What does ol-ashumpai mean? Nothing, really.
There are something like 50 languages spoken in Kenya, and to my great fortune, the Maasai and Samburu I'll be working with speak one of the most difficult: Maa. It's highly tonal, and Maa-English translation dictionaries come with elaborate diagrams of the mouth, nose and throat with arrows and suggestions for how to make Maa noises. Good transliterations of Maa sentences are fascinating-looking things with backwards "c's", horizontal lines bisecting words at a time and accents sprouting at improbable angles from improbable letters
"Ol-ashumpai" is a bad transliteration for the Maa phrase for a white person. The real transliteration requires symbols that my computer can't make and yours can't read. I just wanted to avoid titling this blog some Kenya-related pun, like "Kenya Dig It?". So in that regard, this is success.
As a tangent, the Maasai used to have a much more colorful term for white colonists: "iloridaa enjekat" which translates as "those who confine their farts"- a derogatory reference to the pants-centric sartorial choices of British soldiers. Cole, I think the Maasai are your natural support bloc should you run another campaign based on your opposition to pants.
All of this linguistic dabbling is just a distraction. As much as I like travelling, I hate preparing for it. Drawing up lists, packing, making hotel reservations- who needs it? Far better to try to wrap your tongue, throat and nose around "karbobo naainyala endaa". True, lots of things need to be done before I leave on Sunday, but I can immediately think of dozens of situations in which I'll need to tell a Maasai "It is squirrels that have destroyed the food" in his native tongue. Of course, that could be the mefloquine talking. Mefloquine speaks Maa.
