thoughts on language and culture

last night, as I was falling asleep I was thinking about languages and cultures and how the two are related to each other.

I speak many languages - but apart from german and english they are all latin languages - and once I knew one to learn another one seemed easy to me; once you get the gist of it you can pretty much copy and paste from one language into the next. language talent and grammatical similarities aside I have been wondering whether the cultural similarities behind the languages played a role in making it easier to learn them. by cultural similarities I mean a similar way of looking at the world, going about things, similar ways of respecting similar things, role distributions within society, etc.

studying an african language is not only difficult because you can't use what you already know about another language to facilitate your way into it; but there are expressions which we would never use in our language - like for instance: 'pole kwa kazi mama' - 'you have worked a lot mother, don't get tired'. it's a different way of thinking altogether; a different set of values, a different history, different emphases on different aspects of life. we were discussing this with a friend the other day - european society is very different from african society in many ways. one example that sprang to mind was the possibility of contradicting, or even questioning your parents and grandparents. this is not to say that we don't respect our parents or elders, but we look them in the eye and sometimes contradict and question them. and this respect for the elders of the community for instance is reflected in the language. to be fair I have only just started and know very little about it still - so there might be ways of opposing an older person's opinion or decision; I have yet to find out.

similarly - is it possible to learn a new language unless you are prepared to plunge into the foreign culture? can you learn kiswahili for instance without trying to understand the mind behind the language?
that's where I thought back to my year in south america and learning spanish. it's difficult to say for me whether you could learn a language without engaging with the culture because I'm generally interested in discovering how other societies work, explore the similarities, the differences, the misconceptions we have in europe about africa, latin america, asia. but what I do know is that I felt a lot more integrated in latin american society than I probably ever will here. I do not feel rejected or treated with hostility here, don't get me wrong. but whenever you try and permeate a culture that is not yours you will be let in until a certain point; and then you will run up against a wall - always. in south america that wall was much more subtle and sometimes it felt invisible than it is here. but then latin american culture is much closer to european culture than african culture is. could this have to do with the language? do the south americans think more similar to europeans because we use the same structure and means to express ourselves?

so many questions I would love to explore! and it is like my aunt says - the more you know, the more you realise how little you actually do know. but it should not stop us from wanting to learn more every day!

somo la kiswahili

life is a constant flow of changes - and when I first got here I was determined to learn the local language - kinyarwanda. I even put my name down once to join a class if there would be one going - but it never seemed to have materialised - and then I was just too busy living my life to make time for language training. I also realised that kinywarwanda is a) super difficult and b) not all that useful as it is only spoken in rwanda itself and in a variation in burundi - and I know that I don't plan on spending the next 10 years here.

so around christmas we decided together with my friend ines that we were going to sign up for kiswahili classes; kiswahili is spoken in all of east africa and in many countries is the common language - apart from english. so it will be much more useful if I am considering staying in the region and as a bantu language it is not dissimilar to kinyarwanda but much easier in its structure - so it is a good starting point.

a week ago we finally started our classes and went back to school. the classes are held in the belgian school and it really is like a teleportation back to the old school days. wonky chairs and tables that make a horrible noise when you move them on the concrete, blackboards and chalk, a neon bulb burning overhead whilst the cool evening breeze comes in through the door carrying with it the mosquitoes that bite your ankles whilst you're trying to say 'mgonjwa'.

the teacher is a rwandan who speaks english, french, kinyarwanda and kiswahili and maybe even some other languages... and then they will tell you that they are 'bilingual' - only counting english and french as languages and not mentioning that they also speak seven african languages on the side...

so the first class we started with the numbers, weekdays, months (I particularly like septemba, octoba, novemba and desemba - sounds like rude-boy language to me ;-)) - and as we were getting started I started wondering about how I had learnt all my other languages; where do you normally start. it's such a complex thing to learn a language. I also started wondering how on earth they had managed to teach all of us how to read and write... I don't remember and find it highly fascinating that these funny looking symbols can actually mean anything to you. I feel like that with kiswahili still - I hear it and think - and that means something? people actually understand this?

in our second class he started writing out fractions on the blackboard 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, 1/8 - that's where I had to intervene and asked him if we could maybe start with conversation; I didn't feel like getting into logarhythms in kiswahili before I couldn't say 'good morning, how are you?'. so we left the fractions behind and got on with conversation. the teaching style is erratic and it takes the entire two hours to get through a conversation of 10 lines. I get edgy and last night I stopped him in his tracks as he was going off on another tangent which had started with him trying to explain what the word 'pole' means (there is no translation; it came in a sentence which is an expression you use) but we then talked about 'pole pole' which means slowly slowly, or little by little from where we moved on to how to say 'this is good' and 'this is bad' (ni nzuri - si nzuri). generally the classes are rather disorganised and between the oral tradition of african culture and the lack of a list of vocabulary and more to structure the class than a piece of paper with elementary conversations consisting to a large extent of 'how are you?' 'how was your morning?' 'how are your classes?' 'how is your teacher?' we get stuck on stuff a lot. and it's not always easy for a queen of impatience like me to sit still and hold my tongue... I am also eager to start talking full sentences rather than learning words and saying 'I am fine, thank you teacher' or 'my mother is sick' 25 times in one hour. and if I have to hear 'c'est pas complique' and 'pas de probleme, n'est-ce pas?' 'aahhm' one more time...

so here we go with another lesson in patience... the neverending lesson of my life!

living the nouveau colonial lifestyle

I often sit at my table in the morning, drinking my cup of tea and think about all the experiences I live here - and more than once I've had to mentally pinch myself to make sure I was actually awake and that this life is my reality. and on weekends like the one just gone by I can understand how you can conceive these cheesy happy end hollywood films; sometimes life really is like these films depict it.

I woke up on saturday morning fairly early despite going to bed quite late feeling fresh, funky and full of beans. so I made myself a cuppa and stepped out on the terrace to welcome the beautiful day and was positively surprised to find that all my flower pots had been filled with bougainvillea buds and a huge arrangement had been placed on the railings of my terrace. well - starting your day with a big bunch of flowers - what more can a girl want? and from that moment on I just knew it was going to be a great weekend.

after my cuppa and contemplation I set to work and finished painting my house - thoroughly enjoyed singing along to the music with the sun filtering through the windows as I was painting away. what a way to start the day!

and in the afternoon I went to see the monthly moto polo match down on the football pitch. moto polo - what in the four and half is that you might be thinking now. and you are right - but it's simple really - does exactly what it says on the box. it's playing polo on moto taxis. a mad idea of those that are conceived one late night on a porch with the difference that this one was actually realised. so you have some muzungus who convinced some moto drivers to join in for moto polo - and it has been going on for about six months now I think. and it is FUN.
it reminded a lot of a colonial game of crickett, the guys all in gear and getting ready for the game, discussing tactics whilst smoking cigarettes and taking swigs of beer to psyche themselves up. the girls were finding shaded spaces along the pitch from where we could watch the guys play their game. it was a great display of what you might call gender games: the guys secretly loving the fact that there were all these girls who had come to admire them - and let's face it - moto polo is a very masculine sport (although I still think we should start working on a girl's team). and us girls not only there for the actual game but to admire the guys and play our part in that game.

after the game we went to someone's house where we reinacted the kind of film where teenagers in southern california have parties in their parents mansions whilst these are on holiday. but minus the swimming pool and the actual mansion - but we had good music and booze, a garden and a rugby ball, a hammock and bagels - I mean, really, what more do you want? it was an afternoon of total carefree-ness and I felt like being 16 again - just better. but then maybe that's what your thirties are all about ;-))

and because the weather was so nice we spent all of sunday afternoon with a state of the art picnic by the lake in nyarutarama. there was sun and music, spanish ham and cheese, belgian saucisson, home made bread and home grown salad, wine and beer, a chocolate cake and a bottle of real champagne and last but not least good company. so how could you not have an amazing day?

it's hard to put all of this into words; I get asked by my friends whether I'm ok, whether I have people to share time with and whether life isn't a bit hard in rwanda. sure, there are days where things are difficult - but the good ones prevail! and if you want to know what it's really like - come and visit me ;-))

one year on...

I have now been in rwanda almost a year - and I have been trying to write a comprehensive post about how I feel about my first year in africa and somehow I just can't quite get my words round all the layers that there are to what I have been experiencing in the last 12 months - suffice to say it's been an incredible experience so far and I have definitely made the right choice when I signed up for this.

it has been a year of meeting great people and making amazing friends, learning a lot about spain, adapting to the rwandan rhythm of doing things, learning new ways of thinking, fulfilling one of my biggest dreams (apart from living in africa), looking back in awe at life and how it always makes the right decisions for you, finding my way round a new city, discovering the best places to shop, getting used to having people working at my house all the time, never having to think about cleaning, not having to wear socks, the cool nights, watching the sun rise behind the hill from my bed, listening to the birds sing in the trees of my garden, utter frustration at bureaucracy, lunar eclipse in akagera national park, cold night with whisky and love on top of a volcano, breaking down on a busy dual carriage way for the umpteenth time, 'I-can't-cope-with-africa'-days, 'I-love-africa'-days - but never lonely, never miserable and despite challenges happy to still be here and curious about life's next moves.