Swahili for Beginners
A Young Adult Novel
by Lisa Joyal

excerpt

    Summertime!
    Every year, I could hardly wait for it. No teachers, no homework, no tests. Just perfect.
    Last year when school ended, we'd had a few things lined up for the summer already. "We" is me, Georgie, and Jodi, my best friend ever since I was five. Jodi and I planned to do tons of rollerblading, bike riding and skateboarding. We already had a good start to the summer. We'd taken a couple of windsurfing lessons the weekend before school ended, at a little marina on Lake Ontario. The marina is right in our neighbourhood, here in Toronto. Some university guy in his twenties taught the lessons. He wore beads around his neck, laughed a lot, and said "you're good to go" every time we managed to stand on the board for a little while without falling off. He offered to teach Jodi and me how to kayak one weekend, too.
    There are all sorts of things I'd love to do one day. Kayaking is only one of them. I'd love to learn how to fly and skydive, and how to ski and snowboard. I'd love to bike across the country and sail around the world. I want to learn how to surf, run marathons, even climb Mount Everest. And I'd love to travel just about everywhere.
    I'm a dreamer. That's what everyone says, anyway. And ever since I can remember, I've dreamed of travelling to faraway places. Like going to Egypt to see the pyramids, or to the Arctic to see the North Pole, or to China to see the Great Wall. But I always really wanted to go to Africa. I wanted to cross the Sahara Desert on a camel. I wanted to go on safari to see elephants, lions, giraffes and zebras!
    I don't know what it is about me and Africa. It's just always seemed like such a special place to me. Ever since I first saw those pictures on TV of all those children — you know the kinds of pictures I mean — I've just always wanted to do something to help. I didn't know exactly what I could do, but I really wanted to try to do something when I grew up. I wanted to work there one day.
    Mom has always said it's good to have a lot of dreams. She's always told me how important it is to follow your dreams and not to give them up for anybody. I think Mom really wished she had listened to her own advice. She gave up a lot of her own dreams in order to help put my dad through university to become an engineer. Then she and my dad divorced. My dad remarried two years ago. To another engineer in his firm, I might add. Mom is a teacher at a high school in the city. She works really hard.
    Some dreams change us as people. That's kind of what happened to me. In fact, I can pinpoint in my mind the exact day last summer when it all began. I just didn't know then that it was a beginning.
    Jodi and I had planned to go hiking in High Park that morning, but it was raining outside. We decided to wait and maybe meet up later that afternoon instead. There were some good trails in the park. Good for exploring. Good for talking.
    Anyway, while I waited to see whether or not the sky would clear, I went on the Internet. I sometimes go on the Net to read about the things I'd love to do one day. So while I was surfing around, looking for safaris that you can take in different places in Africa, I came across an international pen pal website for students. I had heard of pen pals. My mom once told me that she had a pen pal when she was growing up — some girl from New York. Well anyway, I decided to check out the website, just for fun. This is what it said:
    Hey students! Make friends from all over the world by becoming a pen pal! Email or write to any of the people listed below. And send us your name, address, age and school name, along with a few lines about yourself, if you'd like to be included on our list.
    I didn't dare send my name and address. Mom would have killed me. At the bottom of the web page, though, was a box where you could select the age, sex and country of your pen pal. I selected the age thirteen (I was twelve and a half then), typed in "f" for female, clicked on "all countries" and pressed "enter," just to see what would happen.
    A list of addresses for a bunch of different girls popped up on the screen. I scrolled quickly through the list, but stopped when I came to one of the names: Ellie Mwanza. She had no email address listed, just a mailing address: P.O. Box 127, Mbosha, Tanzania, Africa. She spoke English and Swahili. She went to Ngodu Primary School. Hmm. Interesting.
    I scrolled through the rest of the list and looked around the other parts of the website, but I kept thinking about that name. Tanzania sounded so far away. I had seen lots of stuff in books and on TV about Africa, but I didn't know anyone who had ever gone there. I looked around the site some more. Having a pen pal sounded so old-fashioned because of email and stuff like that, but getting to know somebody from the other side of the world would be so cool. Besides, it was free and it would be fun just to see whether Ellie wrote back.
    My mom okayed the idea, and so I wrote a letter to Ellie that very same day and sent it off. I had some nice writing paper in my desk drawer that I used to write the letter. I thought that it might make my letter stand out a bit. After all, a lot of kids probably would write to her. I told her about myself and my family, and about Canada. Most of all, though, I asked her a lot of questions about Africa and about what life was like there. I even asked her whether or not she had ever been on a safari.
    I could hardly wait to tell Jodi!