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San Diego safari

By Alan on July 14, 2010

I cracked up this morning when I heard on the news that San Diego Zoo’s “Wild Animal Park” is going to change its name to the San Diego Zoo “Safari Park.” It’s hilarious to me because in Swahili a “safari” is a journey; sure, driving around looking at animals is technically a journey, but really [...]

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Posted in Kenya, Miscellaneous | Tagged Animals, Beach Boys, California, Kenya, Language, Music, Pacific Beach, PB, safari, San Diego, Surfing, Swahili, waves, Zoo | 2 Responses

Aterere in Star Wars

By Alan on May 7, 2010

Here’s a bit of funny trivia for you: what language is the funny co-pilot speaking in this Star Wars clip? Surprise!! It’s Kikuyu, a language spoken in Kenya. I don’t understand what he’s saying, but after living in Kenya for a few years you can eventually distinguish between lots of languages… he apparently says something [...]

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Posted in Kenya | Tagged Aterere, funny, Kenya, Kikuyu, Language, Star Wars, Uthiru, Video | 8 Responses

Chanting in a Dead Language

By Alan on February 11, 2010

There’s some Ethiopian Orthodox holiday going on right now. Nobody’s explained it to me, but most of my Ethiopian colleagues have sworn off milk and meat until April, and there’s a man chanting over a loudspeaker in some church next to ILRI’s campus for hours at a time. I asked someone at lunch today what [...]

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Posted in Travel | Tagged Addis, Addis Ababa, Amharic, Ethiopia, Ge'ez, ILRI, Language, Linux, Religion, work | 3 Responses

Niko Poa

By Alan on October 14, 2009

I am realizing there is a problem with my Swahili: it’s too cool. Niko juu tu sana (I’m just too high up). It’s probably something that most Kenyan youths experience when talking to parents, teachers, or other adults in their lives. When I was living in Tala my limited interactions with adults were usually conducted [...]

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Posted in Kenya | Tagged ILRI, Kenya, Kikamba, Kikuyu, Language, Nairobi, Poa, sheng, Swahili | 2 Responses

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Alan Orth

Lover of Linux, death metal and Indian food, blogs about living and working in Nairobi, Kenya.

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