Asante sana, squash banana

Jambo rafiki!

Recognize the title? It's a line from the movie "The Lion King", that the baboon, Rafiki, sings. When in Kenya, we all got pretty much completely fluent in Kiswahili (cough, cough), and I figured I should try keeping it up, and could do so by writing down some of the things we learned.

So, asante sana actually means something, and isn't complete gibberish as one could think. It means thank you very much. The name of the baboon, Rafiki also has a meaning - friend. Therefore I started this post by saying "Hello friend!". If you haven't been aware of the fact that jambo means hello, then you've clearly not visited this blog before. So, karibu to this blog then, karibu sana! ('Welcome' and you are 'very much welcome' - the words we probably heard the most during our stay in Kenya - and yes, we felt extreemly welcome whereever we went)
More about jambo: jambo actually means "has anything bad happened?", to which you reply "Si jambo" (no, nothing bad has happened). If you're gretting meany; hatu jambo, if being greeted by many, you reply: situ jambo! Mostly jambo is though used as a plane hello, and shouting 'jambo, jambo!' everywhere we went, was great fun. according to us, at least.
Habari Ghani (or Habari Yako) appearently means how are you?, to which one could reply with  simple thumbs up, much used by the locals in Taita. (mostly we got this question in Egnlish though, sounding something like: Houwwwaayooouuuu?? in a highpitched tone, coming fromt he children running after us.)

But back to The Lion King, which could also be known as The Simba King.
Because yes, Simba means lion. Nala, on the other hand, means bald on your forehead. We're not sure this is true though, the pupils teaching us this might have tricked us. That would mean we're all pumbas - someone who doesn't know very much.
Remember the cool tree from the Lion King movie, the one Rafiki is chillin' around? We saw plany of those, the Boabab trees. (known as monkey trees in Finnish) and while driving from Taita Hills to Nairobi, we would joke that it's like driving through all the movies we've seen about Africa: The Lion King, Out of Africa, Tarzan (well, not driving through, this one we walked through, scroll down to read more!) Wah Wah, and a lot of documentaries about Africa.


Something else that is still good to know, is Dio -yes, and hapana - no.Safari means travel, journey, and njema means good. Safari njema! is therefore somthing we got quite familiar with at the airport. Other airplane terminology is kutoka - exit and sukuma - push. These two words could be stared at during the 8 hour flight, to and from Nairobi, so ithey're pretty stuck in my head.

But that's pretty much the limit of my kiswahili-knowledge. We really tried to learn, reading every sign we could. Sadly, in the Taita area, many of the signs where in Kitaita (tribe language) and in Nairobi, they all where in English. And online-dictionairis won't do much good, they all tell me different things! So don'r mind looking the words mentioned in this post up, since it might not make any sence. But this is what we where thought while in Kenya, and this is how our conversations went:

Kenyan: Jambo mzungu!
Mzungu (us, that is): Sijambo!
K: Karibu Kenya!
Mzungu: Asante sana!
K: Habari Ghani?
M: *thumb up*: Kwaheri!
K: Kwaheri!

...pretty fluent, right? ;)

oh, and by the way: kwaheri means goodbye. 

So Kwaheri to y'all! 

And yes, kiswahili-expert reading this, you may correct me.

//H