A Mzungu in Africa

My life in St Judes School,Tanzania from January 2006

Thursday, July 20, 2006


THIS ONE IS BEATING ME

If you came to our school, and went into any class, within around two minutes, you would probably hear a child say "Teacher, teacher, this one is beating me". And you would be forgiven for being as surprised if not shocked, as I was to hear it at first.

But it all makes sense when you break it down...

Kiswahili, being quite a simple language, has far less words than English, so for example, there's no word for 'he' or 'she'. In Swahili, the word "a" is the pronoun which means "this one" or to compare it to English, it replaces he/she. So naturally the children have difficulty in understanding the concept that we differenciate between males and females in English - so they resort to "this one" or "that one".

Beating is the hot word in our school. In Kiswahili, the word for beat is Piga, but piga has a variety of meanings ranging from pinching to slapping to pushing to shoving. So when the children want to tell on another child, they'll say "this one is beating me"...

So if you ever come here, don't think we're letting them beat each other - maybe just the odd slap or shove!

Another common one is "dropping" and "picking"... If you take the bus somewhere you will "drop at XXX place". So it's common to hear a child say "I am dropping at Kijenge" or "I will pick you at the bus-stop". Trying to teach people to say "I am getting off the bus at Kijenge" or "I will pick you UP at the bus-stop" is harder than it sounds because it's in common usage all over Tanzania...

The scary consequence can be that, as a native English speaker, you find yourself pointing to a child saying "this one is dropping at Njiro" or "We will pick that one at 7am".... Sounds crazy but I defy you to come to Tanzania for more than six months and NOT find yourself saying it at least once!

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