Rafiki yangu aliguswa sana alipoona watoto yatima wakicheza bila viatu.

Aliguswa sana means was very shocked. The verb guswa (to be shocked or deeply affected) is combined with: • a- – a subject marker for third person singular
• li- – a past tense marker
• sana – an intensifier meaning very
So, the construction indicates that my friend was greatly affected or shocked.

The clause begins with alipoona, a compound where: • ali- is the past tense marker with the subject prefix (he/she)
• -po- is inserted as a temporal relative marker, effectively meaning when
• ona means saw
Thus, alipoona translates to when he/she saw. The rest of the clause watoto yatima wakicheza bila viatu provides additional details about what was seen.

The action is conveyed by two parts: • wakicheza – derived from the verb cheza (to play) with the prefix wa- adjusted for the plural subject and the participial form -chi- appended to show an ongoing action (meaning playing or while playing). • bila viatu – where bila means without and viatu means shoes. This indicates that the orphan children were playing without shoes.

This sentence demonstrates several key points of Swahili grammar: • It typically follows a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order. Here, Rafiki yangu (my friend) is the subject and aliguswa (was shocked) is the verb. • Additional information, like the circumstance in which the emotion occurred, is attached using a temporal clause (alipoona watoto yatima wakicheza bila viatu), which starts with a combined marker (ali- + po-) to indicate when. • Descriptive adjectives (like yatima) follow the noun they describe. • The use of participial forms (like wakicheza) allows the description of simultaneous actions. Overall, the sentence provides a compact way to express a cause-and-effect relationship while following typical Swahili construction patterns.