Cross-Border

August 26, 2026

It is 7 minutes past 6pm (Ikr! A Gen-Z could easily say I'm trying to force six seven six seven into this blog but no! Hahah). I am seated in a bus on my commute home. It is fully packed including the "spear" passengers. By spear here, I mean those standing passengers who hold onto the long twin bars on the bus's roof for support. You see, the origin of this spear word came during the advent of flashy nganyas on our route whereby a funny fare chart went around as -> Peak hours: bazenga/empress: 100/- Spear: 70/-; Off-peak: bazenga/empress: 70/- Spear: 50/-. Similarly, there used to be a derogatory term for these spear passengers - "washika mti". Surely, who says that?

Now, for those in the know, 6.07 pm is peak/rush hour. The journey is often long and characterized by traffic jams across major lanes, roads, streets, avenues, and highways. You can easily take a power nap and be refreshed by the end of your journey. In my case, I had not had a busy day and as such, I was fully active while a majority of the passengers donned that exhausted look.

There happened to be two "spear" ladies next to my seat and they were conversing about their workplace. If I were Biko, I could have taken a minimum of two paragraphs to describe their statures and appearance but that's it, I am not Biko. I could not quite follow through what they were talking about but one thing stood out for me and that is, the talkative one was from Coast owing to her Swahili sanifu accent which happens to be the agenda of this piece today.

It is common knowledge that if you want to distinguish between a Kenyan and a Tanzanian, just listen to how they refer to the word "come". A Kenyan would easily say "kuja" (excluding a majority of Coastareans and our Western folks) while a Tanzanian would say "njoo". As I listened to her talk, my mind went on an overdrive as it searched for other words that would easily distinguish between the citizens of both nations. It took me back to those days I was volunteering at a shop and a customer who happens to be a friend walked in. He had been from Arusha that past week. While we exchanged our pleasantries, he happened to overhear someone saying "kuja" and he quickly switched from the greetings to explain how he had recently jetted back in from a country where he had heard more "njoos" than "kuja". Besides the "bad blood" between njoo and kuja, he had had another sanifucation (by sanifucation, I mean his Swahili got checked) experience while there. On one occasion, their car had "chemkad" (I mean it encountered radiator issues and had to be topped up with fresh clean water) and while at it, he had used "mwaga maji!" only for his Tanzanian colleague to reprimand him gently, "hatusemi mwaga maji, twasema mimina!". That brings us to the second word - mwaga. You'll hardly hear a Kenyan say "mimina". For a moment, they would find it hard to know what the word means only to find solace in St. Kizito Choir, Makuburi's song Mimina Neema.

"Shukisha" is the third word on the list. If it were not for Christina Shusho's song, we would still have maintained 100% usage of the word shukisha. However, the usage threshold is still over 90% due to the fact that we are in tough economic times that forces the struggling Kenyans to jokingly enunciate from time to time, "shukisa!"

Beyond mentioning these words as few common examples of how we misuse them to mean what we say, there is the issue of plurals. My research shows that the most affected noun class (ngeli) is LI-YA. At a time when the price of eggs is at an all-time high, I am sure this sentence has become more common than ever: "Unauzaje mayai moja?" If you were to cross over to Tanzania, "Wauzaje yai?" would suffice. Anyways, as one "controversial" politician remarked, we are Kenyans and Kenya is our business.

Beyond eggs and onto the parts of the body, our ears, eyes, and teeth have suffered. You would hear a Kenyan say, "Macho yake moja haioni" or "alivunjika meno moja" or worse still, "maskio yake moja haisikii". If I were to take my ample time to take you back to Standard 5 Swahili to show you how and why these sentences are "wrong" by all accounts, we would the entire night but let me save you all of that. The correct sentences would be - "Jicho lake (la kushoto/kulia) halioni", "alivunjika jino la mbele la kushoto/kulia (or if you were to go deeper, you would use makata (incisor), chonge(canine), sagego(pre- molars), magego(molars) - you see how that ngeli lesson would get "confusing" hah?), and "sikio lake la kushoto/kulia halisikii". Beyond LI-YA, there are other noun classes that are really affected such as I-ZI, YA-YA, U-I, U-YA just to mention a few, but let me spare you from that.

They say, you can take the boy out of the village but you cannot take the village out of the boy. Similarly, for us the usage of Swahili sanifu (for most of us apart from Coastareans and Western folks who are forced to speak Swahili sanifu due to the mismatch in the dialects of their sub-tribes) was for the purposes of securing a good grade in a compulsory subject, especially in high school. Beyond the classroom walls, we revert to "default settings". By default here, I mean broken Swahili that still passes the message. Like today, the sun was burning hot, the roads were dusty, and the sky was almost fully azure. The sanifu words for such a description would be: "Jua lilikua limewaka sana, barabara nazo zilikua zimejaa vumbi kwa wingi, na anga nalo lilikua buluu pasi na mawingu machache". But, hold on, wait till a Kenyan describes that for you - "Jua ilikua inachoma, mabarabara zilikua na mavumbi, na sky pia ilikua blue na clouds chache" (They would not mind mixing Swahili with English here and there). Anyways, after all, we are Kenyans and Kenya is our business, right?