All photos by author. Mambo! Its the classic street slang for whats up? in Stone Town, Zanzibar and in most of urban East Africa. It literally means, things or issues? The upbeat term is often paired with the word vipi (how) as in, Mambo, vipi? How are things? 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...
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