Swahili Study

Life at Riverside is settling into something of a routine.  All the students stay in their own bandas (tents or cottages) and join together for meals in the "food banda."  We always have plenty of choices at every meal, and the chef will even fix some Western-type dishes for us.  

There are several classroom bandas around camp, and we meet in those for our daily Swahili lessons.  Every time new students come to Riverside, they start in their own little class with their own teacher, so you study with other students at your level.  The teachers come in from town, and they rotate among the classes each week, which (to my way of thinking) gives us a broader perspective and lets us get to know them.  Here is the teacher we had our first week, Teo.

Classes start when the teachers come at 8:00, so I try to get breakfast before then. :)  They're generally a little late, so that helps.  We're in class until lunch at 1:00, but we have a chai (tea) break at 10:00, and usually a chance to stretch later on.  The teachers are good at getting us to use what we're learning; they're constantly asking us questions so we will use our new vocabulary and grammar.  I think it must take a good deal of patience to listen to us slowly put sentences together and help us fix our mistakes.  As a student, all the talking is quite a challenge, but I'm so grateful for the teachers who emphasize it.  I can memorize words and do textbook exercises on my own for practice, but speaking comes by, well, speaking.

We usually spend our afternoons studying.  A couple afternoons a week, one of the camp staff takes a vehicle into town for supplies, and we can ride along.  These trips into town are my chances for internet access and any other errands.  One hotel has an internet cafe with pretty good connection speed, but I can't depend even on that.  I was able to go twice last week--Tuesday it was filled with a group of American students, and Thursday it was closed(?).  I'm learning to take a short to-do list on these trips to town; there's just not that much time.  Meanwhile I lose the afternoon to study!  But I'm glad for any chance to get things done, online and around town.

In the evenings we're often ready to do something--anything--other than homework.  We come together to play games or watch a dvd.  So far we've gotten into Ligretto (Dutch Blitz) and Mexican Train dominoes.  In the dvd department, we are enjoying the tv episodes of "Monk" that I brought.  Sometimes another student will join us, but usually it's just the four of us from our group.  Recently we've been talking about how we can encourage each other beyond our beloved fun & games, and so last night we met to simply talk and pray.

That is the basic format for my days.  The weekends bring more free time, and so far each weekend I've enjoyed an outing of some sort, so I don't feel stuck at camp all the time.  Those trips include my previous waterfall and canyon hikes; yesterday I returned from a wonderful overnight trip...  I'm still getting my pictures together from that one.

All in all, it is a blessing to be able to focus so exclusively on Swahili.  Although living at camp has its inconveniences, we don't have to worry about cooking, maintaining a house, doing our normal jobs...  We're free to devote our time to learning this language, and I think the benefits will be enormous.  After two weeks I can already talk within certain limited contexts; it's exciting to think what sixteen weeks will do for my ability to live here in Tanzania!