Isanzu trip

The Isanzu are a tall, Bantu, millet- and- sunflower-growing people group who live in about 8-10 villages in the northern-central part of Tanzania. They are a few hours’ bumpy drive away from the nearest paved roads. We were there for a week to visit several villages and do research in four of them.

In the foreground you might be able to see a couple little solar panels. In most villages they had access to some solar power.

The Isanzu area was at a pretty high altitude: our elevation was around 4000-5000 feet most of the time.

My job was to take wordlists.  I had a 300-word list that took over two hours in each village. Taking a wordlist meant sitting down with a few Isanzu speakers and working with them in Swahili to translate the words from Swahili to Isanzu. Isanzu has some really fun words—for example, try saying these out loud:

ngkulukulu : fingernails 

(one fingernail is lukulukulu)

kisikosiko: armpit

mahangahanga: sand

nyegenyege: narrow

And some of them are really long, like kikuwakamogolo (foot).

I laughed so much at some of the words that I’m pretty sure my wordlist informants will think of me every time they use the word “nyegenyege.” 

This was the first survey trip for the new interns. Our team consisted of five women!

We'll use the wordlists to get an idea of the level of linguistic similarity between villages. 

Other members of the team asked questions of a larger group about the sociolinguistic situation among the Isanzu, trying to learn more about how and when they use their language, whether it will continue to be used, and whether language development would be useful to them. This included some participatory activities like mapping their language area and listing domains of use of their languages (mainly Isanzu and Swahili). 

It was exciting to watch how much the people enjoyed joining in and how they became enthusiastic about discussing the pros and cons of the languages they use. Some of them seemed really interested in developing their language and promoting literacy in it.  

After we found a local guide to help us, I rattled around in the back of the Land Cruiser the whole time since we were short a seat. I volunteered for that spot, of course.

We got to see some of the local sights and scenery...

...and were introduced to lots of people, especially our guide's friends and relatives. 

An evening card game at our guesthouse.

We took a break from driving and I climbed a really cool tree.

Mapping the villages where Isanzu is spoken.