OPTIONAL ADD-ON: 1-WEEK SWAHILI COURSE

A one week intensive Swahili Course will kick start your project and help you to enhance your Africa experience! (It will also increase your enjoyment of The Lion King - Makuna matata! [No worries!]

JAMBO! You'll hear that all day long in Kenya, so Hello!  and Karibu (welcome) to Kenya, the 'Cradle of Humanity'.

PROJECT OVERVIEW
Before commencing your project in Kenya, you would find it very useful to learn a little of the local language. We have set up a One-Week Intensive Swahili Course, which will run for the week prior to commencing your Project.

After the course, when you try your new-found language skills, you'll find that your Kenyan colleagues will be very keen to give you a helping hand. Every new word is seen as a small triumph! Learning a little Swahili will enrich your time here immeasurably, as you find out things about the culture and the way of life that someone without language skills simply would not have access to.

The cost of the 1-Week Swahili Course is £245 and includes your food (excl. lunch) and accommodation.  (If you're not doing another project with us, you can still do this course - Price: £475)

SWAHILI COURSE CONTENT:
The course will take place immediately prior to your placement, and is a one week intensive course. The course will be held at the Airways Travel institute which was established in 1995. The Institute is recognised by the Ministry of Science and Technology. It’s also an IATA and a City and Guilds Centre. The course will be given by a local teacher - and all the teachers have either degrees or diplomas. The course itself will be about 5 or 6 hours a day.

All lessons will be set at your level of expertise and will also take into account what type of voluntary placement you will be doing. So you may either be on your own or, if other volunteers are doing the same placement as you and wanting to learn Swahili tailored to their placement, we will put you altogether. If you prefer to get individual attention, or you're the only volunteer on a particular course, we can arrange private one-to-one lessons at your accommodation.

The lessons will include:

• Basic Swahili
• Salutations
• Sentence construction
• Question asking and answering
• Commonly used vocabulary
• Written and spoken Swahili
• Basic tenses, adverbs, adjectives and phrases
• Swahili culture and norms

They'll use visual aids like videos, PowerPoint presentations and also some locals will visit so you can practice the language and have chats with them.

COURSE LENGTH: The one week intensive course runs throughout the year except public holidays.

LEVELS OF STUDY: Classes are available at various levels from beginners to advanced, so no matter what your level of Swahili is, there will be a class to suit you. We can offer beginner, elementary, intermediate or advanced classes.

COURSE MATERIALS: You may be required to purchase some text books for the course. These will be available for you to buy once you are out there.  

COURSE CREDITS AND QUALIFICATIONS: At the end of the course, you may have to sit an exam and on completion of the course and exam, if you pass, you will receive a Certificate issued by the Institute stating that you have completed the course, to what level, and the duration in hours of the course you have completed.

ABOUT SWAHILI
Swahili (also called Kiswahili) is a Bantu language the most widely spoken language of sub-Saharan Africa. Swahili is the mother tongue of the Swahili people (or Waswahili) who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastlines from southern Somalia as far south as Mozambique's border region with Tanzania.

It is spoken by tens of millions in two countries, Kenya and Tanzania, where it is an official language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992 and declared it an official language in 2005. Swahili or closely related other languages are also used by relatively small numbers of speakers in Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

THE LION KING!
One of the most famous phrases in Swahili is "hakuna matata" from Disney's "The Lion King" and "Timon and Pumbaa" cartoon series. It means "no problem" or "no worries" (literally: "there are no problems"). This phrase is often used by East Africans as an appeal to Western tourists. Disney's characters Simba and Rafiki also owe their names to Swahili, meaning 'lion' and 'friend' respectively. Nala means "gift."

Also Pumbaa means "careless" and Shenzi (one of the hyenas) means "barbarous". The African American holiday of Kwanzaa derives its name from two Swahili words kwanza which means "first" or "beginning." and zaa which means "bear fruit". Safari (meaning "journey") is another Swahili word that has spread worldwide.

In Disney's 1994 movie, a meerkat and a warthog named Timon and Pumbaa, respectively, teach a lion cub named Simba that he should forget his troubled past and concentrate only on the present. In reference to the two characters, the phrase had the added implication of a complete lack of ambition. Timon and Pumbaa used the song "Hakuna Matata," with music by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice, to teach Simba. It was nominated for Best Song at the 1995 Academy Awards, and was later ranked the 99th (out of 100) best song in movie history by the American Film Institute. The production team that they picked up the term "Hakuna Matata" from a tour guide while on safari in Tanzania.

The "Hakuna Matata" song can be heard briefly in the 1995 Pixar film Toy Story, in which it was played on Andy's car while Molly sees Woody and Buzz Lightyear through one of the sideview mirrors.

The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sahel ساحل: sawahil سواحل meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language").

Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:

• saa moja asubuhi   ('hour one morning')   7:00 a.m.

• saa tisa usiku   ('hour nine night')   3:00 a.m.

• saa mbili usiku   ('hour two evening')   8:00 p.m.

More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and sunset machweo.

ACCOMMODATION:
Your accommodation will vary, depending on which part of town you're placed in, and which project you've signed on for.

My family were fantastic and went beyond their duties to make me welcome. Njeri [Travellers' Mombasa Manager] was always helpful should I need anything." Caroline Chadwick, on her placement in Mombasa

The Tusks, Mombasa's most famous landmark

Volunteers standing on the Equator!

OPTIONAL ADD-ONS


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION