Beginning Shule ya Lugha – language school

Last Monday, upon returning from Nyamaguku, my mom called Father Edward, the director at the language school, to find out if our classmate had arrived and we would start school. She was to arrive the following evening, but he invited us to start on the next morning anyhow, one day before Sister Maria would join us on Wednesday. Luckily, Sister Maria is familiar with Swahili, having been in Tanzania and Kenya for the past few months so we do not need to repeat the grammar lessons that we learned the day before she arrived. That first week, we finished the first lesson – actually doing every single exercise twice because one of our teachers decided to start them all over when we reached the end, something that apparently he wasn’t supposed to do. That paired with the fact that I had already learned everything we were taught made that first week of lessons go a bit slowly, which led to the creation of this doodle.

So if last week was too easy then this week may be just the opposite. Over the weekend I had been warned that I was moved to a higher class. On Monday morning I arrive, hot from the 15 minute bike ride, and find out that I am in the same class as Sister Maria and Sister Cinzia (Italian. Pronounce cheen-tsee-ah.) – a very fun and energetic person who seems to have a good grasp on the language already. We are slowing her down, really. She has already done lesson five and we just went back to lesson four – skipping two lessons for us but I guess there was no other class to put her in.

I feel like I am making good progress, though. Monday morning I was intimidated because I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do. Sister Maria and Sister Cinzia both seemed far better at speaking and understanding the language than I was. And they are, but even just one day later I feel like I am improving. I know that I have a long way to go and I also know that both of my classmates can speak and understand spoken Swahili better than I can right now because they’ve both been here for the past few months or a year, but I am no longer worried about getting left behind. I feel good about my progress and know that it will just take practice speaking and listening to catch up Sister Maria, not in grammar (we are at the same level in grammar) but in fluency. So for now, I continue going to school all morning with catch-up classes in the afternoon to be at sister Cinzia’s level and then we’ll see if it isn’t more efficient to take the afternoons for myself. The time is meant for the language lab, listening to the day’s lesson on tape but I’ll have the tapes or their digital equivalent at home and I may find something more interesting and useful to fill my afternoons – save to tapes for the evening. Although I could certainly fill my life with nothing but learning the strange language, like some students that live at the language school seem to, almost never leaving the place. But I don’t need to be in Tanzania to do that: I could be anywhere. I want to be here. We’ll see what happens.