Swahili is a funny language.  Sometimes there’s a word to say exactly what you mean when it would take three in English.  For example, the word pole (pronounced “POL-eh) is used to express empathy to someone for something that happened that is not great.  Your mother-in-law just died? Pole. You stubbed your toe? Pole.  You had a long day at work? Pole.  Your psycho ex-girlfriend just slashed your tires and kidnapped your cat?  Pole.  The closest English equivalent I can think of is a combination of “sorry” and the commiserative “that sucks”.  However, sometimes we have one word (and several equivalents) in English and Swahili is bewilderingly lacking.  Like, there is no word for “earlier”, as in “I saw him earlier” or “you should have told me earlier that you were on fire”.   To express sentiments for which there is no word (or for which I don’t know the word), then, things get rather clunky, ie. “I saw him before this time right now.”

I’ve been particularly intrigued by Swahili animal names as of late.  In English we can say monkey and, to the layman, that covers all manner of primate, from those wandering the ground to those swinging through the trees.  In Swahili, each of the “monkeys” here has a name and there is no general term to encompass them all.  Baboons are nyani.  Chimps are sokwe. Colobus monkeys are vyondi, red-tailed monkeys kima (though this might actually be the word in Kiha, the local language in this region).  Yet, though they went crazy with monkey monikers, other animal names are strangely non-specific.  Zebras are “striped donkeys”.  Otters are “water hyenas” (a personal favorite of mine).

And as a learner of Swahili, I am finally starting to pick up on some of these idiosyncrasies and employ them.  It now feels normal to say things like “they are here here” and “you are causing me to like you”.  And the things I don’t know how to say, I just make up.  Hamimu, my intrepid young assistant, has gotten very used to me explaining things using my somewhat limited vocabulary.  To explain the possibility of my having a parasite I told him the other day, “Maybe there is an insect inside me.”  (I also just add an “i” to the end of English words if I don’t know the Swahili word…kind of like Spanish and adding an “o”).  And, perhaps most importantly of all, I’ve garnered enough grammar, vocabulary, and hutzpah to tell someone off in Swahili.   I can now chastise children and wayward employees and even, in an awkward incident the other week, tourists.  A baboon I was following saw two tourists sitting at one of the outdoor tables, eating their breakfast.  Doing so breaks one of the cardinal rules of the park, mainly because baboons are not shy about relieving you of said breakfast.  As my target made a beeline for them, a large male in tow, I started yelling at them in Swahili, “You can’t eat outside!  The baboons will rob you and bite you! Take the food!  Go!”  Of course, these two tourists were American and therefore totally bewildered by the wild-haired woman dashing toward them and gibbering unintelligibly, but the baboons eventually made my point for me, and the guys got rid of their food.  Later I clarified my ramblings in English and realized that perhaps I’ve been here a bit too long if the first language I choose to tirade in is Swahili.