Comments for Staying for Tea

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by “Why’s this so good?” Aaron Ausland on language, food, humility, and humor | Reporting 1 Blog

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:06:40 +0000

[...] blog, titled The Culturally-Sensitive Butt, is really just an exploration of language, misunderstandings, cultural differences, laughing at [...]

Comment on About the Author by “Why’s this so good?” Aaron Ausland on language, food, humility, and humor | Reporting 1 Blog

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:06:38 +0000

[...] traveler and development practitioner Aaron Ausland keeps a blog called Staying for Tea. In this blog he builds off of his experiences from living in [...]

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by Joseph

Joseph — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:20:23 +0000

Excellent linguistic info on Kiswahili. Thanks! That’s a good point about German colonizers spreading Kiswahili through specific linear routes. I was referring more to Nyerere’s nationalization projects, combined with Ujamaa villagization, that launched Tanzania on its literacy program with the creation of thousands of schools with Kiswahili as the medium which was a major project of his. Nyerere did undoubtedly spread Kiswahili in much more profound ways than German colonizers and made it the national language (together with English). I’ve met many many older generation people in Tanzania who barely speak it at all, and its because they weren’t exposed to the language as a child. They were too old to have enjoyed free education under Nyerere or not from the coast. It is interesting that there are different exo-glossic influences on Kiswahili depending on which neighboring country you are in. That’s interesting that there are only three non-Bantu languages in Tanzania. Do you know the third? I’m shocked at this because many local languages do not even come close to sounding like Kiswahili, and would be curious about how so many distinct languages formed from a single parent but sound absolutely nothing like each other. I’ve learned a bit of Kinyambo, Kimaasai, Kimeru, Kiarusha, and Kimaasai. The latter two are very similar (nothing like Swahili probably because of their Hamidic roots….maybe Kiarusha is the third non-Bantu?). Regarding the use of Kiswahili in primary schools, this is a highly contentious issue in Tanzania, as students then immediately shift to English as their secondary school medium….there is no segue. This reproduces social stratification as those students whose parents can afford English medium schools go there for primary school and are most likely speaking English much more at home. Kiswahili is rarely spoken in the home in more rural areas (many people still know it to some extent because they’ve been to primary school), thus presenting an even more stark disadvantage for students who much learn Kiswahili then English in order to progress through school and enter university. There is a burgeoning movement in Tanzania to make both primary and secondary school Kiswahili-medium, and, based on the abhorrent matriculation rates in Tanzanian public schools, support this movement. Thoughts?

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by Barry Sesnan

Barry Sesnan — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:24:33 +0000

Just a point about Swahili in Tanzania – it was spread through Tanzania not by Nyerere but by the German colonisers as early as the 1890s. before then it spread up the slave trade routes into Congo. In Tanzania it has been the primary school medium of instruction since way back then. It was also then that the spelling was standardised into its present beautiful phonetic form in the Latin alphabet (it had once been written in Arabic style script). Many many countries envy Tanzania (and, in practice, Kenya) for having a single African unifying language. For countries speaking mainly Bantu languages (only three of Tanzania’s languages are not Bantu, the biggest being Maasai and Luo) Swahili is familiar and very easy to speak and understand. The challenge for Bantu speakers is more at the vocabulary level as it derives many of its abstract, governmental and scientific words from Arabic (where English derives them from French Latin and Greek), In DR Congo, (also a majority Bantu-language country) up to half the population understand Swahili (and it is one of four national languages and a school language). There the new words come from French. So instead of afisi (office) they say biro (bureau) .

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by Bill Newbrough

Bill Newbrough — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 03:22:36 +0000

“…a couple of words and a bowl of strange food do not a culture make” says it very well. Having a long-used brain & being language-deprived by an upbringing in USA, it’s not possible for me to duplicate Joseph’s achievement in Kiswahili. Most of the local people I meet when traveling want to practice their English, so there’s little opportunity to learn more than a few words. It’s when they have good English skills and there’s lots of time to talk that my absorption of their culture is most gratifying.

My language deprivation is not as severe as most Americans. The best advantage came from studying Latin in the 9th grade with a teacher who had dedicated most of her life to it. Spanish taught by native speakers as a junior & senior in high school & as an undergraduate in liberal arts.primed me for spending a half hour a day for a year talking with my Puerto Rican secretary in her language. Yet subsequent traveling extensively in Mexico & Central America were not enough to make me “fluent” in my second language.

That’s why I envy many Lao who speak American English effectively and progress with it quickly. It’s at least their fourth spoken language: As toddlers, the first language they learn is their village or ethnic language; soon they learn Thai because they watch Bangkok television. When they go to school, they learn Laotian. Some who go to college or university learn French Vietnamese or, increasingly, Mandarin. The result. it seems, is a powerful ability to communicate about their cultures and understand mine on many.levels.

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by Bill Newbrough

Bill Newbrough — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 02:14:44 +0000

Plenty. Evidenced by requiring 2 servings to figure out what I was eating, and it tasted good even then. Because there were about 6 of us eating it, there was no opportunity for a 4th ball of sticky rice saturated by the blood and drippings.

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by stayingfortea

stayingfortea — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:46:23 +0000

Thank you for your comment Joseph. They are thoughtful and thought provoking as well. Not being able to remember if I was in Chad or Uganda may point more to the negative effects of growing older coupled with traveling 50% of the year. But, yes, point taken – let’s not forget the superficiality of learning a few token words and trying some unique foods – a couple of words and a bowl of strange food do not a culture make. We should be careful not to be overly self-congratulatory about our efforts to engage local culture, but rather should be humbled by just how shallow a slice we can hope to experience even with our best efforts and intentions. I’ve spend nearly 7 years living in Latin America and I’m still totally hopeless half the time! Thanks for reading; thanks again for commenting; I hope to hear from you again.

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by Joseph

Joseph — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:17:29 +0000

I thoroughly enjoyed this post. Thank you. Especially the part about Kiswahili, the only language beside English in which I’m fluent. I have spent considerable amounts of my life learning it while living in Tanzania, and its easily the best skill I’ve devoted (lots of) time to. I’ve taught American students in Tanzania, and spend considerable energy conveying the importance of learning even a bit of it. Working in a Tanzanian school is probably the best/most horrific way to learn about language politics, as the school system there is split between Kiswahili and English with zero indigenous language representation. Kiswahili, while endoglossic, was still imported from Zanzibar as a nationalization tool by Nyerere. So in many ways, its not “their” language (their being 95% of Tanzanians). Perhaps that’s why Kiswahili and other lingua franca type languages straddling that gray area between indigenous and not are so interesting. They serve as real challenges to our understandings of what is “local” and “foreign,” “authentic” and “imported,” and, depending on you politics and experiences, “good” and “bad.” The dualities are broken down, and much more meaningful questions arise in their places: What power does the language add or subtract from an identity? Whose and what interests does language serves versus another and in what space? Kiswahili is so useful, but its generally not the vernacular language in most Tanzania communities (unless you are near Dar or in Zanzibar). People are much more impressed when I speak a few words of their indigenous mother tongue (124 of them in Tanzania alone) than they are in hearing complete fluent soliloquies in Kiswahili. Your comment about not being able to remember if you were in Chad or Uganda, two extremely different landscapes, cultures, and lexical formations, points to the negative effects of learning only a few token words in dozens of languages on one’s commitment to the specificity of place and the unique character of every square inch of our planet. To be universally qualified to function on a rudimentary language level anywhere comes with a price, a lesson I’ve learned from knowing only Kiswahili and none of the 125 indigenous languages of Tanzania. Thanks once again for the thought-provoking post!

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by stayingfortea

stayingfortea — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:11:03 +0000

How many Beer Laos had you had? I think Joe Rogan has a job for you. Thanks for sharing Bill.

Comment on The Culturally-Sensitive Butt: by stayingfortea

stayingfortea — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:07:53 +0000

Your not French are you? Pet Peeves aside, we all have to keep trying, bumbling forward, hope we succeed in communicating where we fail at grammar. Thanks for helping to keep us a little less ugly out there.