Babu nono? Babu yes yes.

Language is fun. There are so many ways to mess it up. My favorite story didn’t actually happen to me, but to my friend Ryan. Random side note; Ryan is from none other than Glendora California! While we don’t have a Starbucks or a Classic Coffee in Niger, we do have a shade hanger with a guy named Daude who makes instant coffee mixed with condensed milk. Ryan frequented this high class establishment daily, always asking for no milk in his coffee, “Babu nono.” Weeks later, we came to find out that “nono” doesn’t mean milk, but breast milk. Imagine our glee to discover that Ryan had been asking for coffee without breast milk all this time! Another linguistic problem is that the verb “son” means to want, to like, and to love. Therefore I couldn’t explain to my teacher that while I like and even love babies, I don’t actually want a baby right now because that would just not be practical. So now I don’t like babies. Awesome. My favorite language issues come from popular phrases that are not meant to be literally translated. The phrase “In sha Allah” means “If God wills it.” Nigeriens often say this in response to an inquisition about the future. It is an Arabic phrase, but literally translated from Hausa to English it means “If to drink God.” So of course, with the lack of entertainment available to us in Niger, we have oodles of fun answering questions about our future plans by saying, “If God drinks it.” Try that one on for size, APU. I’ve messed up more times than this, and I’ve said some pretty horrible things this past month in Hausa, but luckily for me Nigeriens are some of the most patient people in the world, and are always ready to laugh with us when we mess up. And I hope God drinks it that all of you have no breast milk in your coffee.