Charlene comes to Tanzania: Forget English, let’s speak Kiswahili

DAR ES SALAAM: I CONFESS I have spent the better part of this week rehearsing my English, just in case Charlene Ruto lands at JNIA and somebody thrusts a microphone at me demanding a “reaction.” I practised in the mirror.

I tried “entrepreneur” several times, rolling it around like a man chewing sugarcane he suspects was overpriced. Then I stopped mid-syllable and asked myself a very Tanzanian question: Yaani yote hayo ya nini? All that trouble, for what? Because somewhere between Nairobi and Dar, the East African scoreboard has quietly been updated.

Our tall, handsome boy Isaya Yunge has done what no striker, no diplomat and no regional integration seminar has managed in decades. He has brought a Kenyan into the Tanzanian family.

That, my friends, is TZ-2, KE-0. But before our Kenyan cousins start typing with both thumbs and one eyebrow, relax. This is not real rivalry. This is utani wa jadi, the respectable mischief of neighbours who share a fence, borrow salt, quarrel over football and still eat from the same kisinia.

It is Simba and Yanga, Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards: loud enough to scare the goats, harmless enough for everyone to dance together after the final whistle. So, Kenyans, msiwe na pressure. We are teasing you with love… and with the scoreboard visible, naturally.

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Naturally, the moment a Tanzanian achieves anything of note, the old ghost rises from the grave to ask its favourite question: “But can he speak good English?” Ndugu zangu, this question is older than State House furniture and has never once built a bridge, balanced a budget, or cooked good pilau.

I have sat in press conferences where a minister explained, in flawless Kiswahili, how a road would be built, a hospital equipped, a disease contained only for someone to whisper, “His English is not strong, is it?” Yaani, as if the road refuses to be tarmacked unless the contractor says “infrastructure” with BBC saliva. English is a language, not an IQ test. Not a degree, not a dowry, not a passport to seriousness and certainly not a receipt from heaven.

I have met men who cannot balance their own chequebook but pronounce “entrepreneur” with three syllables of Cambridge and one imaginary uncle in Oxford. I have met women who run entire districts in Kiswahili so precise it should be bottled and sold at airport duty-free, yet some fellow will still call them “not polished.” Polished for whom? A shoe? A colonial ghost? A LinkedIn audience with ring lights?

We did not accidentally end up speaking Kiswahili. A young nation looked at more than a hundred different tribes, heard one shared tongue already working in markets, buses, football grounds and wedding committees and chose unity over borrowed prestige.

That is not a failure to learn English. That is refusing to make English the entrance fee to your own home. Tanzanians are not, as a rule, in the business of proving themselves. We do not treat every sentence like an audition. We eat our food without apologising, laugh without translating the punchline and mind our business with the seriousness of a government department that has lost your file.

Visitors sometimes mistake this for shyness. It is neither. It is what happens when people have already answered the question of who they are and no longer feel the need to keep re-answering it in someone else’s language, accent, or LinkedIn bio.

Which brings us back to Charlene. Soon, God and the wedding committee willing, she is going to be counted among us. She will find a country perfectly capable of switching to English when useful: for the visa officer, the airport announcement, or that one uncle at the reception who insists on saying “distinguished guests” before asking where the soda is. But left to its own devices, Tanzania will speak Kiswahili at her. Not as a wall. As a welcome.

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There is a special hospitality in refusing to perform for a guest. It says: sit down, we are not acting today, this is how we live here. The remote is there, the tea is coming and if you hear aunties laughing, do not panic. They laugh like that about everyone and everything. Let the neighbours arrive, if they wish, with carefully ironed English, ready to adjudicate our vocabulary at the reception.

We will offer them ugali, Bongo Flava and negotiations conducted entirely in a language that needs no one’s approval to function. If they insist on scoring by who says “sophisticated” most convincingly, let them keep that scoreboard.

Ours reads TZ-2, KE-0. Now, what has genuinely shocked me is the Kenyan silence. Kenyan FM radio stations, where art thou? These are stations that can interrupt regular programming for a missing goat in Kitengela, debate for forty minutes whether a matatu conductor’s Sheng was disrespectful and turn one Tanzanian’s pronunciation of “generator” into a threeday national security discussion.

Yet here we are: an actual Kenyan first daughter marrying an actual Tanzanian and the airwaves have gone polite. Suspiciously polite. Even X usually a coliseum where Kenyans arrive fully armoured for any contest involving Tanzania has managed only a few congratulations, some throatclearing, and a silence so deep you can hear a border post stamp.

The only noise drifting across Namanga and Holili is Kenyans blaming their own elite for not being “sharp” enough to protect the first daughter’s ring finger from a Tanzanian counterattack. Imagine: a whole country caught ballwatching while Bongo made a clean run into the box.

Then Isaya’s uncles in Katoro recently lifted the curtain. Not fully, but enough to show how a wedding behaves when it stops whispering and enters with drums.

Tanzanian style is still to pretend we are simple people while parking something suspiciously shiny behind the banana trees. Not that anyone expected helicopters and executive SUVs for what was, technically, “just” a dowry ceremony. In Tanzania, “just” is a dangerous word. “Just passing by” can become dinner.

“Just greeting” can become a family meeting. “Just dowry” can apparently require air traffic control. And still, Kenyan netizens are silent. Hata kidogo tu? Not one emergency hashtag? No uncle in the diaspora saying, “As someone who once connected through Dar in 1997, let me explain Tanzanian marriage culture”? Msiwe hivyo, wajameni. We miss the usual programming.

Perhaps the scoreline stings because it wasn’t scored on a pitch. It was scored in the one arena that actually matters: family. Lose a match, and you demand a rematch next Sunday. Lose a daughter to Bongo and suddenly there are aunties, uncles, a wedding programme, a drone video and photographic evidence in matching outfits. Still, let nobody take this too seriously. Kenya and Tanzania are not enemies.

We are relatives with different accents, similar appetites and too many opinions about football. We tease because we know the love is there. This is utani wa jadi: firm handshake, sharp joke, shared plate.

So karibu, Charlene. You will not need to prove anything to us. And with respect, love and one raised eyebrow, please do not come here trying to prove anything either. Speak Kiswahili badly if you like. We will love you more for trying than for getting it right the first time.

Say “shikamoo” to the wrong cousin, call pilau “pilao,” confuse mchuzi with Michuzi if you must. We shall correct you gently, laugh warmly and feed you anyway. That, too, is very Tanzanian.