Swahili + English = Swanglish

I brought my books with me so I can study Swahili while I’m away, but so far I have only been taking out my phrase book with mini dictionary and trying to converse with the locals, so progress is not as fast as I had initially hoped. Slowly this helps with vocabulary but I really need to get the grammar past the simple present, simple past and simple future (with a handful of verbs) that I can use at the moment. Maybe it will cool down a bit to allow me to do so! In the meantime I am so glad I brought my Kindle: I have been reading from that almost every day. Doesn’t help with the Swahili but it helps with the relaxing :-)

I was flicking through the phrasebook earlier today while we were getting an inner tube replaced on one of the piki pikis, and had to share some of it with you. Let me give you some background first to place it in context as to why I find it amusing: one of my colleagues – Carla – has rather short hair and likes to keep it short. I, on the other hand, like to keep my hair long-ish and let it grow. In Iringa there is a hairdressing salon with a nail-painting section out front on the terrace area where I get my toenails painted as a bit of a treat, and the first time I was there the lady working in the salon asked if I wanted my hair doing. I thanked her and respectfully declined, but when Carla mentioned she wanted her hair cutting I said: “I know a place!” We went along to the salon and asked (in what is referred to as ‘Swanglish’ – a bit of Swahili and English) if she could cut Carla’s hair and she said no, and pointed us in the direction of a barbers’ shop. We subsequently observed that in the ladies’ salons there doesn’t seem to be any cutting of hair: just braiding, and weaving. Now that requires skill, don’t get me wrong, but it was curious to see. Into the barbers’ shop we went, and asked if they cut hair: they do, they said. Carla had the brilliant idea of bringing a photo of herself with her hair shorter and asked the barber to cut it like this. Well, out came the electric razor with the adjustable fittings, and off he went, giving her a grade 3. I don’t think Carla much resembled the picture she had brought along, but she was happy enough just to get it taken off, and “it grows back!” she said. The scissors did make an appearance at the end, to trim the neck hairs, but the way he was brandishing them about convinced me that I won’t be going to any hairdressers or barbers while I’m here in Tanzania. This is confirmed by the phrases – particularly the last one – given in the phrasebook under ‘hairdressing’: