Friday, September 12, 2008

a bit o' fun

Hey friends family and whoever else might be around and reading,

In honor of Sarah leaving me here and the first year rapping up (September 23rd I will have been here for a full year!) I just wanted to dedicate a blog to some fun stuff and forget about the nitty-gritty for now. I am sitting at the Teacher’s Trainer’s College in Kasungu and having trouble seeing the mountain which the town is named for because of all the haze and dust in the air. When the rain is not around everyone’s favorite pastime is to burn garbage. Therefore Malawi gradually turns into what you would expect from Mecico city or LA only not as grey – just hazy. By the by, the aforementioned mountain comes from a Chichewa word. If you would like I will let you guess what this word means ….. no guesses? Well when you put the prefix ku- in front of a word that means little. –sungu comes from the noun which mean pimple or zit. Kasungu, then literally means little pimple. If you have seen the mountain then you can gather where they get the name from.
Here is a list of my favorite Malawian names – I am not kidding I know all of these people. Keep in mind that most of the time “L”s are “R”s are interchangeable. This first group is funny from the exchange of the letters and after that are just plain funny. Gradess, Gelsom, Lowlence, Mollis, Halord , Grolia, and Frolence. Then we have Esnart, Eveless, Loyder, Loveness, Goodluck, Mel Gibson, Giraffe, Rejected Stone, Obvious, Washington D.C., Whisky, Archangel, Henery and his twin brother Henury (from Ali’s class), Nashion, Diet, Gribetta, Funny, Happy, and then my student who on the same test spelled his name Alinaphy and Alinafy.
At a future date I will have a list of my favorite words that they say when the letters are mixed up (e.g. do you think Barack Obama will win this eLection?). I do want to say that I am not making fun of my friends here, I just find this amusing and thought u might want to see another aspect of the culture that we experience here.
Life has been good (aside from Sarah leaving and adjustments there) and I am really excited to come home at the end of November and see everyone before coming back for my last year!

1 comment:

Javabeing said...

Are you really coming home?!?!? That's awesome! We can't wait to see you!
~EMily