Market Crash

We have a pair of Trumpeter Hornbills that roost outside our dorm here at language school (you can google what they look like.) Their 'song' if it can be called that, sounds like a recording of whinging toddlers in a dairy in Hataitai on repeat 'waaa-aaa-aaaaaa'. Anyway...

Swahili lessons are into the second week now and we are learning how to interact in day to day situations, such as the market. Ah, the pressure of bargaining coupled with mathematics in a foreign system...I hate it. Tuesday we had a mock market set up on the premises to test our skills and I just could not add two sums to get a grand Jumli (total) for a 'customer'. She walked off in disgust and I started 'hornbill-ing (waaaaaaa) to Franatee for help. I hate maths.

That night drowning the sorrows of that day, the wife, a classmate and I heard music in the distance so wandered into a farewell function with skits, speeches, dancing and singing for final year Tanzanian environmental students. We were greeted like dignitaries, asked to introduce ourselves and to speak to the class as to what we thought were the challenges for them for the future. I babbled off something I remembered from the end of Rocky IV 'if I can change, and you can change, maybe we all can change' or something. They loved it. Then it was time for slow conga dancing and traditional singing before Francoise and I got asked to sing something from our native land. After debating hakas and waiata we settled on the safest course and crooned most of the national anthem (in English lamentably). Not a bad wee night.

The next day, it was time for the real thing and a big group of students were bused to a local Arusha market to buy things for the kitchen in Swahili. That's a lot of foreign money heading to a poor area. It felt like the start of 'Saving Private Ryan' before they hit the beach; the bus shaking to a halt while our teacher shouts 'You will ONLY buy things at a good price, do NOT take ANY expensive items into the market, on exiting the bus, do NOT stop until you get well past the beggars and hustlers, now GO GO GO!!!'



Actually it was kind of relaxed and people appreciated the attempts of muzungu to speak the local tongue. Though we did get ripped off I think more than once...but at least I bought a fetching kitenge AKA the Zanzabari man skirt.