“Subiramo muhalo” Say it again, slowly.
The Monitoring and Evaluation office bursts into laughter around me, knowing smiles exchanged over my clumsy efforts. Only a month has passed since I arrived at Partners in Health as the new M&E Global Health Corps Fellow and my language skills leave much to be desired. My co-worker looks back at me and tries again.
“Tuzabonane ejo!” See you tomorrow.
My tongue aches. My brain hurts. This is the fourth time he’s tried to correct my pronunciation and the speed at which I can actually hear the individual sounds pales in comparison to the speed at which my colleagues converse. After yet another butchery of pronunciation, everyone else finally tells me that most people simply say “Na ejo” as they leave work. That I can manage.
I love learning languages, but Kinyarwanda feels like a completely different beast. 16 noun classes, tonal, multiple suffixes and prefixes to change meaning or plurality, and to a non-native speaker the individual words are almost impossible to pick out in the hurried blur of conversation.
Why bother? Indeed, many have asked me that question. Outside of Rwanda, knowing how to wish someone good morning or ask for the price of a pineapple in Kinyarwanda serves no functional purpose. Sure, I can add it to the bottom of my resume to join the others on my “Additional Languages” list (Bambara, Lusoga, and Twi, for the curious), but the vast majority of my future employers are unlikely to even know these languages exist, much less where they are spoken. I can gleefully call someone a bean-eater in Bambara, but only people who spent time in Mali will know the hilarity of that accusation.*
From a purely utilitarian point of view, learning at least the basics of Kinyarwanda just makes life here easier on a lot of levels. Outside of the city, most people still only speak a smattering of French or English so knowing how to request something or ask for directions makes a big difference. I will freely admit that there is something deeply pleasing in the surprise people show when a muzungu (white person, or more generally foreigner) knows how to greet someone and ask about their day.
But for me, the importance of learning even a basic knowledge of something like Kinyarwanda comes to down to a far simpler and more important principle: respect. Though I will work in Rwanda for a year, I am still just a visitor. To assume that everyone should meet me on my level by speaking English ignores the realities of access to education and disregards the heritage of a language spoken by 12 million people.
I will never become fluent, and I will undoubtedly resort to English or French when my limited vocabulary gives out, but making the effort to learn and practice a language like Kinyarwanda is part and parcel of the idea of accompaniment and the philosophy of the Global Health Corps. I will stand by my partners and colleagues and make the effort to communicate in their language because this is their country, their health system, not mine. There is a reason why PIH labels their vehicles in both English and Kinyarwanda. I adapt myself to this context in order to more fully embrace it and to learn and grow from my Rwandan partners. Hopefully my skills and background will make some difference along the way. To greet my neighbors and office mates with a murmured “Mwaramutse” is just one way for me to give the respect I feel is due.
Kinyarwanda may not matter in the grand scheme of things, but it matters here and here I stand.
*If you want a more academic explanation of what this is about, check out this paper, page 76.