By Greg Moore, The Kansas City Star

There’s a friendly-looking guy sitting behind me, and I need to know something.

So, I figure, I’ll turn around and politely ask him my question. Easy, right?

Wrong. (C’mon, if it had been that simple would I be writing about it?)

It was Tuesday morning, and I was at the airport in Nairobi, Kenya, boarding a flight for Entebbe, Uganda.

In this part of the world, communication among fellow English speakers is hindered by a few key factors.

First, accents. Around here, mine is thick and uncommon. And English speakers in the U.S. put emphasis on different syllables than English speakers in East Africa.

Also, English in Kenya and Uganda is a national language, but in practice it's a third language -- at best.

As it is in the U.S., the most educated people have the best command of vocabulary and structure.

Most people in Kenya first learn to speak a local dialect, then Swahili, then English.

And Uganda, it's a local dialect, then Luganda, then Swahili, then English.

As a result most people in Kenya, speak a Swahili-English mix called Sheng (Sh from Swahili, Eng from English).

In Uganda, English is more dominant, but everyday people dip in and out of Luganda very frequently.

I don't.

So when the airport procedure at Kenyatta International Airport threw me off, I found myself sitting there, slightly confused and not quite certain about what to do next.

(One thing that made me feel at home was the customer service that came in the form of disinterested hand gestures and head nods.)

Anyway, I'm there looking around for help, and I see a guy who looks like he knows what time it is (literally ... he had on a watch.)

So, I say to the guy: “Excuse, me. Do we just board now? Or will they let us know when to get on the plane?”

He didn't understand a word of it.

Accent problems. I try again, more slowly and with fewer words.

“Do we go get on now? Or will they tell us when to board?”

He looks at me with the sort of expression you might make if unexpectedly you smelled something pungent.

His lip started to curl a bit.

“Uganda?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Will. They. Tell. Us. When. To. Get. On. The. Plane?”

“Winter?”

It was my turn to make a face.

Now, I'm aware that sometimes I speak quickly or colloquially -- or both -- and it causes my words to run together. (Though, I've tried to make sure not to do that lately.)

But until confronted by a man at an airport on the other side of the world, it hadn’t occurred to me that sometimes when I say “to” it becomes “ta” -- even when I'm consciously trying to enunciate.

And in this case, I thought I said “when to,” but he heard “whenta” – which is gibberish – and translated it to “winter” – which, given the context, would have been ridiculous.

So, to clarify, he asked me, “Winter?” And this made me wonder whether he spiked his morning coffee with rum.

As a result we were staring at each other like neither of us knew who cracked a rotten egg.

Thank God for the nice lady who overheard the exchange and said to me: “Yes, they’ll let us know.”

The Kansas City Star has exchanged journalists with Nation Media in Nairobi, Kenya, for the last three years in partnership with the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships. Greg Moore, who is The Star's wire editor, is traveling and teaching journalism in Kenya and Uganda for the next several weeks.