Kiswahili, Buhumbi and the Marketplace

I am glad that I took a cross cultural communications class at Trinity. It has helped open my eyes to alot of things here. Just by beginning to study Kiswahili it is very apparent that respect and the correct greetings are very important in this culture. It is essential to make sure that no one that you talk to feels that they have been slighted and have not been given a sufficient amount of your time spent making sure everything is okay. Hujambo basically means "I assume nothing is wrong with you" to reply "Sijambo" meaning "yes nothing is wrong with me". In addition there are many different ways to inquire this, to many people, about someone or about many people. Then there are many ways to ask how you are doing. For example "Habari Yako"- How are you, then "Habari Zako" tell me all your news, or "Habari za tangu jana" How are you since yesterday. I have a page of different Habari's!! Wow- things such as greetings are very particular, showing their importance. As well as important greetings for elders ( I say Shikamoo to my elders- which brings a smiley response of suprise at me as a white person!!).

To add a few things to what has been going on here: I haven't begun actual "work" but am becoming accustomed to the culture and language here. My supervisor is gone to a regional meeting for the week, so it is my week to study. On friday though, we went to look at the village Bahumbi, where they are weighing children once a month (and sometimes once a week in excitement) to record on charts. If children are in the green part of a chart, created by WHO (world health organization) then the goal has been met, and theoretically the child should be healthy. I met the executive of this project and was toured around and led to sign multiple guest books, and the women weighing their children were told in Sakuma (another language) to "hurry up and put your baby in the scale and show this lady what we do here" (I learned later the women were just nonchalantly sitting around and the executive really had nothing to do with the clinic, but it is her place to be in charge, and therefore made herself very important and showed me around, seeming that she had everything to do in the world with this project.) I do not wish to disrespect her as this is the culture here, but back home someone who "pretended" to have everything good to do with a project but really hadn't done much with it at all might be kicked in the butt (or maybe not??).
Anyways, the next thing I would like to share is about the market. It runs every day but I went down on saturday with Winnie, who is the cook here. I caused her undo heartache because of being a white person, and received many insults that she was trying to get me deals (she did get me fair prices though...although when i summed it up later i felt extremely guilty about how cheap it was). She had to do shopping for her own cooking though, and I tagged along to see how it is done. Of course every vendor told her a price to ask me, and she told them the fair price- they didn't put up a fight and were gracious to me except for one young man who insulted her and served to dampen the mood. Needless to say I feel compelled to go to the market on my own next time- lets see how well I will do!
Here is a list of what I bought. $1 (US) is about 1328 Tanz.Shillings:

Straw hat: 1000
Pinapple: 500
6 green peppers 200
6 big carrots 500
.5 kg onions 350
.5 kg beans 400
6 tomatoes 200
1 watermelon 300
3 cucumbers 200
1 kg rice 750
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4400 TSH = 3.35 USD
YIKES!! Think about that for a minute. I don't know what it should imply but that is astounding.