When I ride my bicycle around here, scores of schoolchildren say, "Good-a morning" to me. Every one of them in a group wants me to say "Good-a morning" back to them individually, sometimes more than once. Swahili words don't usually end with a consonant so adding a vowel at the end of an English word is commonly done to make it sound right. Since they are beginners in learning English, they say, "Good-a morning" any time of day.
I started to think about an interesting behavior modification experiment. I wondered if I could change verbal behavior in the kids on my bike route by using a different greeting, one that would be different from what they would ever learn in school and preferably be slang. I would use that greeting whenever I was greeted and see if they started to adopt my greeting when they saw me. I would be easy to recognize on subsequent encounters. There are just not that many very tall, bike-riding wazungu in this neighborhood. (I used to translate "wazungu" as "white folks," sort of in a non-pejorative "white folks" way. It literally means "explorers" which is what they correctly called the first Europeans they saw traipsing around their land. There is a foreigner connotation to the word. I have heard Indian-Americans [ancestors from India] and Korean-New Zealanders called wazungu even though they are not Caucasianoid. I am told that sometimes African-Americans are referred to as wazungu.) But we digress.
What could I say? Gang slang is out. Finally, I came up with the famous Hawaiian attitude/saying, "Hang loose." That has a happy ring to it and also has a cool hand wiggling gesture to go with it. Perfect.
On day one of my non-randomized and definitely not controlled experiment, I picked a group of 5 girls about 10 years old to be the first subjects. "Good-a morning." I replied with a happy "Hang loose" and did the happy hang loose gesture. They recoiled like I was a striking King Cobra. They were definitely not hanging loose.
I asked a Tanzanian friend about it. There was clearly a cultural incompatibility that I was missing. It turns out that in Tanzanian culture, the fist looks like his head and the extended thumb and pinkie look like Satan's horns. I was signaling that I was a Satan worshiper which is taken very seriously around here. Great. I am a hanging loose Satan worshiper!
I am back to the drawing board. Yo, homie? Hang loose without the gesture? I invite your suggestions. You can add comments to this blog post.
Don
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