The learning never ends...

A few weeks ago, my friend Lulu came over to visit. I taught her how to play Scrabble. That was an interesting experience. I only won by a few points (kinda sad considering I’m a native English speaker). But after Scrabble, she taught me how to play a Tanzanian card game very similar to Uno. This was quite the cultural experience. I had no idea that cards are played different in every country. Let me educate you. The order of the cards is very different here. For instance, the face cards are not the highest point value. On the contrary, they are the lowest. A king is worth 4 points, a jack is worth 3 points, a queen is worth 2 points, and an Ace is worth 1 point. They also call them wazungu (Swahili word for white people) instead of face cards. Or they refer to them by their letters only, K, J, Q, A. She didn’t realize the reason for the letter until I explained they were a King, Jack, Queen, and Ace. Does it show you much about the culture when they put the two male cards as more important than the female card? In the game we were playing, you wanted to discard your cards with a high point value first. Well it was quite an adjustment to realize that a 7 is much higher than an Ace.

My favorite part of playing the game was learning the Swahili words for the suits.

Spades – Jembe (English meaning - Hoe)
Diamonds – Kisu (English meaning - Knife)
Hearts – Kopa (English meaning – Love)

And my favorite!! Clubs – Mavi ya mbuzi which in English means goat poop. She had to tell me several times before I would believe her. And she proceeded to explain that the clubs looked like the poop of a goat. Have you ever been that close to a goat? She asked. J

Every day holds its own Tanzanian treasure. This day was goat poop.