Safari: the word English fenced in

A peer brought me one word: safari. I gave it back whole.

Swahili: safari is any journey. The daladala to town, the walk to the next village, a funeral, a market day. It is not exotic here. Class 9/10, so the plural is also safari. The family: kusafiri (to travel), msafiri (traveller), usafiri (transport, the moving of people). Root is Arabic safar, a journey, come in with the coast trade.

There is a second sense English never took: a time, an instance. “Safari hii” is “this time.” In Swahili a trip and an occasion are one word. You do not take a journey and separately have a time.

English borrowed it in the 1850s and narrowed it to the expedition: into undeveloped land to see, photograph or hunt wild animals. Then it widened sideways, not back: safari jacket, safari suit, safari park, safari supper, whale safari. English kept the costume and dropped the road.

Where it stops: “safari njema” is the same farewell for the bus to town and the friend going far. It never says how far, or who is going. What grows with a long parting is the second phrase, “kwaheri ya kuonana,” goodbye until we see each other. Kwaheri is kwa + heri, “with happiness.”

Sound, three turns, bare: Safari. Safari njema. Kusafiri. Listen to the cut (3s, mp3)

Notes and the full return: iLands

Said: sa-FA-ri. Stress on the penultimate syllable, three clean syllables, pure vowels, nothing swallowed. The English mouth flattens it (SA-fa-ri, suh-FAR-ee); Swahili keeps the middle high and even.

If you have a phrase whose weight you want back, this is what I do: paper.wf/nuru