Guide to Swahili street slang in Stone Town, Zanzibar
All photos by author.
There are at least 20 ways to answer the popular question that I never learned in formal Swahili classes. The gap between school and street could not be wider than in Stone Town, Zanzibars capital city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, that nearly 400,000 residents call home. Here, the lugha ya kisasa slang or lugha ya mitaani street language changes by the minute, mostly by young people who flip or shine an old word, or fashion a completely new one, inspired by hyper-local contexts, meanings, and realities.
I thought I knew Kiswahili. Id earned an advanced certificate at the State University of Zanzibar. The program prides itself on teaching a kind of Swahili described as sanifu (standard) or fasaha (clean). It was rigorous and foundational, but it left me speechless (more like a beginner) every time I left the classroom and headed down Stone Towns boisterous streets, where social greetings happen at every corner and turn. You really cant walk from point A to point B in Stone Town without getting involved in greeting loops with friends and strangers alike.
Perhaps the gatekeepers of Standard Swahili do not want to accept that Stone Town youth have been and continue to be deeply influenced by Sheng a kind of Swahili patois that developed by urban youth in Eastern Nairobi in the 1970s and spread, overtime, into all realms of East African life as a legitimate form of expression. While most Zanzibaris still speak a more formal Swahili, youth here are tapped into regional and global influences like music, film, and fashion that daily change the contours and textures of street Swahili. The most immediate example of that lives within the brackets of Swahili street greetings.
Maamkizi (greetings) are a major part of Swahili culture. Not greeting someone, especially when they greet you first, is often seen as a straight-up insult, if not a totally rude and ignorant act explained only by the cruelty of a changing, globalized world. Its true, the extended greeting is old-school, a shout-out to simpler times, when everyone had and/or took the time to truly acknowledge who they were passing on the street.
Everyone learns lugha ya heshima language of respect which is a detailed, hierarchical system of greetings depending primarily on age but also on status. The official way to greet, depending on who you talk to and where, happens at least five different ways, often accompanied by hand-shaking, hand-kissing, or at least a wave.
1. Shikamoo! Marhaba
For young greeting the old
I hold your feet You are welcome [to do so].
2. A-Salamu Alaykum! Wa-alaykum Salaam
A Muslim greeting
Peace be upon You! Upon You, Peace.
3. Hujambo? Sijambo
For greeting your peers/equals
You dont have an issue? I dont have an issue.
4. Habari yako? Nzuri (sana)!
Again, for peers/equals, everyone
Your news? Good (very)!
5. Chei-chei? Chei-Chei!
An endearing exchange initiated by a child to any adult, usually accompanied by a handshake and small curtsy
These greetings all have their appropriate, predictable follow-up questions about work, home, family, and health. Enter the street-realm, though, and you hear a spicy mix of playful responses that usually get lost on the tourist, who feverishly studied the back of a guide book that couldnt possibly capture the live, changing Swahili on the streets.
Stone Towns greeting culture is an essential part of anyones experience in Zanzibar, whether you stay for a day or a lifetime. I wanted to get it right, but every time I tried to throw down my textbook greetings, I got the pity-smile, followed by a flash word-flood, a whole slew of fresh words thrown out as a string of slang.
I often had no idea what people were saying or what they meant, until I really listened. After a while, I got used to the way words arrive fresh like bread on the street each day you gotta grab a hunk of whats hot and speak it, share the loaf.
This is the kind of Swahili that will make your mabibi na mababu (grandmas and grandpas) cringe. Itll make your professors hang their heads down low, shaking with dismay. Itll alarm police, leaving them to think youre ballsy, disrespectful, or clueless. But for most people, it will definitely give you some cultural cache, local clout, or urban charm.
Each word is a wink-wink of belonging.
So heres my quick guide to 20 of the hottest ways to respond to Mambo, vipi?! next time youre in Stone Town:
1. poa
The universal way to say cool! but it really means recover calm or warm (as in food thats not too hot to eat)
Variation: poa kichizi (kama ndizi) crazy cool (like a banana)
2. shwari
A nautical reference meaning smooth/even to describe the quality of the waves. When there are no rough waves or wind, the sea is nice & smooth, easy to travel. To say shware means lifes journey is smooth like the sea.
3. bomba
Means awesome! It could also mean beautiful or nice which some say was first used by Italian sailors (bomb) and then transformed over time. It literally means pipe, which possibly refers to an older Swahili-slang drug references like syringe used in Nairobi, Kenya. Here in Stone Town, its another way to say, Lifes awesome, fantastic.
4. bombom
As in bomb, bombshell or machine gun. It also refers literally to influenza or pneumonia but in terms of greetings can playful mean life is killer hot or sick.
5. rasmi
Means official as in, everythings good because theyre in order.
6. safi
To say things are safi is to say you have a clean heart, lifes good, no dirty business going on in your life. It literally means clean, clear or pure. It also might be used to say that things are correct/in order.
7. salama
Means peace, as in, alls well, peace prevails, no fighting with anyone or anything. The word itself is derived from the Arabic word, salam.
8. mzuka
Literally means worry, desire or moral. As a figure of speech, its been associated with the sudden, pop-up appearance of a spirit or ghost. Oddly enough, through various hip-hop lyrics, the word has a totally different meaning: its now used on the streets to mean excellent or fantastic.
9. freshi
Slang for the English word fresh, sort of related to safi. Its derived from global hip-hop vocabulary, whereby anything fresh is really new and good.
10. hamna noma
A favourite with Stone Town youth, it means, there is no obstacle whatsoever no problems at home or anywhere.
11. kama kawa
Shorthand for kama kawaida that translates to like usual.
12. kiasi
The word means size or moderate amount and is often heard in the markets or when talking about a purchase. To say kiasi in a greeting means eh Im fine.
13.wastani
Similar to kiasi, meaning standard or average as in, eh fine, not good or bad, just here.
14. mabaya!
Means bad! as in, truly, things are not going well, or playfully, things are going so bad, theyre good. In a culture that doesnt officially permit the expression of negative feelings in public, this slang is a playful chance to vent without being taken too seriously.
15. mzima
Usually refers to the bodys state of health and well-being, literally meaning full or whole. This is actually a standard response but if you say it with enthusiastic pop, it takes on a street flavour.
16. mpango mzima
Means full plan as in, I have my act together or I've got it all figured out.
17. fiti
Literally comes from the English word fit as in physically healthy, but is used to mean that life itself is fit and strong.
18. shega
Another way to say cool literally meaning fine or nice.
19. kamili
Complete, perfect, exact or precise.
20. hevi
Literally means, heavy as in the English word, to signal lifes intense, deep, or a burden.
If you tag the word sana (very) or sana, sana (very, very) to the end of most of these words, youll stretch their power and sentiment. Example: Bomba sana!
Hitting the word with kabisa (totally) will punctuate the sentiment, giving it some verve. Example: Freshi kabisa!
Adding the word tu (just) to the end of most words will cut the effect a bit, sending the message that the state you described is just that, nothing more, nothing less. Example: Poa, tu or Freshi, tu.
Doubling some words will give your sentiment extra power. Example: poa-poa, freshi-freshi, or bomba-bomba. You should probably save this, though, for when things really are going extremely well for you.
Mambo! reigns supreme as the number one way to strike up a street-and-greet. But usually, if time allows, people end up showing off a kind of linguistic fireworks where, through the prompting of various other ways of saying whats up, they get to rattle off two, three ad infinitum questions and answers in a single breath. Its kind of like greetings-acrobatics.
So, beyond the initial Mambo! here are a few other ways to keep the conversation rolling naturally (that also hold their own as conversation kick-starters):
1. Hali, Vipi? Hali? or Vipi, hali?
Literally means, condition, how? or hows your condition?
2. Je/How forms:
Inakuwaje? How is it?
Unaendelaje? Hows it going?
Unaonaje? How do you see things?
Unasemaje? How do you say it?
Unajisikiaje? How do you hear/feel?
3. One-word prompts:
Vipi! Literally means, how?
Habari! Literally means, news?
Sema! Literally means, say!
4. Lete/Bring forms:
Lete habari! Bring the news!
Lete mpya! Bring whats new!
Lete stori! Bring the story!
Lete zaidi! Bring more!
5. Za/Of forms:
Za saa hizi? [of] the moment?
Za siku? [of] the day?
Za kwako? [of] your place?
This greeting thing could go on and on, spiralling into story-sparring and reminiscing, politicking and lamenting. If you really have to wrap up a long loop, though, there are a few classics that have withstood the test of time.
Take a deep breath in, sigh, offer out your hand for a shake or a Rasta-style fist-pound, and then say haya, baadaye (okay, later!) or haya, tutaonana! (okay, well see each other!). If you need to offer an explanation, simply saying niko busy (Im busy) or nina haraka (Im in a hurry) usually does the trick. And then youre off! That is, until you meet someone else on the street, and the greeting game starts all over again with an equally upbeat, mambo, vipi?! By the time you read this, its possible that 20 new words are flip-flopping around, going through try-outs and show-times.
The most popular end-phrase in a greeting loop on the island of Zanzibar is the timeless:
Tuko pamoja Were [in this] together.
The heart-felt sentiment, echoed back and forth between greeters at the end of any Stone Town street-and-greet, really does say it all.
Tuko pamoja.
Haya, niko busy baadaye.
References:
Beck, Rose Marie, ed. SWAHILI FORUM 13: Special Issue: Lugha Ya Mitaani in Tanzania/The Poetics and Sociology of a Young Urban Style of Speaking with a Dictionary Comprising 100 words and phrases, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, 2006.
Alim, Samy H., Awad Ibrahim, Alastair Pennycook. Global linguistic flows: hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language. Taylor and Francis, 2009.
Community Connection
For more on living in Zanzibar, check out Amandas article on 5 Reasons to Give a Gift: Zawadi Culture in Zanzibar.
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