Translation Please

Swang (Swahili English) to American English translation guide

“pounding” means either eating or traveling depending on the context, “pound the road” “pound the pizza”
A “hotel” is a place where you eat food, “the Olive Garden Hotel”
A “paper bag” is the plastic sack that you put your purchases in (what we would call a plastic bag)
Jeans, etc are “trousers” not pants – those are your underwear
A “matatu” is a public transport
A “bob” is a shilling (Kenyan currency is counted in shillings. 75KHS is about one US dollar.)
A “guest house” is what we would call a hotel or a bed and breakfast
“upcountry” is pretty much anything north and east of Nairobi
“downcountry” is Nairobi and anything south or west of it
A “mzungu” is a white person
“Jambo” means hello, but people only great you with it if they think you are a tourist. Normal people say “habari” which kinda means, “What’s up?” or “How are you?”
Your cell phone is your “mobile”
And, you “SMS” (es-em-es) from phone to phone instead of texting

Pole (sorry) that all of these updates are coming at once. We didn’t have internet available in Nairobi – or the time to hit up a cyber café more than once – so you get to be inundated. 