Bouble

Lichinga accommodation complexities surfaced again today. My colleague Mbumba and I had to spend far too long finding a spare room that I could shift to. We knocked on several guesthouse doors, to limited avail. Eventually we found a vacant room in a house thanks to the effervescent housekeeper Hortênsia who greeted us. And I had time to snap the old and decrepit colonial era cinema in the centre of Lichinga, which is looking incredibly grim.

In the evening I kept up with my planned online Swahili lesson with Yusuf, even though I’d rather just be focusing on speaking Portuguese here in Mozambique. My Swahili level continues to be woeful and I’ve purported to be learning it for over two years.

We revisited the expressions relating to marriage. When talking about a man, the term translates as ‘I marry’. For a woman, it is always a different passive verb that translates as ‘to be married’. This reflects the role of a man in Swahili culture in that he is expected to initiate and facilitate the process, including payment of the bride price. The woman is expected to wait for the man to come and ‘marry her’.

I asked Yusuf if the more passive term should ever be applied to a married man and he confirmed it would be offensive. Apparently it’s rude to phrase it that way for a man as ‘it’s what you say to a gay’, presumably as some sort of derogatory remark.

Both women’s and gay rights are alive and well in the Swahili speaking world. Do we really think that men ‘facilitate’ the marriage process? It’s far more likely to be a collection of aunts, mothers, sisters, female cousins and the bride herself who make it happen. Nothing succeeds in this world without women running around triangulating the linear thought patterns of men.

As we are doing our lessons online Yusuf is live pasting information to me in the chat, which is useful. Today he posted the bewildering array of grammatical advice below. When I have learnt Latin languages, grammar has often been my favourite area (I was a strange child). However, I looked at this and couldn’t compute. And then I couldn’t be bothered. My brain is full. There’s no room at the inn.

Verb Ending in a Bouble [sic] Vowel

The passive form of verbs ending in the double vowels (‘-aa’, ‘-ua’ or ‘-oa’) is built by inserting either ‘-liw-‘ or ‘-lew-’ between the two final vowels. If the first vowel of the verb stem is ‘a’, ‘i’, the infix ‘-liw’- is inserted. If the first vowel of the verb stem is ‘e’ or ‘o’, the infix ‘-lew-’ is inserted. 

Examples: 
-fua,nunua,fungua,zaa,angalia,chukua.(liw)
-Toa,oa,bomoa,ondoa.(lew)