"This bus is going to fall," I stated and asked concurrently in my Swahili 101. The buddah-bodied, sarong wrapped woman to my right laughed at my big worried eyes.

"No, young sista," her electric white teeth glowed through me. "Hamna tabu."

Her corpulent arm, the size of my thigh, fell on my shoulders: a universal gesture of comfort. Hamna tabu, no problem. I was unaware there are six different ways to say "no problem" in Swahili, depending on the degree of the problem. It is not desirable, in Tanzanian society, to be the harbinger of discouraging news.
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