On Kinyarwanda

Every Peace Corps Trainee, in every Peace Corps host country, is subjected to the daunting task of “learning a language”. Some programs have language prerequisites for service. For example, to serve in Latin America you must have taken a certain number of Spanish language classes, and in many West African countries there is a French requirement.

In Rwanda, we learn to speak Kinyarwanda. Well, we try our damnest to learn Kinyarwanda. Kinyarwanda is a Bantu language, spoken by a whopping 7.3 million people worldwide. Compare this to the 67 million who speak French, or 1.5 billion that speak English. Some days this feels like the most pointless language to learn – when will I be able to apply this language again in my life? Maybe if I travel to Burundi, but trust me, I won’t be going there any time soon. If you cross into Uganda or Tanzania, Kinyarwanda will do very little for you. But, and this is a big but, learning Kinyarwanda is arguably the most important thing I can do for my Peace Corps service.

During training, we spent every day, from 7:45AM to 5PM in class. Every day involved at least two hours of Kinyarwanda classes, and most involved significantly more. Imagine this: I have been up since 5:30AM, when my host family first started their day – usually by turning on the radio and speaking significantly more loudly than would ever be acceptable in my household at such an ungodly hour. Maybe I dragged myself out for a run with my “run club” (we were no Heartbreak Hill, but we did drag our butts up and down the few hills of Rwamagana). I’ve taken a bucket bath, and on a good day it was hot water. I’ve eaten my morning breakfast of a hotdog bun and porridge. I haven’t had my coffee, and I am not in the mood for our warm up of Big Booty or Pterodactyl. All I can think about is the coffee and morning snack (will it be cinnamon buns?) that await us at our first break of the day.

But nonetheless, every day, I sat with my three classmates while, Warren, our patient, hilarious and intelligent teacher tried to teach us his native language. I think I speak for my cohort when I say that I am truly amazed and proud at what we were able to accomplish in two months of instruction. Especially because Kinyarwanda is NOT an easy language, and couldn’t be more different from English, or the little Spanish I have held onto since high school. We learned to conjugate verbs in the present, future, imperative and past tense – if only I could remember the verbs. We learned that “inuma”, “inama” and “imana” are three very different words, and you wouldn’t want to pray to a pigeon, attend the morning staff God or see a bird on the street and accidentally call it a meeting. We learned that you should absolutely never say “I like to do many things” in Kinyarwanda, because many things actually means many dirty things. I am able to have practical conversations, and although there are many words I don’t know or simply cannot remember, I am able to crack a few jokes here and there to make my new coworkers and neighbors smile.

Warren also taught us about the culture of Rwanda throughout our language classes. We had lessons on fending off the unwanted attention of men in our community, and that it is absolutely acceptable to tell a high ranking man that he has “umuco mubi” – bad culture, when he relentlessly hits on you at work. Warren studied education in school and lamented about the current state of language education in Rwanda. Adults in Rwanda were primarily educated in French and Kinyarwanda, and few adults speak English. In 2008, Rwanda changed the language taught in classrooms from French to English. However, many teachers who teach English don’t actually know the language. Children learn Kinyarwanda at home, and can speak and understand the language, but many are not taught to read and write in Kinyarwanda in school. As a result, there is a fear that children in Rwandan schools today will not truly know any one language.

One day, early into learning Kinyarwanda, myself and my three classmates suddenly understood a concept we had been working on. I cannot remember exactly what it was, but believe it had to do with creating sentence structures and verb conjugations. We jokingly applauded our “small victories”. Warren looked at us, slightly confused by the English saying we were using. We explained the phrase small victories by comparing our accomplishment, correctly forming a sentence, to a large victory, such as a team winning the World Cup (Warren is a big football fan, and many of our conversations centered around the World Cup). Warren looked at us, not a hint of sarcasm in his eyes, and said that for him, us learning to form sentences, conjugate verbs and converse in Kinyarwanda was a big victory.

Our final week of training, we were subjected to the LPI, or Language Proficiency Index. The LPI consists of a 20-40 minute conversation (interrogation) with one of the staff members or language instructors. They ask questions and guide the conversation to assess knowledge of vocabulary, verb conjugation, sentence structure and listening ability. I am happy to say that I passed my exam, and feel as though a lot of what I learned has been applicable at site thus far. We will be tested three more times throughout our service – in approximately three months, one year and two years. I hope to continue to improve my language skills, not for a resume builder or a check off my Peace Corps bucket list, but for the daily small victories of conversing and building relationships with my new neighbors, coworkers and potential friends.

This week I moved to my permanent site where I will be living and working for the next two years. Aside from myself and two coworkers at the health center, I have not met a single person with working knowledge of the English language. If I want to purchase eggs or vegetables at the market, speak with women at the health center about the importance of exclusive breastfeeding or balanced diets for children under five, or simply to have a conversation with another human being, I must be able to converse in Kinyarwanda. I have found a tutor who will hopefully be able to help me with this endeavor. On slow afternoons at the health center, I make sure to whip out my verb chart and practice learning new verbs and conjugations. For example, for the first few days at site I had no idea how to tell people when I arrived in Nyamasheke. I would tell them “I went here on Thursday”. Now, I confidently can tell people when I arrived in Rwanda and when I moved to site.

I have officially worked at my health center for a week. Honestly, my health center is a pretty well-oiled machine, and discovering my role here will be challenging. This week I have been exposed to many different facets of the center – I have checked people into their appointments, taken the weights, lengths and MUAC on babies and children under five, attended and introduced myself and the Peace Corps at a community health worker meeting, and ventured into the community for a “hygiene check” at local restaurants and bars. Needless to say, I will absolutely not be eating at any of the establishments I visited, and the things I saw were enough to convince me to commit to quasi-vegetarianism for the next two years. This coming week, my counterpart and I will be getting started on my Community Familiarization Exercise. This is basically a series on interviews, with health center staff, community health workers, patients, Sector and Cell officials, religious leaders, school officials and teachers, and local NGOs. From this information, we hope to get a better idea of what problems exist within my community and what programs and projects will be most effective. The culmination of this exercise will be a lengthy report to Peace Corps, and a presentation at our training in November. And, of course, this entire exercise will be conducted in Kinyarwanda – pray for me.

To everyone who has reached out since I have been in Rwanda, and especially those who have texted, called or DM’ed since I have moved to site, this is where I praise you! I think I have told this to everyone who I have spoken with, but Peace Corps is absolutely the strangest thing I have done in my entire life. Twenty-four of us boarded a one-way flight to Rwanda, a tiny, beautiful and entirely different culture and country from America. We lived with host families who took care of us, woke us up at 5AM with loud music and louder yelling, played with our hair and gave us a quick introduction to the culture of Rwanda. We went to class every day, six days a week, for nine weeks straight. We spent hours learning Kinyarwanda, behavior change, capacity building and the Peace Corps approach to development. We even had a nonnegotiable 6:30PM curfew. Then, out of nowhere, we were given free range in Kigali for three beautiful days. We were gluttons – eating all the cheese, ice cream and iced coffee we could find. We downed gin and tonics and shots of tequila and danced until 2:30AM on a Tuesday night. We bought up every gas stove we could get our hands on at T2000. We attended a fancy party at the Charge D’Affairs home in Kigali where we gave an oath to defend our country from enemies, foreign and domestic – I didn’t even realize this was part of our service until I repeated the oath. And then they cruelly forced us to say goodbye to one another. We packed our trucks high with luggage, wooden stools, basins and water filters, and after a tearful “see ya in three months!”, we were off to our villages.

As I write this, I have been at site for a total of nine days. These days have been trying to say the least. For the first few days, I was spoiled rotten and eating every meal with the nuns. Not only was the food delicious, but they are my only six friends in village. We spent hours chatting, laughing and drinking coffee. They even saved the last slice of cake for my arrival. Now, I am living in my little home, cooking rice, beans, eggs and vegetables, eating peanut butter and jelly straight from the jars, and have had my first taste of the deluge of free time many volunteers experience. So far, I have done my best to keep busy – from Saturdays at the health center working on my Kinyarwanda lessons, to Sunday church and a long, winding walk toward Lake Kivu, my first full week of work, hours and a few books on my Kindle, and some good ole runs and BBG (thanks, Kayla!).

Most importantly, I have gotten calls and texts from all of you. Two years is so damn daunting, but the time spent talking with my friends and family leaves me feeling encouraged, strong, and like maybe I am doing something right. So keep ‘em coming – my favorite way to blow through data is on WhatsApp calls.

Below are photos from our family farewell party - more from swearing in and site to come!