All is well

I didn’t have class at all today, so my day was spent studying Swahili, trying and failing to cash traveler’s cheques and baking brownies. All in all a good day, but not one that provides much to ponder.

As I was studying Swahili, though, I realized how much I like the optimism of the language. “Habari?”, the greeting that means essentially, “How are you?”, has only one of two responses “nzuri” (“good/well”), or “nzuri sana” (“very good/well”). One responds “nzuri” no matter what. Granted, “nzuri” can be followed by “lakini”, meaning “but…”, but for the most part, everyone just responds that they are well.

This reminds me of a conversation that I had with Asheri, the man who works for Arcadia here in Tanzania. He said that he liked that I always smiled because, in his words, “Why would we not smile? We are not slaves, we are not prisoners, we are free and we should be happy! When you have all of that, there should be no reason not to smile!” It’s hard to argue with that.

This picture is from the Maasai boma that we visited last Sunday. The internet is in pretty good shape today so I figured I would satisfy everyone who has been looking for pictures, even though is unrelated to today's post. Enjoy!