Welcome to Hello! Fine.

In Swahili, Kenya’s lingua franca, one of the standard greetings is the question “Hujambo?” This is a contraction of the phrase, “Huna jambo?”, meaning literally, “You don’t have any problems, do you?” The standard reply is “Sijambo!” — “I don’t have any problems!”. Most people shorten both of these even further, such that the exchange is more like: “Jambo?” … “Jambo!”.

Anyway, when Kenyan children learn English, they obviously learn (paralleling Swahili) that the standard greeting is a question-and-answer: “How are you?”–to which the reply is “Fine.” Here’s how we know:

Just as any language-learners would do, the children seem to take any greeting we give them as this (standard) one, of “How are you?” The other greeting “Hello” seems to have been assimilated into it, such that, almost every time we greet a child with a warm “Hello!”, we get back a cheerful “Yes, fine!”

This is very funny.

“Hello!”
“Fine.”

Of course, it is just one of the many idiosyncrasies of the place we are calling home for almost 6 months–the Tumaini Children’s Home, outside of Nyeri, Kenya. Apart from us 3 white Americans (and all caucasians are classed as Wazungu, or “Europeans”), the orphanage is home to about 200 children, who have been admitted for a number of reasons (the primary one being the death of parents due to AIDS), and a small handful of staff.

I (Jonathan) spent a few months here earlier this year during the formation of Hope Runs, an NGO started by some friends. Hope Runs uses running training to educate the children and provide them with opportunity, while raising global awareness of issues surrounding orphans and vulnerable children.

The three of us (Emilee, Michael, and myself) decided to come to Tumaini for a while, to keep these programs going, to start various others, and primarily to be friends to those here, while at the same time living as an extension of the intentional Christian community of which we are a part (located in Palo Alto, California).

Over the next few months, we hope to take turns writing little windows into what’s happening here, from cultural notes to (hopefully funny) stories, and also to share some photos. So stay tuned! Because “Hello! Fine.” is just the beginning of the conversation. The rest, we’re sure, will be just as nonsensical!