This is how I learned Swahili.
My PhD research is about the lives of women in Zanzibar, and how the social changes of recent years have affected gender roles on the island. I focused on weddings, because wedding celebrations are such important female spaces (and because the prospect of spending a year in Zanzibar going to as many weddings as possible seemed like a good idea.)
My research method was to spend a lot of time sitting with women, drinking tea, and chatting, which meant that I had to learn Swahili as quickly as possible. I spent a lot of time on the beach with vocabulary lists, drinking mango juice and conjugating verbs to anyone who was passing. Even better, I met Mama Anti, my Swahili teacher, who spent every morning helping me with grammar and welcomed me into her home in the afternoons. After the first few weeks she had become my Zanzibari mother as much as my teacher.
There are many reasons why Zanzibar is the perfect place to learn Swahili: standard Swahili is based on the Zanzibari dialect, so there are few differences between the language you learn from a course book and the language you hear on the street. And it's easy to meet people willing to help you practise speaking. Spend a few hours drinking tea at Jaws Corner, sit on the sea wall in Forodhani Gardens, buy a coconut from a coconut seller wandering the streets of Stone Town, and you'll find hundreds of opportunities to greet people and try out a few sentences.
But the main reason to learn Swahili in Zanzibar is Mama Anti. She's been teaching Swahili to foreigners for decades, and has the enthusiasm and experience that makes a really great teacher. Some of her other students were based in Nairobi or Lamu, but had come to Zanzibar especially for her classes. If you'd like to continue learning Swahili, I definitely recommend spending a few weeks with her in Zanzibar: her number is +255 777 422 499, and she can help arrange accommodation for you with a local family.
You can read my blog about living in Zanzibar here.
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