Jina Langu ni Martin...

Naitwa Martin. My name is Martin; I'm called Martin. Now that isn't the sum total of four days, but it's part of it. We're going at a fast pace here, covering three tenses in three days "a" "me" and "li". Kiswahili uses prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. And there are 18 different noun classes! I'm reassured at every turn that at the end of three months I will have mastered the grammar -- I just hope the vocabulary and some fluency come with it. (That is, I hope that my Kiswahili is better than my French -- I carry on a perfectly fine correspondence with two French friends with me writing in English and their responding in French.)

I have a great teacher, whose name I still butcher. Unfortunately, his name is too close to the name of our parish in Dodoma, which means I'm forever calling him "Airport"!

There is a group of lay Salvatorian volunteers from Germany who are finishing a one-month crash course; they head out on Saturday. Also leaving on Saturday are a German family (parents and two young sons) who are evangelists from some "free church" group. That will leave, really, four of us: a Spiritan priest from Nigeria headed to Arusha, Tanzania (said to be the quickest growing city on the continent); a Japanese evangelical, a young man headed to work in the southern part of the country, and a Korean woman, preparing to work in Dar es Salaam.

The Internet situation is not quite what I'd hoped. I'd really hoped to post the comments of the emeritus bishop of Dodoma, Bishop Joseph Mathias Isuju. I taped him speaking about how OLQP is the fulfillment of his dreams for Dodoma. It's a great piece, the middle part of which made it up to youtube --you can see it on the sidebar-- but the third and final part is golden. At somepoint, you'll be able to see it.

I haven't been off the campus this entire week, and there's not so much to photograph here, so haven't tried to post photos. I did take a picture on my iphone of a Redemptorist --a priest from Bihar working in Kenya (living off campus with the Fransalians, so I forgot he's among our number)-- a picture of him with a chameleon from the garden. There are such things in these parts (unlike, I think, Dodoma) as well as some nasty snakes (cobras). But as I told the folks very worried about this: The chances of being in a crash with a bus or truck in this country are, I'm very certain, much greater than poisonous snakes, etc.

Now I'm off to study the "li" tense. I'm picking up a bike from Bart Murphy this weekend; that will give me a chance to get some exercise and make my way occasionally into town--about six miles I reckon on the back road (See the above for why I'd take the back road rather than the Morogoro-Dar es Salaam road!). Oh, one thing I forgot to write in my earlier post about him:He's the cousin of Liam O'Connell, an Irish Jesuit whom I've gotten to know because he spends summers in Santa Barbara. Liam was a great host when I visited Limerick two years ago.

That's the scoop from here.

Not quite, though: I received a report from the Detroit Province Jesuits about the donations to OLQP during the past month. Thanks so much to folks for their care for the young folks of Dodoma.

God bless.