Spreek je Nederlands?

After a day of travel, I am in Africa. It still baffles me how you can wake up one morning in one country and then go to sleep that night (or maybe the next night...I think I lost a day in there somehow) on the other side of the world. Travel went very smoothly and the big highlight was that on the second long flight there was an empty seat next to me so I had a place to put my legs. Another highlight was that I got to live into my cultural roots a bit--the flight attendent on KLM spoke to me in Dutch for the duration of the 8 hour flight. Apparently I look Dutch (go figure) and since my end of the conversation consisted of one word responses ('water,' 'yes,' 'pasta') or a smile and a nod, I kept him going on the Dutch thing. I am glad he never asked point blank if I were Dutch. I would have felt pretty stupid saying that yes, technically I am Dutch, I live in a place called Holland, I own wooden shoes and know some Dutch dance moves, but I only know one Dutch word (gezellig).

I am moving on from Dutch, however, into Swahili. I have already had about 5 encounters where I felt like a stupid white person and I haven't even been anywhere except the airport and Paul & Elizabeth's house. No worries, Paul just handed me a Simplified Swahili book. Something tells me, however, that no one is going to mistake me for a Tanzanian anytime soon...