One of the
last stops on this fabulous journey, was Tanzania. Located in East Africa, next
to Kenya and Uganda, its one of hotter countries weve been. Arriving there, we were confronted with a
very special language. The Swahili language. The country has two official
languages; English is the first one, Swahili the second language. Swahili is
seen as the unifying language of the country between different tribes, so being
able to speak this language is very important for some of the inhabitants of
this country. Of course, we dont speak Swahili, so we hired a translator. He
was one of the locals, and could speak both English and Swahili very fluently.
It gave us the chance to have some conversations with these people, without
making fools of ourselves for trying to speak a language we cant. During the week in Tanzania, our translator
stayed with us all the time. The other locals knew him, and thus he could take
us with him to one of his tribes. They
told us, the tribe language is learned first, then Swahili and English. The younger people, like the students (who we
met during a short visit in one of the universities of Tanzania), mix both
these languages ( English and Swahili) to a new language. Its very strange to
hear them speaking. From one of the
teachers, we learned that lots of languages are spoken in Tanzania. During the
colonial period of Tanzania, even German was widely spoken. This practice
though is already forgotten. Not far
from the borders of Rwanda and Burundi, French is spoken. Even Portuguese is spoken. Its a variety of languages we could appreciate
a lot, during our visit in our 11th week. During the week, we learned to speak a word
or two in Swahili. Mimi nina utalii, for example. It means Im a tourist, in
Swahili.
