A Techno African Hoedown

On Thursday I took my Book 1 exam. I didn't miss one question in any of the 10 sections except the section that deals with subjunctive imperative/indicative phrases, where I missed almost all of them. I can't tell you what they are in Swahili... hell, I can't even tell you what that means in English. Lets check Webster's New World Dictionary for an explanation:

subjunctive - adj. LL subjunctivus. gram. designating or of the mood of a verb that is used to express supposition, desire, hypothesis, possibility, etc., rather than to state an actual fact (ex.:the mood of were in "if I were you")

imperative- adj. LL imperativus. gram. designating or of the mood of a verb that expresses a command, strong request, or exhortation.

indicative- adj. Fr indicatif. gram. see also indicatory

aneurysm- n. when an artery in the brain spontaneously bursts. Reason previously unknown by American Medical Association, now known to be caused by subjunctive imperative Swahili phrases.

On Friday PH rescued us from classes and we went to a far away village. It was almost 4 hours away and we entered the jungle area of Tanzania, located in the south east. We were in thick jungle, going up and down huge cliffs and mountains, dodging monkeys and pineapple vendors. But soon we hit the plains again and entered the village. During the service the confirmation class was confirmed. After they took their first communion they sang a song and all of their parents and relatives greeted them in a big mob and decorated them with some things very close to those big flowery Hawaiin lais.

Saturday was a fee day so I had time to relax, study, visit the shoppes in town, and a bunch of us went out to eat. But after we came back Kim and I went to go ask PH about the situation mentioned 2 blogs ago. It was pretty awkward to ask him about it, but some people around LJS were quite upset with him and I thought it would be better that we asked him instead of someone else getting angry and accusing him of things. It turns out he as just really swamped with work at the time and any time students at the foreign language school ask him for help he immediately puts a wall up. He was the director of the school for a very long time and retired a number of years ago. But the Tanzanians won't take responsibility for themselves and run their own program, so he is trying to force them to ween off his influence by not taking more responsibility then necessary. He was also unaware of the urgent nature of the situation. All in all, it was just a big misunderstanding and everyone is at ease here @ LJS once again.

Sunday was very interesting... We went to a village that is built around a school. The funding comes from the states and have they have over 200 students! The church was GIANT, it was as big as some of the churches at home. We were warmly greeted, as always, and had our tea and biscuits. After that we entered the church and watched as the choirs performed some preludes. There were two choirs, each with about 50 people. One choir was all school students. They had matching uniforms that were, well... hideous. I would have hated to wear their uniform. It was a sort of canary yellow shirt and these awful swamp muck green pants. And I would describe the shoe as brownish black clunkers. They sort of looked like the shoes I would imagine Frankenstein would wear. The other choir was of Maasai children from the surrounding area, dressed in regular Maasai garb. The church had a generator that supplied power to the Toshiba electric keyboard which was hooked up to massive speakers. It was the wierdest music I have ever heard. The choir would be singing Swahili words to ancient christian hymns with traditional African chords and structure while the keyboard sort of dabbled in western chord progressions and the pre-set drum beats pumped out an um-pa-pa polka rhythm. All this was at a decibel level loud enough to knock small planets out of orbit. I would describe it as a techno African hoedown. It was so wierd.
But the highlight was the dancing. One girl in particular was amazing, she even got to solo in a few songs. At one point the choir knelt down and she was the only one standing and she did this weird thing where she would shake her shoulders really fast and jump and swing her head back and forth... it is hard to describe, but it was amazing. The whole church was clapping and cheering, it was quite the spectacle. After the service I was all excited to practice the Swahili I had learned the week before but all the students wanted to practice English with me! So I talked with many of them for about an hour and we had a great time.

Monday we started classes again and had a pretty normal week. Unfortunately, it is the sisters' last day today as well as Scott and Lu's. The sisters have been here for about a week longer then I have and are almost done with the books. But its time for them to start work at their assigned stations. I'm going to miss them, they were a lot of fun and good study buddies. But I am really going to miss Scott and Lu. They have been really great friends and we have bonded a lot. It is going to be terribly hard to see them go, but we will definitely keep in touch.

Last night we went out to dinner and had burgers and beers and played a little pool. But after we got back I started to feel sick. I went to bed around 10 but had a hard time falling asleep because my stomach was really hurting me. After I finally got to sleep I would wake about every 20 minutes to either clutch my churning stomach or run to the bathroom. On a funnier note, at about 2 in the morning I was on my way to the bathroom when I started to think I was having a hallucination. But my eyes were not deceiving me... at 2 in the morning Baba John (Grandpa John in Swahili), the old senile Dutchman who live a few doors down was in his underwear sweeping the walkway. Baba John is very very old and has a very hard time sleeping and I'm pretty sure he only takes naps. But on a serious note, this morning Padre Sandro, my catholic priest neighbor, came and apologized to me. He said he felt bad because he didn't come and check up on me last night. I asked why he though he had to check up on me and it turns out I was screaming in my sleep. I hope I didn't scare him too bad.

Unfortunately, I'm having such terrible stomach problems that I wasn't able to Join PH, Luka, and Kim on the village visit today. They are also spending the night in the village, which seems like an amazing opportunity but I just couldn't handle it in my current condition. I'm hoping its just food poisoning because I've seen what malaria can do to a person!

Low: Stomach problems. And I know I am really sick because I started to crave country music today... whats that about?

High: I'm going to separate from Kim on Monday and get my own teacher. I really like the language and now I can move at the pace I want to!