The True Meaning of Hakuna Matata

plus, an introverted poly-glop's guide to making new friends

My friend Edith and I go to the same workout studio. She joined a few weeks ago and because we’re the same height we now share a squat rack (a bit of a bummer really because before that I got to have a squat rack to myself because nobody was quite as short as me.)

One day I found out that Edith grew up in Kenya and speaks Swahili.

Edith and I communicated very well in Hebrew (to the extent that we communicated at all because I’m not much of a talker) so it was not strictly necessary for me to learn Swahili but because everything is a sign now, I decided that it would be my next language.

Also, it's been a while since I started learning a new language. I don't count Rusyn because my brain never got into a foreign language mode with it, that excited “oooh I don't understand anything let’s figure this out" state, and I missed that state.

The beginning is my favorite part. It's also the time when you make the fastest gains. Same as when you just start going to the gym.

I don't know how that happened but lifting heavy things is, like, one of my favorite things in the world. When I was a kid I was the epitome of unathletic — chubby, glasses, extremely slow at getting dressed let alone running, afraid of heights, depths, lengths, and widths. And dogs and cats and birds and rotten apples (because they sometimes had worms in them).

But now I love it. Maybe it’s because I don't define myself as an athletic person or whatever. I've been lifting weights for 20 years but my mental image of myself is still of a slow, chubby, snotty, unathletic child (because I suppose we all live with the definition of ourselves that we — or our parents or our environment — gave us when we were 8 years old). It’s just that now I feel like a slow, chubby, and unathletic eight-year-old who happens to be able to squat 110% of her body weight.

I’m not bragging (I am bragging just a tiny bit), I’m just fascinated by how far we can get when we don't take ourselves too seriously. When we're not bound by grand plans or self-definitions like an 'athlete', 'writer', 'polyglot', 'artist', or whatever.

Actually, there are two things in my daily life that always reliably bring me joy: my dog and working out.

I love a lot of other things. I love my kids. I love writing. I love learning languages. I love writing this newsletter (a lot actually). I love making art. All these things define me (whatever that means) a lot more than Shiloh or working out. But these are complicated loves, as maybe most relationships are. Because some days I can't quite get the structure of that essay right, or that art composition is not coming together, or because this editor hates my work, or this language seems to hate me (I have a love-hate relationship with the Finnish case system) or I can’t stop my kids from swearing at each other, and by 12 am 10 am on Saturday my house feels like the planet Earth after WWIII.

But my relationship with Shiloh and the squat rack is just purely wonderful. I don’t care how much I lift I just enjoy it. And I don’t have any expectations of Shiloh either.

Just so you know what I mean. This is Shiloh when she’s not allowed to get onto a mattress on the floor because it is being used for somersaults (not by me)

Sure, occasionally she eats a sock and needs to throw up at 3 am but mostly there are no problems.

Or "Hakuna Matata" as we say in Swahili.

You probably know that this phrase comes from Swahili but did you know what it is made up of? I didn’t.

It turns out that kuna is a verb meaning ‘there is / there are.’ It’s also how you express possession in Swahili. You get rid of the ku- bit and are left with -na. To this, you add a prefix that indicates who the subject of the sentence is:

Ni-na means ‘I have’. U-na means ‘You have.’ Wa-na means ‘They have.’ And so on.

I said Nina watoto wawili ‘I have two kids’ in the MFYF video last Friday.

So kuna is just an impersonal form of that verb, meaning there is no person who ‘has’ something. That something just exists. So it is translated into English as ‘there is/there are.’

Ha is the part that means ‘no.’ So Ha-kuna means ‘there isn’t / there aren’t.

And matata is a noun meaning ‘trouble.’

Isn’t that super cool?

Also, I learned that it’s not advisable to use this phrase when talking to native speakers unless you want to sound like a foreigner who learned Swahili entirely from Lion King.

So, I started learning Swahili last Saturday, using the free audio course on Language Transfer (I’ll tell you more about it later, but for now I’ll just say that it’s wonderful).¹

Because the language is pretty easy (no tones, no cases), I knew I’d already be able to say something to Edith when we met for our workout on Sunday.

But on Sunday she wasn't there.

I was bummed, but on the bright side, it meant that by our next workout, on Tuesday, I’d be able to say even more things, would know how to ask wh-questions, and so would be able to ask “How come you didn't come on Sunday?”

If you’ve ever learned another language, you’ll know that your first conversation with a native speaker is the most exciting thing that will happen to you in this process.

On Tuesday morning, as soon as Edith came in and put her bag and her coat in the storage cube, I asked her: Kwanini hukuja Jimipuli? “Why didn’t you come on Sunday?” I honestly don’t even remember what she said (I hope it wasn’t something horrible like ‘I had to go to my uncle’s funeral’) because I was too excited to be saying my first-ever sentence in Swahili. I’m a good friend, am I not?

And then we spoke in Swahili a little bit. And by ‘spoke’ I mean that I said dumb things like Ninataka kujifunza Swahili “I like learning Swahili” and Utakuja kesho? ‘Will you come tomorrow?" and Twende “Let’s go” because these are the only things in my current Swahili repertoire that are somewhat relevant to our shared experience.

I can build a lot of other potentially useful sentences. I can say things like Mjii huu ulijengwa zamani “This town was built a long time ago,” and Nitakula kwa rafiki jangu kesho usiku “I will be sleeping at my friend’s house tomorrow night” and Anataka kufanja na sisi? “Does he want to do it with us?” but I couldn’t see how these sentences could be useful in furthering this relationship. As of lesson 58, Language Transfer hasn’t yet covered vocabulary related to weightlifting which is mostly what Edith and I talk about.

Still, it was nice. Now whenever we meet, we exchange a few sentences in Swahili. And we kinda started talking more in Hebrew in general.

It turns out that we live in the same neighborhood (Edith now gives me a ride home because I don’t drive) and that our kids are in the same grade in the same school, go to the same English-for-natives-speakers class, and will probably share a high school major next year.

Turns out that we immigrated to Israel around the same time (she — in 1997 from Kenya, me — in 1996 from Russia). Turns out that we both really want to be able to do a pull-up. Just one pull-up.

Turns out I can be brave enough to talk to people I like but don’t know very well only if I approach them in a foreign language. (Makes sense, right?)

1. I am not paid to recommend any language resources/tools/courses and I hope I never will be. So if I say that something is wonderful it’s because it objectively and indisputably is. Language Transfer also offers courses in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Turkish, Arabic and Greek. I haven’t tried those but I’m sure they’re all amazing.