'Be' ing

Some days my senses are so alive it almost hurts. I feel I’m floating, slow motion in a parallel universe-savouring every detail... the women gliding past elegantly balancing buckets on the heads, their babies peeping out from behind where they’ve been safely strapped with a colourful chitenje, wide smiles, the smell of burning plastic mingled with fried potatoes, a waft of cow manure, the distant sound of bicycle bells mingled with voices and children laughing, each grain of sand in my shoes, deeply inhaling the cool dusty air.
I feel invisible ...until a kid I know runs up to me with a raucous laugh for a ‘high five!’ and the next thing I know I’m ‘high fiving’ most of the 40 odd children on their way home from school. I smile at the familiarity of their faces- their exuberance as they run past single file – jumping to slap my outstretched hand.

I know...my blogs have slowed- probably as the culture shock wears off and I struggle to describe the nuances of day to day life. I struggle with the fact that I do not yet have a formal ‘job’ and yet in another sense Im relishing the opportunity—perhaps the first I have ever really taken to just ‘be’. Not ‘cope’, ‘perform’, ‘strive’ or ‘produce’ ...just be. Africa is teaching me lessons Ive never taken the time to learn before.

How’s language going? Well- Swa- said in Chiyawo this morning
‘right now, rina can speak Ciyawo very well’.
I took that as both a compliment and a gentle reminder that I really do have obviously ‘good’ and appallingly ‘bad’ days when it comes to ‘language performance ability’. But although it may be 2 steps back- its usually followed by 3 steps forward. Like realising, for example, that the words ‘this’ and ‘that’ are not only specific to the class of the noun it is describing – but there are also different variations of the word indicating the speakers distance from the noun in time in space. In short the English words ‘this’ and ‘that’ are probably represented in Ciyawo by about 50 similar sounding words. I dunno- i haven’t counted- but it was a huge break through for me.

It’s hard- but Im in awe of the language. Every sentence ‘matches’. Someone described it like music- if you play a note- there is a chord that goes with it for the particular key- so, in Ciyawo, the noun in the sentence determines the prefixes to many of the words for a particular tense. Write me a comment if you actually read this far. I have started (another) new language learning method where I get my helper to record a simple story about something in her life, or I try and tell her a story in Ciyawo (Lots of help) and she records what I should have said – then we listen to it lots together and write out all the new words and discuss why they suddenly disappeared into another word when the tense changed...and then I listen to it lots when she’s not around, and the next day we practise the new words from the story by taking turns making different sentences with them which helps me grasp the range of meaning. Its relaxed and we both get to be creative and Im learning lots about the Yawo culture through the stories!

Ok- ive written an essay, sorry. Making up for less posts recently.

So, comments- what is with all the advertising comments?! I’m not clicking ‘here’. No way. It could set off a bomb or something!
What is maize? Yeah- i wasn’t sure before I came here either- but its corn that isn’t sweet. Speaking of which- Im gonna plant some sweet corn on the weekend! Yay