Leaving off from day 2, I’ll start with day 3!
The third day was when everything started to get exciting! Just jokes! On the third day we made a trip to St.Elizabeth Hospital for a workshop on HIV and HIV caused Tuberculosis. The workshop was slightly boring, but still interesting. Everyone was dying for a 5 minute break, luckily we got our break, as well as some fresh water from Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, along with some cookies.
Quick Fact: We couldn’t enter the hospital unless we had our white coats on.
After the workshop,we got to visit the clinic where they treated the HIV and Tuberculosis patients and also meet with some of the patients. We attempted to talk to them with our broken Swahili, with a slight ‘shikamoo’ to elders and ‘mambo’ to little kids. Although we couldn’t get a conversation to start, we managed to get some chuckles out of these patients.
Quick Fact: All health care, including medicine, check ups, and minor surgeries are completely free in Tanzania, thus making it one of the fastest country to reduce HIV rates.
After the morning at St Elizabeths, we went to the Projects Abroad Office in Downtown Arusha for a Swahili workshop. During my 2 weeks in Tanzania, and recklessly speaking Swahili to anyone I saw, I thought I got pretty good at it. In fact I think I’m hooked on to Swahili, not to be racist, but now when I see African-Canadians, or just Africans in general, I can’t help but want to say ‘Hujambo’ to them.
A speed Swahili class:
Hello, How are you?(to elders or authority figures): shikamoo
In response elders will say marahaba.
Hello, How are you? (to people the same age or younger, it really means more like ‘what’s up?’): mambo
There are tons of responses for this greeting, the most common one I used was poa, which means cool.
Hello, How are you?(in general): hujambo or habari
For hujambo, the common response was sijambo, and for habari, the typical response would be mzuri.
For any of the response, just add ‘na wewe’, and your reply would be like ‘I’m good, and you?’
Some random words are kuku, which means chicken, lala, meaning sleep, and taco, you’ll never guess.
Taco means ass in Swahili! I found that extremely interesting.
After our Swahili workshop, we went home and had our showers to get ready for the night, because we were having a surprise birthday party for one of the cutest girls in our group, Hannah! It was her 17th birthday, and how can we let that past, especially in Tanzania. So for dinner that night we had chips and chicken, or as we call it, fries and chicken, as well as a birthday cake, YUM, and a mini fireworks show.
