kama

kama is a strong metaphor in toki pona. To arrive at a location and to arrive at a state of being are the same concept in toki pona. This means that kama can refer to arriving home to eat dinner, arriving at school, or the moment you become an akesi because an evil prescriptivist wizard cursed you for using too many nimisin. This of course describes kama's use as a preverb, in which its meaning is close to "become." This can imply the start, body, or end of this process. It's easy to describe the reverse of whatever process kama preverb is representing by negating the word that follows it, i.e. "kama X ala."

kama is also used to talk about the future a lot. The future is things to come, but the past is things that already came, so this is less of a tense marking word. But often you'll see people modifying words with it to make them future-y, like "soweli kama" for "the animal that will arrive" or "tenpo kama" for "the time that is to come."

kama used transitively is best translated as "summon," "conjure," or "bring about." It's the closest thing toki pona has to a deticated causative. Often something like "I make you build a house" is translated as "mi kama e ni: sina pali e tomo." But for causatives, I recommend thinking about the actual act of making someone do something. Are you telling them to do something, using consequences as a means of motivation? Are you controlling them in some way? "kama" is certainly used here for causatives, but sometimes breaking down a causative into an actual action that describes what's going on is really fun and novel.