't fancy hearing my armchair linguistical musings, you have my full permission to skip this one. Now, for whoever's left, on with the dorkfest!

The Lion King. Now’s as good a time as any to share that many of the African-sounding words in Disney’s The Lion King come from Swahili. A few of the characters’ names are Swahili words, including Simba (lion), Rafiki (friend), and Pumbaa (the root of a verb meaning “to be foolish”). Hakuna Matata is a real Swahili phrase, and it means something pretty close to “no worries,” though most Swahili speakers seem to prefer the equivalent expression hamna shida. Word about the movie has apparently gotten out among the street peddlers in Zanzibar, because hakuna matata usually one of the first things they trot out to tourists. The movie is not consistent throughout, though. While studying Swahili back in the States, I was a bit disappointed to learn that the opening call and chant in “The Circle of Life” is not in Swahili—it’s Zulu.

Onomatopoeia. One of my favorite Swahili words is pikipiki (motorcycle) and I loved it even more when I learned of its onomatopoeic origins. Apparently pikipiki is an imitation of the sound that old-school motorcycles used to make when people revved up the engine. Similarly, the village of Bububu on Zanzibar draws its name from the sound of old steam locomotives on the island’s first railway. Some Swahili words of older vintage that I suspect of being onomatopoeic are mbwa (dog), chafya (sneeze), and miayo (yawn).

Loanwords. Like many languages, Swahili is loaded with words from other languages. The big sources of loanwords that I’m aware of are (in decreasing order of importance) Arabic, English, and Portuguese. But as tends to happen with loanwords, many have gotten mangled to suit local pronunciation, with frequently charming results. This happens because while we’re all born with a lot of linguistic flexibility, our ability to form certain types of sounds atrophies quickly in childhood if those sounds aren’t present in our native tongue. This is why so many Filipinos struggle with the “f” sound, why many native Spanish speakers have to throw in a vowel before an English word beginning with “s,” and why it’s so difficult for many English speakers to master the rolled r’s and guttural sounds in other languages.

Swahili speakers really don’t enjoy ending words with consonants, so most English loanwords have an extra vowel—most frequently “i”—tacked onto the end. Therefore, a taxi driver will give you a lifti to your destination, and if you pay with a large bill you’ll collect your chenji. While traveling you will surely stay at a hoteli, but hopefully you’ll avoid the hospitali and the kituo cha polisi (police station). I and many of the Americans I know have started using some of these words even in conversation with each other, and it’s a running joke that if you’re at a loss for a Swahili word, adding “i” to an English word is a reasonable guess. I even hear lots of Tanzanians throwing in some extra i’s when speaking English—the word “just” seems to be tricky because it frequently becomes “justi.” Sometimes the letter “u” serves this function as well: you can call your friends on a simu (from SIM card) and indulge in some cold aiskrimu. Occasionally, Swahili goes the other way and deletes a final consonant; “r” is a frequent victim, giving the language a Bostonian touch whenever one plays soka or enlists the services of a dereva (driver).

Placenames. I always enjoy learning placenames in a new language because I think it provides some clues to a culture’s sense of geography. I was especially intrigued by the Swahili names for countries and continents. This is pure speculation on my part, but I imagine that one can get a sense of people’s evolving mental map of the world based on how Swahilified different placenames are. The name for Europe, Ulaya, seems pretty much unintelligible in terms of any European term for the continent, so I would guess that Swahili people had some awareness of a large land mass to the north before European infiltration took place. Portugal was the first arrival on the scene, and its name looks similarly obscure: Ureno. I learned from the Swahili wikipedia that the name comes from the Portuguese word for “king,” and it originated when Vasco de Gama and other explorers announced that the King of Portugal had sent them. By the time we get to England, Uingereza, we have a name that’s clearly derived from the real European name but still a bit garbled. The real johnny-come-latelies, like Marekani and Kanada, have names that sound pretty much like their English name with a Swahili accent- and once in a while, an extra vowel at the end.

how to say "hi" in swahili

The most delightful aspect of Tanzanian culture that I have seen so far is the greetings. Whether you’re meeting someone for the first time, seeing your officemate in the morning, or approaching a stranger on the street for directions, it’s absolutely mandatory to exchange greetings, and failing to do so it the quickest way to distinguish yourself as an obnoxious foreigner. And while one greeting is a necessity, more greetings are better. While in Zanzibar, we traveled around the island with a government official who is a master of the craft. He can fire off a succession of greetings so quickly it practically gives the listener whiplash. This guy also appeared to know everyone on the island. No sooner would we stop at a police checkpoint on the road (the checkpoints are as ubiquitous as their purpose is inscrutable) than he would practically leap from the car and commence greeting, laughing, and backslapping with the cops.

A standard formula for greeting someone is habari _____? Habari means “news,” and the blank can be filled with lots of different things depending on the situation. Options include habari gani (how are things?), habari yako (how are you?), habari yenu (how are y’all?), habari za kazi (how’s work?), habari za nyumbani (how’s home?), habari za safari (how was your trip?), habari za leo (how’s your day?), habari za asubuhi (how’s your morning?)… you get the idea.

Though the possibilities for asking someone how they’re doing are nearly endless, the answer is always some variation of “good.” Acceptable replies include nzuri (good), njema (good), salama (peaceful—in other words, good) or safi (literally “clean,” but in this context, good). No matter how bad things are, things are good—“even if you are about to die,” according to my Swahili tutor. If your house just burned down or you lost your job, the time to bring that up is later in the conversation, not during the greetings. If things are really good, you can add the word sana to your reply, and if things are merely a little bit good, you can add the word tu. Another way to exchange greetings—actually, the first way most visitors learn—is for the first person to say hujambo? (literally, “you have no problem?”) and the other to reply sijambo (“I have no problem”).

Go ahead and laugh, but Americans basically do the same thing. Europeans enjoy mocking us for using “how are you?” as a substitute for “hello,” and most of the time we really only expect to hear some variant of good, well, or fine. I was once in a bookstore in the Philippines and found a guide to American culture written for prospective immigrants and visitors. Thumbing through this book was an immensely educational and eye-opening experience, and I recommend it if you can get your hands on such a book. The book cautioned would-be visitors to the U.S. not to interpret a casual “how are you?” as an invitation to discuss how their house burned down or they just lost their job.

A special, extra-respectful greeting reserved for one’s elders is shikamoo, to which the elder replies with a marahaba. Neither word has any other usage in Swahili, though I read that shikamoo is derived from “I hold your feet” (nimeshika miguu yako is my possibly erroneous translation). Some people claim that the terms originated as an exchange between slaves and masters, but their use today is widespread enough that no such associations remain. I have found that being greeted with a shikamoo by a foreigner is often a source of delight for the recipient. I share office space in Dar with a Tanzanian woman who is old enough to have teenage children, and I once asked her if shikamoo was appropriate or called for in professional settings. “Yes!” she replied with a laugh. “You should be greeting me with shikamoo every day!”

I have also waded, gingerly, into the world of slang. Someone near to my own age could be safely greeted with a mambo?, a vipi?, or a mambo vipi? I wouldn’t try any of these on somebody who is old enough for a shikamoo, since I imagine that would be like approaching an elder American and going “whasaaaap?” Slang replies include poa (roughly translated as “cool”) or, my favorite, freshi (from the English word "fresh"). I’m told that the better your slang greeting, the lower the fare you are quoted by a taxi driver is likely to be, so I have an economic as well as a cultural incentive to learn more.

I see two main virtues to the Swahili greeting system. Once is that the greetings, even if they’re formulaic, make every interaction a little friendlier. The other is that they put a little speed bump on the pace of interaction. With our frantic pace of life in the U.S., it’s easy to blow right past people with our heads completely wrapped up in our own business. If culture demands that you exchange a greeting, or preferably two or three, it’s that much harder to let those opportunities for connection go by.

graduation weekend dispatches

Grantchester revisited. Among the items on the Cambridge tourist to-do list that we missed when my family visited in January is the walk to Grantchester. This may sound familiar to longtime readers with sharp memories. Grantchester is a tiny village a few miles up the River Cam where the poet Rupert Brooke once hosted future members of the Bloomsbury Group—including John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and Bertrand Russell—for tea and civilized conversation. Today Brooke’s old home and orchard are a teahouse that preserves some of the memory of that group.

After my parents and I arrived back in Cambridge for graduation weekend, the Grantchester walk was first on the agenda, but unfortunately the appointed day did not turn out quite the way I might have hoped. Contradicting an observation I had made earlier in the trip that thunder and lightning are rare in Britain, the afternoon was spotted with thunderstorms and pouring rain, with spells of cold drizzle in between. Dispirited by the weather and feeling a touch of pre-departure depression, I felt like calling off the walk, but my parents were game to face the storms, mud, and cows. The teahouse and surrounding orchard would usually be jammed with people on a summer afternoon, but for at least part of the time we were the only people sitting outside. In the end I was glad we went—the hot tea, conversation, and visiting a fun old place helped to restore my mojo for the festivities to come that evening.

Latin lessons. After changing into some dry clothes, we headed to Emma, where I had organized a graduation-eve formal dinner for Development Studies classmates and their families. The countries represented included China, India, Japan, Brazil, the U.S., Canada, Austria, Germany, and Greece. We had pre-dinner drinks in the cloisters by the college chapel and then moved on to a cozy upstairs room with lots of portraits of dead white men in wigs. I was incredibly grateful that Dave, a member of the catering staff who we always prayed would be the one quarterbacking our MCR dinners, was overseeing things. Dave did throw me one surprise, though: shortly after we were all seated, he came over to me and asked if I wanted to recite the College grace. I think my initial response was on the lines of, “uhhhh… I don’t speak Latin, Dave.” He showed me where both pre- and post-dinner graces were printed in the program and we had a 30-second dress rehearsal. I remember exactly two things from the third of a year of Latin I had in seventh grade (and any Latin scholars in the audience are welcome to correct me on this). First, the letters more or less always make the same sounds, unlike in English; second, it’s pronounced more or less the way a native English speaker would expect. With that slender bit of background knowledge and Dave’s confidence, I read out the grace without any obvious stumbles. I don’t know if the same could be said for my pronunciation, but I doubt anyone in the room had the slightest idea what I was saying. If you're curious you can check out the graces, with translations, here.

Pull my finger. Graduation, like so many other things in Cambridge, is steeped in formality and 800 years of tradition and takes little note of the way the rest of the world prefers to do things. There are lots of graduation ceremonies on different throughout the year, and the timing of any particular student’s graduation depends a lot on the idiosyncrasies of his or her course. There are no go-out-and-get-‘em speeches. Graduates shuffle through their small piece of the all-day ceremony by college, so I wasn’t even with my Development Studies classmates. My required outfit included a tuxedo, a white bow tie and bands (which made me feel like I should be trying somebody for witchcraft in 1690s Salem), a black gown, and a big black hood lined with blue silk draped over my back. I knew little about the ceremony going in and warned my parents not to expect much.

What I did know was that I was going to have to hold some guy’s finger. (Eight hundred years of solemn tradition, building up to… a fart joke?) Each college appoints one of its fellows as Praelector, and from what I can tell that role involves presenting the graduating students and enforcing the dress code. Rumor has it that if one of us students commits a wardrobe infraction, our college Praelector is fined… in bottles of port. Anyway, the graduates from each College march into a fancy old building known as the Senate House, and their Praelector extends a hand to the first four graduates in the phalanx. As each graduate holds onto one of those fingers, the Praelector leads the group forward and gives a brief testimonial, in Latin, to their learning and morals and their fitness to proceed to the degrees which they are to be awarded.

Now comes the really weird part. Picture, at the center of this grand assembly, a fairly senior man or woman sitting in a fancy chair and dressed in a bright red cape lined with white fur. This is (rarely) the Chancellor, Prince Philip; or (less rarely) the Vice Chancellor; or (usually) a deputy of hers, often the Master or President of a college. Our caped MC was the Master of Magdalene College, and the outfit combined with his kind face and round glasses gave him the appearance of a clean-shaven Santa Claus. After the Praelector’s testimonial, each individual graduate’s name is called, and each in turn kneels on a cushion in front of the big chair and extends his or her joined hands as if in prayer. It looked a bit like we were being knighted, minus the part with the sword. The presiding officer then clasps the graduate’s hands and formally confers the degree, in Latin. The new graduate rises, taking extreme care not to trip over the gown in the process, and gives a bow before exiting stage right.

Amazingly, the least ceremonious part was the paper diploma. After all of these traditional flourishes, I was expecting a huge piece of parchment with Latin calligraphy and perhaps a wax seal. Instead, what I got was a piece of 7x10 paper that looks like something I could have easily printed out on a home laser printer. It certifies, in English, that I attended the Congregation of 18 July 2009 and only later gets around to mentioning that I was awarded a Master of Philosophy degree. The mode of presentation was no more dramatic: we received our diplomas inside a plastic sleeve from an usher as we exited the Senate House. Like most of my friends, I opted to get a wooden University of Cambridge frame—partly because I fear that no one will believe it’s a diploma otherwise, and partly because I fear that one day I might accidentally toss it out with some old bank statements.

This has probably sounded a bit snarky, and there certainly was plenty of joking all around about the sillier aspects of the ceremony. But like many other things here, I think Cambridge’s odd approach to graduation is best approached with an open mind, a sense of humor, and a healthy dose of respect for eight centuries of history. And most importantly, after the red capes and Latin incantations we all get to walk away as Cambridge alumni—which is really, really cool in any language.

dispatches from the british road

The Wild Wild West. It always impresses me how the most fun and memorable travel experiences seem to pop out of the less glamorous aspects of a trip. After spending our Sunday at an eccentric environmental boondoggle known as the the Eden Project and then on a gorgeous hike along the coastline, we headed toward the hostel Stella had booked for the night. They had a firm check-in deadline of 9 pm, but we had plenty of time. I drove, Stella navigated. As the roads narrowed and other cars grew fewer and farther between, Stella's instructions became equally sparse. After a very long spell on the same winding road without a word from my copilot, I asked for an update on our progress, and Stella informed me that she was no longer sure we were going the right way. I pulled over and looked at the GoogleMaps printout with the directions to our hostel, and any doubts about Stella's navigational abilities quickly went away. I gazed in disbelief: almost a full page of instructions with no route numbers or street names at all, just turns and distances. The map portion was equally unhelpful: our route meandered through a cobweb of unnamed back roads. Only the occasional intersection was labeled with what I could only assume were the names of some very, very small villages. Where there are no street names or numbers, I quickly realized, Google is of little help.

There was only one way to connect the directions with real life. Each intersection we came upon had a signpost with the mileage to various villages, and some of the names matched up with places on the map. Thus, at the next junction, we picked the name of a village we knew was in the right direction and headed toward it. (I should stress that I'm using the word "village" only for want of a better term- often there was no sign of a church or pub, just a handful of country homes around a junction.) Many of the roads were only inches wider than our tiny rental car, and the overgrown brush on either side whipped the doors and side view mirrors. At times we encountered bogglingly steep grades and curves that had me praying no cars were coming in the other direction. Other stretches had tree cover dense enough virtually to block out the light of the late-evening sun. Eventually we came to a place called Portloe, with stunning views of the ocean far below. An elderly man with a hairy neck and long, caramelized fingernails was having a smoke outside of the local inn. The "No Vacancy" sign left me scratching my head as to who the hell takes their vacations out here. We asked him for directions, and within a minute I could tell he hadn't even heard of where we were going and was just interpreting our map for us. ("Take this road and follow your nose until you get to Portholland," he intoned in a vaguely Irish-sounding accent.) By this point it was past 8:30, so I extricated myself from the conversation as politely as possible, rolled up the window and continued on.

I don't know when it happened, but sometime before Portloe, we started having fun. It was a ridiculous, completely unexpected challenge. The scenery was amazing, and we laughed at our predicament and at the ludicrousness of tourism in this kind of place. We rolled into the Boswinger YHA hostel at 8:52 pm. "I was wondering if you were going to make it," said the teenager working the late shift at reception. I asked him if there was a pub around, and his smile told me that I was silly even to have entertained the idea. We did have a lovely walk, though, among some cows and the distant sound of surf and the fading light of a long summer evening:


Fun with Placenames. One of the fun little bonuses of being a Bay Stater in England is seeing the places that many of the towns in Massachusetts are named for. Up until now I hadn't noticed any underlying relationships within the names, except for the one-off correspondence between the two university towns named Cambridge. In Southwest England, though, I got a whiff of a pattern: I found Dartmouth, Plymouth, Falmouth, Truro, Barnstaple (yes, that's a "p"), and St. Dennis. If you're not from Massachusetts, or if you share my home state but aren't particularly observant, these are all the names of (or are close to the names of) towns on or near Cape Cod. Given the geographic similarities, I can certainly see the Cape reminding the early British colonists of Cornwall, so I doubt it's a coincidence.

And on an entirely random note, here's my nominee for the most deprived-sounding region of England: junction 14 on the M4 motorway leads to the towns of Hungerford and Wantage.

Wales. I had never been to Wales before, so Stella agreed to add it on at the end so that I could get my card punched. The Welsh language is alive and apparently much more viable than Cornish; the road signs turn bilingual as soon as you cross the border, and at least one radio station was utterly incomprehensible. Though the capital city of Cardiff is close to the border, we decided to pass on it due to concerns about traffic and testimonials to its relative unWelshness.

Instead, we headed for Caerphilly Castle, which is now right in the middle of a Cardiff suburb of the same name. When it was built in the 1200s, the castle was not only one of the world's largest, it was also at the cutting edge of castle technology, with a "concentric" design featuring multiple moats, walls, and battlements. The castle was built to defend Gilbert de Clare, an English lord, against Llewelyn the Last, the last Welshman to rule Wales. (Incidentally, Clare College in Cambridge is named for one of Gilbert's daughters, who saved the college from an early financial ruin.) Shifting alliance quickly destroyed the rationale for the castle's existence; it was left to rot and pillaged for stone until an early-twentieth-century restoration project. Here's a shot of the castle, with its very own leaning tower on the right side:


A Special Mention. I will conclude the tale of our road trip to the Wild West of Britain with an acknowledgement of another very special companion: Michael Jackson. The UK is also mourning the King of Pop (as is Vietnam, I'm sure), and it was a nostalgic treat to hear his old hits on the radio mixed in with the trashy dance music that generally fills the airwaves here. RIP, Jacko.

pirates and palm trees: this is england?

Penzance – I have made it to Penzance, and yes, there are pirates. I am at the end of Cornwall, the long finger of land that is Britain’s southwesternmost extremity, on a road trip with my regular traveling companion (and fellow WWOOfing enthusiast) Stella. We originally had a larger posse, but due to a confluence of events—including an unexpected rash of centipede hatchings that is keeping a biologist friend in lab for the weekend—it’s just the two of us. Cornwall has a reputation as a place apart from the rest of England, and there’s no better testimony to that fact the bizarre and alarming existence of palm trees here. And just as Salem, Massachusetts has embraced and profited from its witches, so has Cornwall’s largest town capitalized on its pirates. We unwittingly timed our arrival here with Mazey Day, Cornwall's traditional midsummer festival, and there are pirate costumes and skull-and-crossbones banners aplenty. The local pop music station goes by the name of Pirate FM.

Pirate antics aside, Cornwall is as serious about its regional identity as anywhere I have seen in the UK except for Scotland. The Cornish flag—a vaguely pirate-like white cross on a black field—is much more popular than the Union Jack, just as I saw far more of St. Andrew’s cross in Edinburgh. At the Mazey Day festival, vendors sell cards featuring doctored photos of Gordon Brown and Barack Obama holding oversized pasties, the region’s culinary gift to the rest of Britain. As we drove in toward Penzance, we heard a Pirate FM DJ interview a representative of the Cornish Language Partnership at its festival booth. The government-funded Partnership tries to preserve the Cornish language by offering courses in it, much like in parts of western Ireland where state subsidies are trying to keep Gaelic from disappearing. We stopped by their booth and picked up their free “Cornish for Beginners” brochure. Despite my enthusiasm for languages, this kind of enterprise strikes me as a fool’s errand. As my Cameroonian friends reminded me not long ago, people will talk the way they want to talk, and one can no more hold back that tide than command the waves to halt.

Speaking of waves, we also took an expedition out to Land’s End, the point where Britain finally surrenders to the Atlantic. Once you get past the tacky and overbuilt tourist facilities, it’s a marvelous landscape of cliffs, blue water, and rolling heath:

a response to my critics re: "not the queen's english"

I had intended to suspend the blogging and focus on schoolwork for a while, but it's come to my attention that my "not the queen's english" entry was reposted on a Cameroonian website and has generated a lot of pretty heated commentary- including accusations of ignorance/stupidity/idiocy (which I don't really mind) and racism (which I do). Some of the commenters expressed hope that I would respond, so here I am.

First of all, I want to assure my critics that I intended no disrespect toward Cameroonians, and I regret that I have offended some readers. I believe that many of the people who wrote comments have misunderstood the spirit and intent of my post. But taken out of context, I can see how what I wrote in those few paragraphs came across as inflammatory and condescending. There are also parts of the post, the "Special English" paragraph in particular, that in retrospect I should have worded differently.

The reference to the "Queen's English" was obviously the source of a lot of misunderstanding (see posts by Afrika/Unitedstatesofafrica, Samm, oyibbao, and Atanga Belmondo). As commenter Steve Jackson pointed out, I am not British, but American, so I myself do not speak "the Queen's English" either. I meant "Queen's English" as an ironic rhetorical device, not as any kind of statement of how people "should" speak, and certainly not as any kind of statement of a pro-colonial attitude. I do not see language in terms of better or worse, right or wrong. I agree with commenter oyibaao's observation "language is a means of communication that is influenced by time, place, and events." To borrow a phrase from the Bible, language is for people, not people for language.

So why would I write about differences in the way Cameroonians and I use English? As commenters Caitlin, Ras Tuge, Steve Jackson, Le Chiffre, and facter all surmised, the main motivation was humor. I write about this stuff because it’s funny—not in the sense that I am mocking Cameroonians or viewing myself as better than they are, but because language differences are one of the great sources of humor in travel. On this blog, I have written about the differences between British and American English here, here, and here, and about New Zealanders' accents here. In my previous blog, I wrote about differences in the way Americans and Filipinos use English. I was no more trying to insult Cameroonians in the post under discussion than I was trying to insult Brits, New Zealanders, and Filipinos in those other posts. If more Cameroonians had a chance to visit Britain or the U.S.—and I regret that so few have that opportunity—there would be things they would find funny about the way Brits and Americans speak. And I can assure you, Reex Flames, that during 3 weeks in Cameroon I was the subject of plenty of mockery because of my speech, dress, and all of the other things that make us different from each other. But I was a guest in Cameroon, so I don’t think I have any right to complain.

I think a lot of commenters missed that some of the humor was directed at me and at Americans. As commenter Caitlin correctly remarked: “To me it comes across that the author is laughing at himself for his assumption that he'll be able to communicate in an English-speaking country when in fact the type of English may not be anything like his own.” I also made reference to the “ugly American” stereotype: the tendency of Americans who speak only English to assume, absurdly, that if they just speak slowly and over-enunciate enough that non-native speakers of English will understand them. As I said, the “Special English” paragraph was not the best written, but I was merely pointing out the irony that "ugly American" English has some similarities with the version of English spoken in Anglophone Cameroon. I emphatically was not suggesting that the pace or lilt of Cameroonian English is evidence of stupidity—though I can see how it might have come across that way in the original post. (In fact, I was grateful that people spoke English slowly to me so that I had a chance of understanding them.) Just speaking for myself and my own background, I am glad that, as commenter facter put it, we Americans “can joke about ourselves.”

I wanted to highlight the excellent point made in different ways by Naneh, Reex Flames, nadine, and routine, about the multilingualism of Cameroonians. I came away impressed by how many languages Cameroonians speak, especially because I come from a culture that (sadly) does not put much value on learning other people's languages. I am a little bit embarassed that I only speak English fluently, though I have enough French, Spanish, and Tagalog to get by. The average Cameroonian is far ahead of me on language abilities.

I also appreciated Papa Mama's point (even if it was made in a sarcastic way) about the internet leveling the playing field between people in different parts of the world. Papa Mama points out that the internet enables Europeans and Americans to be exposed to the thoughts of Africans. To that I say, amen and hallelujah. I am grateful that we are able to have this dialogue, which in earlier times would have been impossible, and I hope that we will be able to learn something from it.

Finally, I strongly object to the insinuations made by Reex Flames (for which, to be fair, Reex Flames later apologized) and Unitedstatesofafrica that I went to Cameroon with fantasies of “helping” or “making a difference” by bringing the light of my Euro-American brilliance to the Africans. If you read more of my blog or talked to me about development efforts, you would know that I am very skeptical of arrogant Western attitudes about helping lower-income countries. My motivations for traveling were to learn about Cameroon and Africa, and to spend time with a special someone. As a few commenters pointed out, I was writing for my friends and family, and I had no intention of offending a whole bunch of Cameroonians. But since I did, I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify and continue the discussion.

not the queen's english

Bamenda, Cameroon – “English-speaking,” I have learned, is a relative term. When we first arrived in Bamenda six days ago, I was excited to be in a region of Cameroon where language would be less of a barrier to interacting with the locals. Then we went out to Bamenda’s most posh restaurant—we’re still talking fluorescent lighting and 3,000 CFA ($6) entrees here—and I got a reality check. After spilling some Top Pamplemousse (Cameroon’s delicious homegrown brand of grapefruit soda) on the table and floor, I went back to the bar to ask the bartender for some napkins. My initial request was met with a look of incomprehension. I gradually simplified my question to just “napkins?”, but that didn’t work either. I finally got the message through by miming a spilling beverage and wiping motion.

The majority of people in Anglophone Cameroon don’t speak the Queen’s English in their daily lives. The true lingua franca is Pidgin, a blend of English and local languages that is incomprehensible to a speaker of standard English. To give you a small taste of how different it is, prior to our mountain bike trip along the Ring Road I asked one of the local Peace Corps volunteers for a short primer on asking for directions in Pidgin. I was told that “which way to Ndu?” would be translated as “wu side Ndu de?” The word “side” does come from the English, but as you can tell, the meaning of the word is a little bit different than the sense we are used to.

That said, most of the Cameroonians I have met in this region can speak and understand English fairly well, as long as you adopt what the Peace Corps folks call “Special English.” Special English entails speaking very slowly, enunciating clearly, eliminating contractions, and introducing a bit of a lilt to one’s voice. It’s funny, but this seems to be the one place in the world where the stereotypical “ugly American” way of speaking to the locals—i.e. speaking more slowly and loudly, as if the listener were stupid—actually works. I’m told there is one volunteer in this region who has got Special English down so well that now he can’t turn it off, even when talking with other Americans. I’m pretty bad at Special English, which means that even here, Kate does most of the talking with the locals.

Some of the importations from English are downright hilarious to American ears. Whereas in the north of Cameroon I would be addressed as “nassara,” here I am “white man.” “White man” is a unisex and even a plural term; thus Kate is also “white man,” as are the two of us together. In almost every village we biked or hiked through, children would shout to us from the roadside; at one point we got shouts of “WHITE MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN” in stereo from both sides of the road, the kids apparently competing to see whose lungs could hold out the longest. Another of my favorites is “I will beat you” (that’s “beat” in the sense of “smack around,” not “defeat”), which seems to be the preferred idle threat among children and Peace Corps volunteers. Cats are referred to as “pussy,” and a kitten is “small pickin’ pussy” (“pickin” somehow means “children”). But my favorite local phrase of all is “you are welcome”—Cameroonian hospitality in action.

¡TeamSevilla! takes the alcázar

Seville, Spain -- It may not be the most opportune time academically, but I´m spending a long weekend in the south of Spain with four wonderful Gates people. ¡TeamSevilla!, as I affectionately call our posse, consists of the group that went to Paris in November minus one. (By the way, I love the fact that the characters ¡ and ñ have their own buttons on keyboards here.) In the less than 24 hours since landing, we´ve largely adjusted our lifestyle to the rhythms of Andalucia, which basically means doing everything late: 10 am is wakeup time and 10 pm is dinnertime, and so far we have had every meal alfresco. Midday temperatures top out in the high 60s, so it´s not exactly sweltering, but compared to Cambridge it feels glorious.

The timing of this weekend is also a little bit strange because next week I have final exams for the French class that I have been taking all year. So after adjusting my brain to Spanish, I will be hurriedly switching back to French. The oral part of the exam will consist of me making a 5 minute presentation to my class au sujet du Cameroun on Wednesday, and I´m a little bit afraid I might inadvertently throw some español in there. The Spanish has been coming back with relative ease, and I´m feeling like the stereotype that Spanish is an easier language has some truth to it.

By coincidence, three of my courses at Cambridge have been turning to the subject of Islam in the last week or so, so it´s quite interesting to be here in what was the northern outpost of high Islamic civilization. Today we visited the Alcázar, a glorious hodgepodge of palaces and gardens whose showpiece building was constructed by Muslim artisans in the employ of Mohammed V, the 14th-century sultan of nearby Granada, for his buddy the Christian King Pedro I. Pedro was known as Pedro el Cruel or Pedro el Justiciero (the dispenser of justice), depending on whom you asked, and he had a colorful life to say the least. His father was quite the philanderer, leaving Pedro to compete with a slew of half-siblings, some of whom he unfortunately had to dispatch to keep his grip on power. Later, when Mohammed V was briefly deposed, Pedro lured his friend´s successor over for a dinner party at the Alcázar, where he captured the illegitimate Sultan and his retinue. Mohammed V was restored to his throne and received his rival´s head as a gift from Pedro I. Hey, at least the Christians and the Muslims were getting along back then. But the gory history aside, the Alcázar is a magnificent place, and it provided me with what must have been the most shutter-happy hour of my life.

Stay tuned for more on Andalucia, and hopefully some good pictures when I get back to the UK.

le week-end en suisse: fondue, trains, and beer in plastic cups

I'm not going to lie-- Geneva is a snooze. Take a city in a country obssessed with order and stability, and make it the world's capital for order and stability, and what do you expect to happen? But I had been warned of this by various people, including Cheryl, the friend I traveled to Geneva this past weekend to see. A little bit of backstory: Cheryl and I met several years back in DC thanks to a mutual friend who noticed that Cheryl had done a Fulbright in the Philippines and I was about to do the same. So I knew going in that this wasn't going to be Carnaval, and shortly after I landed I explained (reassured?) Cheryl that my motivation was 95 percent hanging out with her and 5 percent seeing Geneva.

That's not to say we didn't have a whole lot of fun. Cheryl took me to some unexpectedly grubby places that served beer in plastic cups, we ate fondue by the lakeside, we had a minor scrape with the law for riding a night bus around 3 a.m. without a valid pass. We meandered around the city and a charming suburb called Carouge. Aimless wandering is not my usual travel mode, but I really enjoyed it.

We also went to a film festival that, quite coincidentally, was showing lots of Filipino movies. The film we saw was a fictionalized documentary of a Filipino "reality" show that shamelessly moves in on a family in the aftermath of the murder of the oldest son. The movie had a lot to say about the artificiality of television, the mutual manipulation of the family and the TV crew, the schadenfreude of the viewing public, and the Philippines' complicated views on homosexuality. Parts of it were deliriously funny. After the first 20 minutes, which were almost entirely footage of people bawling, I leaned over to Cheryl and remarked that "this is either awful, or brilliant, and I can't decide which." The verdict: brilliant. I feel bad saying it, but neither of us were expecting that level of sophistication in a Filipino film. The audience received it well and had a lively Q and A afterward with the director, who had flown in from Manila.

On Sunday, thanks to efficient high-speed Swiss transportation, the two of us plus another friend of Cheryl's got to see a fair bit of the country. Through some Swiss friends, Cheryl got her hands on all-day rail passes that were valid anywhere in the country for just 30 Swiss francs apiece(about $25). I don't know if I have ever been to another advanced country that suddenly and completely switches languages part way through. Most of the country speaks German, but the Western quarter (including Geneva) speaks French, about a tenth of the population speaks Italian, and a few places speak some language I'd never heard of, called Romansh. Even the trains seem to obey the invisible linguistic borders; at some point between Geneva and Bern, the screens inside the train announcing the next stop switched from French to German.

We spent a few hours apiece in Bern (pronounced "bearnn"), a small and picturesque capital city overrun with fountains and clocks, and Luzern (Lucerne), which I had expected to be bumpkin-land but was surprisingly slick and urban instead. A short selection of photos:


Wall of the Reformation, Geneva. The city is proud of its role in the Reformation and was for a time the home of John Calvin. Among the figures honored on this wall is Roger Williams.


Cheryl and me in Bern. Yes, I am pretending to take a bite of her head, because at the top of this fountain is a statue of a guy eating babies. Apparently there is something sick and twisted hiding beneath that placid Swiss psyche...


Swiss timekeeping at its finest.

This tower is part of the 14th-century wooden Kapellbrücke (chapel bridge), which is Luzern's most famous landmark. Again, stereotypes about the Swiss are confounded: instead of taking the shortest route across the river, the bridge zigs and zags. The shop called "Joe's Souvenirs" (I am not kidding) inside the tower was also a rude awakening.