Saturday 19 March 2011

Language Learning: Things Jonny didn’t tell you Part 1!

1.3    Dad's Blog Post no.4

Although Jonny has been in Tanzania for about six months, he's only had Swahili language lessons for about four of them, so I didn't really expect him to show any fluency – just a few greetings and pleasantries. What I got was a shock!

He can really enter into conversation with a wide variety of people in different situations.

At the kindergarten Jonny and Arne lead three groups of children in PE for an hour. This requires command of numerous instructions in Swahili, leading the children in some responsive singing, and interacting with them. It's great to see how enthusiastically the children respond.

In the Kahunda village (approx 13,000 inhabitants) most people walk everywhere and no one has a car. This means that people know and talk to one another! When you're passing someone, there is usually an exchange of greeting – and frequently people want to stop Jonny and ask how he is – and who this other white man is. Since he's involved with some of the children in the village, and he's one of a handful of white people, it seems that a large proportion of the people know him. And most of those that know him are delighted that he can engage with them in their own language!

One of the real highlights was to see Jonny run a Bible Study at the high school for teenagers. Although only a couple of them spoke English with any fluency, Jonny had done a lot of preparation on relevant passages – dealing with the subject of "The Truth" - and they really seemed to embrace what was being presented to them.

[On the other hand, there is a real cultural desire to please – which can sometimes even mean being economical with the truth, if a friendship is thereby preserved.]

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