No news is good news

As I believe Suze has mentioned below, the usual greeting in East Africa is “Jambo”. This is an abbreviation of “Hujambo?” meaning, fairly literally, “Nothing happening?” The polite reply is “Sijambo” meaning “No, nothing happening for me.” No news, then, is definitely regarded as good news. However, not only is this the polite reply, it is more or less the only reply. It is usual to say a few words to anyone with whom you interact, along the lines of “Hello, I hope there’s no news/nothing is happening today/nothing happened on your journey” etc, and the reply is always to say that nothing is happening, everything is fine and your journey was good. Even if said journey was actually delayed 5 hours like our flight here, or whatever other misfortune may have befallen you, you say it is all fine.
So, when yesterday we went to swim off the same pier we have swum from before, and met the Security guy who is always sitting at the end of it, we said Hi and established that nothing was happening for him, nor to us, and nothing had happened on the way there, etc. Marvellous.
So we proceeded to dump our towels on the concrete pier and remove shoes, shorts and other chattels, only to look up and see the Askari (security) making his way down the pier to speak to us again. Between us we had a little Swahili and he a little English, and gradually we understood that the police were on their way; “one man dead in water now”, he explained while pointing to an empty and unattended fishing canoe. I distinctly remember how he stressed there was one man dead, as if we might still want to swim providing there weren’t more of them. Or perhaps it was just that, even though this wasn’t quite nothing happening, it was still better (i.e. less) news than 2 or more men dead.
We walked away a little shocked, although relieved to have been told the small (?) but undeniably bad news before we swam out and saw the figure on the sea bed. Eventually we came to realise that this is, while no doubt a great loss to his family, still small news, locally speaking. I guess the thing is that very few people here have pensions, and almost nobody has the “opportunity” to die in a nice clean bed in a retirement home, or whatever other euphemism you want to use for such a place. We’ll never know for sure, but he was probably not the mid-20’s drowning victim you read about in the British local press, most likely he was a elderly fisherman, who had fished here for decades. But everybody’s heart stops beating eventually, and for whatever reason his had done so while he stood up in a canoe.

Finally, so as not to end on a negative, and following the unprecedented success of the “name that fruit” competition (apparently it was a sweetsop, by the way): a mystery object round. What is this? This time we know the answer, so I can give a clue or two. Most households locally have one, but despite this the Bajaji driver was amused that I had bought one. I’ll even tell you its name, it’s an mbuzi.
[Darn it, picture to follow... You have no idea how unsophisticated the 'net connections are out here. Someone give tell the mule to walk faster, I can't upload!]