Ten thousand words swarm ‘round my head
Ten million more in books written beneath my bed
I wrote or read them all when searching’ in the swarms
But still can’t find how to hold my hands
And I know you need me in the next room over
But I am stuck in here all paralyzed
For months I got myself in ruts
Too much time spent in mirrors framed in yellow walls
Ain’t it like most people? I’m no different
We love to talk on things we don’t know about
Ain’t it like most people? I’m no different
We love to talk on things we don’t know about
“Ten Thousand Words” - The Avett Brothers
Looking at the luscious green grass, the multi-storied house, and the expensive electronics, I thought for a moment that we were in America. Then I supposed that, technically, we were. The Ambassador to Rwanda’s house was the site of our hallowed Swearing In ceremony - the three hour procession in which the Peace Corps Trainee transforms by way of bureaucratic fiat into the rank of Peace Corps Volunteer.
We were in “America’s House” as the Ambassador told us. International law dictates that her patch of land sitting in the middle of Kigali - a city in the middle of Rwanda, a country in the middle of Africa - was technically sovereign American soil, and for those few hours, I was happy to be on it. She also told us that her house, by extension of being America’s House, also belonged to us, the American volunteer - and I wondered in that moment if that meant she would be willing to let me live there for the next two years rather than in my dusty town down in the Southern Province.
Observing the drinks and the Fender-brand sound equipment I wondered if I couldn’t go into “my house” for a while - bring over a few beers, my plug in my guitar and cool my heels for awhile. “What up Erica!” I would turn towards the door and wave from my well worn spot on the couch, without actually getting up out of it - met only by her blank stare. “How was your day? Listen - real quick - we are out of milk, and the toilet is doing that thing again, you know what I mean? Like that super weird hissing sound? I would call the guy but I’m out of phone minutes and I’m a little low on cash so… Government salary am-I-right! Maybe put in a word with Uncle Sam for me when you go back to the office tomorrow, ‘cause a guy’s gotta eat! Ha, you’re the best, thanks”. In the end, I imagined this would violate the symbolic spirit of the generous invitation.
The ceremony carried on without a hitch. Ursula and I gave our jointly written and performed speech to a warm reception. We heard from the Ambassador, the Country Director, the Rwandan Health Minister, and others who all wished us well. All volunteers were dressed to impress, which each person sporting some level of African traditional fabric crafted into form fitting clothing by our very own tailors back in the town of Rwamagana. It was a far cry from the sweaty faces and dusty clothes that we had no choice to wear while we slogged through our 10 training weeks.
To boot, we had been told that event was being catered by one of the nicest catering outfits in the city of Kigali. And when the ceremony concluded, and our signatures were collected to make it official, we were shepherded over to the reception area where a diverse (wonderfully protein rich, to my delight) and delicious spread was out there for us. Pizza! Ice cubes! Chicken and Beef with sautéed veggies! Really, where were we?
Finally we were alerted that there was a cake on the far side of the table. The cake was wrapped up and hidden away, waiting to be thrust upon us in a manner commensurate with the importance of it’s exceedingly rare presence. It was a cake was baked specifically for us, the volunteers, as an earned symbol of us making it and a pleasant reminder of the luxuries of home.
When we all gathered, the cake was revealed to us in all its glory. A white frosting covered it in entirety. A red-icing hexagonal pattern adorned it, bisected by a straight blue line of delicious frosting. The icing had a rough look to it, which gave the mouth-watering suggestion that it had been laid on thickly in a very liberal manner. And below the pattern, in red-icing lettering, the cake was unequivocally dedicated to us, as written by the Rwandan catering employees:
P - scorP!
Yes, thats us. We had gone through 10 weeks of training, learned a traditional Rwandan dance and processed through a three hour Swearing In ceremony to go from “P-ScorP" Trainees to “P-scorP" Volunteers.
It was a hilarious and stark reminder; we may have been in America’s house for the day, but the world out there was still African. And we learned, to our dismay, that our common foe, Lord Language Barrier, doesn’t respect the boundaries of international sovereign land. Not even within the confines of the American Ambassador’s house, with a legitimately commissioned fine dining catering company could we escape His ambiguous clutches. Even when we felt as safe as we could, standing literally upon the soil of our own country, He would still deface an otherwise beautiful cake to make His relentlessly annoying credo known to us all - “I Kind of Understand You, I Think…”
It was the first language gaffe of my minutes-old career as a Volunteer. In the succeeding months I would come to experience so many more that they would comfortably become my new normal reality. When it comes to learning the local language of Kinyarwanda, there are countless idiosyncrasies, mismatches and translation gaps that make navigating my daily life painfully funny, incredibly frustrating, and legitimately eye-opening. I will convey some of them here.These are my Notes from the Field.
Mo Money, Mo…
Before we moved on from training we had to go through a language test. The big test was nothing more than a conversation with one of our Language and Culture Facilitators, or LCFs, and they would see how far you had come along in your understanding and your speech. One aspect of the conversation was a fake scenario, a situation ostensibly concocted to resemble one we may have to go through in our own towns.
My situation was that I had to speak to my “landlord” (the LCF) and explain that there was a robbery or some other adverse event, which left broken parts of the house that I needed for him to fix. Was I capable of that scenario, my teacher asked me? I had to think for a moment, as I always did when it came to Kinyarwanda. I had to run the full gamut: how would I actually say this in English? Ok then how would I boil that down into its most absolutely simple elements in order to convey the idea in the most efficient manner possible? Ok and of that, how many of the actual Kinyarwandan words to I know, and can I do it all in the present tense, the only tense I had a handle on?
Do I know the word for glass? No, but I know the word for window, so maybe I could get away with that. Do I know how to say broken, or shattered or thief? No, of course not. But I do know the magic word. The word that Rwandans use for just about everything distasteful: “Ikibazo” (ee-chee-bazo) - Problem.
Hello, leader of my house. I was at work. After, I go at home. At home, I see problems many many. There is a problem at the window there. There is problems many on the floor here (I point to the floor to the imaginary shards of glass indicative of the malicious break-in). Here at the door, also, there is a problem. It is bad. I don’t like it very. Please help!
My teacher looked bemused. But the truth remained that the Rwandan people use the word “Ikibazo” with a very liberal regularity, and its context covers a lot of ground. If you have a headache, you have a head problem. Food that has gone bad at the market isn’t rotten, it is simply food with big problems.
My counterpart at the health center, Cecile - a lovely woman who doubles as my Rwandan mother - has a son who is about my age. With pained consternation, she told me one day that her son Aimable (pronounced Ee-ma-brey), was seeing the doctor because he was “very sick”. I was greatly concerned. I asked her what was wrong, but given her natural shyness and embarrassment at speaking English (her third language, which she still speaks with functionality) she declined to explain. I figured that if the illness was beyond her grasp both linguistically and emotionally, then it must be quite serious. She told me that when she went home and talked to him, she would be able to send me a text message and tell me what it was about, in better English than she could produce in that moment. I told her that was fine.
As I was cooking food that night and listening to music, my phone dinged, indicating a text message. I went over to look at it and opened the message from Cecile.
“Alexi! The grand finger on Aimable’s foot has big problem!”
It was an ingrown toenail. A very big “Ikibazo” indeed.
Upload Complete
In the cult-classic movie “The Matrix”, human beings exist in a dystopian future where robots have taken over the planet and co-opted the human brain by subjecting every living person to a digital simulation of reality, the name of which is the title of the film. When one is inside The Matrix, they are inside a computer which means they are part of the system, and therefore can learn skills with the rapidity of a program download.
In one scene, a main character learns within seconds how to fly an Apache helicopter. In one of the movie’s many famous scenes, Keanu Reeves goes from zero martial arts knowledge to waking up in his chair after a download to tell the viewer, “I know Kung Fu”. The data can reach everyone, and it is standardized. Theoretically if I were in the matrix, I too could learn the same level of Kung Fu, given the program template.
This is all fiction, of course. But for those with a proclivity for conspiratorial or fantastical explanations of our world, I have a treat for you. Because if there is evidence that human beings do live inside a giant computer program, a la The Matrix, I have found it here in Rwanda.
Every day when greeted, every child I have met in the country says the exact same thing to me, in the exact same manner, no matter what time it is.
“Good Morning-gee!”.
It has a staccato-like rhythm. The pronunciation of the word “morning”, given Rwandans phobia of R’s, sounds like “Maw-ning”. And for some unknown reason they add an extra syllable of “gee” to the end of it, maybe just for an African linguistic flourish. They seem to all say it with the same tone and enthusiasm, and they say it irrespective of the time of day. Whether it is 1:00pm in Rwamagana, 3:56pm in Kigali, or 11:22am in Musanze, if you see a kid, they will say the same thing. “Good Maw-ning-geeee!”.
As for the adults. Greetings, we have been told, are extremely important to Rwandans and Africans in general, so for us as volunteers it is exceedingly important to acknowledge everyone and ask how they are doing. And when you get around to asking the question, you will get the exact same answer from literally every single person you speak with who knows even the smallest iota of English.
“Hello (X). How are you?”
“I am fine”
I am fine. Everyone is fine. No one is good. No one is tired, or in a blah mood or even feeling great. There is no conjunction between the first two words, as no one is interested in the time saving qualities that the speech device provides. I - am - fine. You - are - fine. We - all - are - fine. That’s the only answer you will ever get. It is difficult to explain how similar the cadence of the response is, the pure repetitive nature of it that is mimicked across every person I speak with. Even the kids, who otherwise speak no English at all, seem to know that when they hear the foreigner make the speech pattern with his mouth that looks like “How are you” that they answer the same. I am fine.
Did the same English teaching human being teach “Icyongereza 101” to every single person in this entire country? Even if they did, wouldn’t they specify, even in passing, that there are other types of responses to give in different contexts? And if he did so, then of the sample which included the entire country wouldn’t one person have picked up on this and attempt respond to my question in a diversified way? How is it that every kid would only think to say a single response no matter the time of day, when the Kinyarwandan language has the exact same three greeting system for morning, afternoon and night that English has? Don’t Rwandans feel a range of emotion extending beyond fine-ness, and wouldn’t they seek to try to convey it?
There is only one person I know who gives me a different answer - my friend and colleague Eugene. When I ask him how he is, sometimes he pushes the absolute limit of expression when he tells me that, “He is so fine”. I suspect that he must be almost exploding with joy.
I of course know the answer to this conundrum, at least as it pertains to everyone being “fine”. Rwandans, for all their emphasis on greeting each other, have a rigidly formulaic response to all of them that I find to be odd. There are, as of this writing, four different variations of Kinyarwandan greeting that I am aware of, and in 99% of the instances I have asked them to people I work with and in my community I receive the exact same response almost every single time. It is so repetitious and standardized that at times I don’t even want to ask because I have mapped the entire exchange in my head before it even happens. This is how they translate, roughly:
What is your news? - It is good
What’s up? - It is all OK
How are you doing? - It is all good
How are you feeling? - I am feeling good
Of course, native speakers are able to break through the formula and actually get to the crux of how someone is actually doing. But at this stage I am not. So whereas I am used to at least extracting some level of novel news when greeting a person in English - whether through their demeanor, tone of voice, or word choice - here in Rwanda my host language conversations are painfully short and non productive.
But it is here where language lays bare cultural differences. Rwandans don’t care that their responses are formulaic because the primary goal of a language exchange is to acknowledge the people in your community and have them acknowledge you - the prerequisite for a communal culture. Everyone waves to each other and asks for their news - to the point that it is socially acceptable to be late for a meeting simply because you were caught up greeting your neighbors. The American way emphasizes productivity in all things, including speech. With my mode of thinking, it irks me that an exchange would confer no novel information, and in the case that it doesn’t it is then rendered as hardly worth having. The assumption that “your news is good” is just as valuable as me asking it, because I know what your response will be and if I can’t be of use to you then what’s the point? Of course I have to fight against this instinct in order to earn acceptance, but the difference in philosophy I find to be important.
Naturally, there are options to mitigate this problem that I have. I could redouble my efforts to learn the language and give of myself - seeing that I have willingly elected to come to a foreign country - in order to learn the culture that has evolved over centuries. Or I could project the science fiction fantasy world of one of my favorite movies onto the landscape in which I live - instead choosing to believe that Rwandans have all received a computerized upload of the same linguistic program, which would thereby abdicate my responsibility entirely. I think you know what I will do.
Bits and Bobbles
In Kinyarwanda, there are no specific words for each day of the week. They translate literally into numbers. Monday is First Day, Tuesday is Day Two, Wednesday is Day Three, and so on. At first this seems crazy, but after living here for several months, I can see why no specific convention for naming each day of the week arose. Given that traditionally Rwanda has been an agricultural society where you have no choice but to work everyday, and there are only two seasons (dry and rainy) every day truly would feel exactly the same, save for their consecutive order. It is different for me because I am still on a schedule that bears resemblance to the one I used to have at home - the five day work week with two days off - but even so, when the weather is almost always the same the days tend to blend together with a constant regularity. Leah (frequent contributor to the program) and I often joke that if you have specific plans to do something fun on the first day of the weekend, then it is indeed a “Friday” - but if you’re going to sit around, read a book and go to bed at 8:45, like every other night of the week, then you are having a “Kwa Gatanu” - Day Five.
Rwandan names are wild, and I can not understand them. It is one of my biggest shortcomings in my job that I desperately need to figure out. Several days of the week we give out food products to malnourished families. Government reporting requires that we write down the recipients of the products to track both their growth and their frequency of visit. My first few weeks I tried. But there are no Smith’s and Johnson’s in Rwanda, which reflect standard and easy names that many people share, even with a lack of familial relation. Instead Rwandans create both names for their children. And the names also appear backwards for us, so the surname appears first, in all caps, then the first name comes afterwards. But while their first name might be common (the name “Mugisha” which means Blessing is probably the most common name I encounter) the last name is a wholesale reflection of whatever they feel like telling the world. It’s like a Rwandan vanity license plate, except it’s attached to your being. This makes for names that translate into WEAREHAPPY Blessing, and HEISHERE Kevin and HEISMAN Gilbert and THEQUEENOFALL Naome and THEYLIKETOSAY Setia. It is hard to get used to, and as of right now I can not do it.
Kinyarwandan language adheres to the system of the Bantu Noun Classes which is a grammatical feature of languages in this region of Africa. It is a instructional nightmare, and is so complicated and unintuitive that our teachers in training avoided explaining it to us like it was sex education at a Catholic School. To explain briefly, every noun in the language falls into one of 16 “classes”. The class that the noun falls into then influences all words that are in relation to it, like adjectives. I know that doesn’t make sense to you, because it still barely makes sense to me. I will give examples in an English equivalent. Right now I am sitting at a table and, in English, this table is a “nice” table. The word “nice” is the adjective that refers to “table”, the noun. Let’s say that in Kinyarwanda, the word table falls into Noun Class 1. Then the table is no longer a “nice” table, it is a “Tice” table. The noun has influenced the spelling of the word “nice”. That Building is Bice. My Friend is Fice. Your Eyes are…Eice? You essentially no longer have an objective spelling for many words because “it all depends on the noun class”, and you have multiplied the manner of spelling huge swaths of the lexicon by a factor of 16. To my English speaking mind, it is pure insanity.
Wrap It Up
A description I once read of my Myers-Briggs personality wrote that “[I am] considered gifted when it comes to learning a second (or third!) language”. Participating wholeheartedly in the Horoscope Effect, I chose to believe this untested and vague projection of my capability. But, as you can see, learning the local language has proven to be slightly more difficult than my personality describers may have thought. I wonder if they have ever been to Rwanda. If they had, perhaps they would have included as a footnote, “(*unless of course an INFP is trying to learn Kinyarwanda)”. I have, however, no choice but to try my best and in order to try to be a successful volunteer I will continue to do so. English and Kinyarwanda are languages that are worlds apart - they don’t sound anything alike, they don’t translate directly, and the philosophies behind them are completely different. But slowly improving upon it and working at it provides for a daily challenge that has been a fulfilling one to face. The fight against Lord Language Barrier rages ever onward, but at least it makes for some interesting Notes From the Field.