Wed 07.10
After being told that we should not leave the house early in the morning of Tuesday for the embassy because our preparation would continue with Swahili lessons we scraped our plans. When the morning came instead of 8 we started at 10:30...
The lesson itself then only lasted about an hour but it was a good first start to Swahili the language spoken by most of East-Africans. It's origins are from the Arabic and Bantu (spoken originally in the area before foreign influence) but contains English, French and even some German, which becomes most visible when trying to pronounce the words as it is exactly like German. We spent the first session learning the week days, numbers, common phrases and singing a song.
Afterward we spent the rest of the day catching up on sleep as it is extremely hard to fall asleep at night as well as catching up on food in a shopping center as it is hard to get used to the food cooked here and you never are too sure about where and how the food was cleaned and cooked.
Today we woke up to Keke a Kenyan volunteer who is responsible for cultural exchange asking us whether we wanted to tour Nairobi with him and look at the must sees such as the Parliament, state house, ministry of finance, prison for political prisoners under former president Moi (the torture house for Kibaki is currently unknown) etc... Of course we agreed and went on a 3 hour walk through Nairobi. I was most impressed however by the Goethe Institut and the Alliance Francaise in the city... you walk through the doors and you literally feel like you were in Germany or France. Additionally the fight of religious groups to missionate as many Kenyans as possible is simply mind boggling. The anglican church has a huge castle looking cmplex, the opus dei have a house a little outside the city center and the list goes on and on.
When we went back at 2 to meet with our Sahili teacher for further lessons she was not there and so we were faced with yet another afternoon that we have to fill.
Max and I are now in the internet cafe and afterwards will buy something in the next door super market while the remaining french girl (I should probably know her name by now...) is buying cards in a larger shopping center a bit further away so we are not doomed for boredom.
I will try and follow up this update with pictures that I have taken so far this friday.
Swahili word of the day!
(well phrase) unaitwa nani? = what is your name?