"Do white people drink milk?" "Yes, I think they do."

Or as Alice said to me, Alice who has lived in Nkhata bay for the last 4 years, who speaks Tonga almost fluently and who is married to Kumbu (a local celebrity there),

"Oh cource we do, don't you know this is how we keep our skin so white??"

We had to laugh. We were walking back from the Nkhata Bay hospital. One of the volunteers had strange blister growths on her hands and feet and we took her to the hospital. It really is funny to hear locals talking because they can sometimes say the most random comical things. And not for one moment do I think the sayer of this was truely ignorant of the fact that white people drink milk. It was just comic and funny to make that statement in the moment.

Once, while in a dala dala in Tanzania the bus conductor leaned out and asked one of the ladies walking "mama unene*, nenda Bububu?" Fat mother, are you going to Bububu? KiSwahili is rude and direct in its simpleness. You gotta love language in Africa.

*nene may be the wrong word for fat, but it is something like this. My dictionary is far from me!

Manzi, madzi, maji

I thought that I might do a bit of a linguistic exploration...

...with the word water. In isiXhosa the word for water is amanzi. In chichewa the is word for water is amadzi (commonly said as madzi). In swahili, the word for water is maji.

I am sure you now see similarities. Xhosa is classified (along with several other languages such as Zulu, Sotho, Shona, Chichewa) as a Bantu language. Now for a bit of interesting info. Swahili is not the "original", "traditional" language of the Swahili coast (Northern Mozambique up until Southern Somalia). It is a mixture of the multitude of Bantu languages that used to exist in these areas, with Arabic. This is why I do not like the word traditional. What was traditional 50 years ago may not have been traditional 150 years ago.

In my third year when studying African Languages we discussed the issue of creating standardised languages that all people in a country can learn in. In South African we have 11 official languages but English still retains the highest prestige. The solution that we came up with (yes, us few people who want to change the world!) was that we needn't drop the status of English (it is after all the world wide language of... everything). We just ned to ensue that the other languages are elevated to the same level. So that if Sotho is you home language you do in fact have the option of learning in your mother tongue as well as English.

My lecturer then pointed out Tanzania and the University of Dar es Salam. One the the biggest obstacles in RSA tertiary education institutions is that students who have not gone fantastic English first language schools or indeed have but have received a substandard education is English terminology, struggle to grasp subject specific jargon at University. My lecturer pointed to the fact that if you want to study at the University of Dar, you need to be fluent in both English and Swahili. Which is great, elevating the local language as well as the international language. In South Africa we only have English Universities (with a few offering Afrikaans credits).

But then there is the fact that Swahili has in fact wiped out local dialects and languages. So is Swahili really local?

It is an interesting topic and one that can be argued round and round.

So back to the topic of similarities.

In Xhosa, when the speaker wants to refer to being in something, going to something/somewhere, or is already at the place, you need to add a "-ni" at the end. Therefore, to say "in/at/to the water" you would say e-manzi-ni (the 'e' replaces the 'a' so amanzi becomes emanzini).

This is the same in Sawhili. To say in/at/to the water, you say: "majini".

I am sure the same applies for Chichewa.

Madzi amphunga

- rice
- water
- salt
- sugar

1. in a pot put in the rice that you will be cooking for your meal. Add water, but add more than what you would usually use to cook the rice. We need excess water for Madzi amphunga. Add salt to taste

2. bring rice to boil and cook for about 5-7 minutes (not until the rice is fully cooked - it can be 10 minutes, but rice must still need to cook more)

3. at your chosen time, pour off most of the excess water into a container big enough to hold the water.

4. return rice to heat and finish cooking. We are finished with the rice. Now we turn to the Madzi (the water)

5. the water will be white and starchy. To this add sugar to taste. The water is not meant to be very sweet. The small amount of salt and sugar bring the taste out.

6. i prefer this drink warm to hot but some people drink it cold.

7. honey can be substituted for sugar

(Malawian recipes)