The Joys of Kinyarwanda

Six pm on a Tuesday night, in Cyabayaga, Rwanda. (This blog post starts like an Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode; it wasn’t my intention.) My Supervisor calls me:

 “Caitie, where are you?” I was in my house, heating water, to take a bath. Where else would I be six pm on a Tuesday night?

I stopped heating the water, and headed over to his office. A whopping five-minute walk from my house. A female teacher sat waiting for me, named Peace. Peace is a common Rwandan name so is Innocent, Michael Jackson, and Beyoncé. I’ve met three Michael Jacksons, and two Beyoncés. One of which lives up to her name perfectly. She is a D-I-V-A.

Peace spoke English perfectly, and wanted to tutor me in Kinyarwanda. I agreed, and our tutoring lessons start next week. Meanwhile, I have been practicing my tutoring with a man named Innocent. Innocent lives in Nykigando, and bikes two hours one way to see me every Saturday morning. He is an amazing teacher but far too expensive, and I cannot afford his prices anymore. I broke the news to him yesterday, and he didn’t seem too upset. I think the biking was getting to him.

As I am changing language teachers this week, and trying to understand this god-forsaken language, I thought it'd be appropriate to educate on the joys of Kinyarwanda.

Kinyarwanda is a Bantu language. This means that it makes little sense to people, like me, who grew up around Romance Languages, or Latin, French, Spanish, Italian.

They do not put vowels together. For example my Rwandan name is Mutesi, given to me by Mama Beyoncé and the other Mamas of Bushoga. No one can say Caitie. Notice the consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, combination in Mutesi. The ai combination, and the ie combination in my name, Caitie, makes no sense in Kinyarwanda whatsoever. So therefore I am Mutesi (Moo-tess-i).

Most words are one vowel or consonant off from each other.

For example: Umusazi (oo-mu-sazi), Umusozi (oo-mu-sozi), and Umusuzi (oo-mu-suzi). Same word really, but each with a different vowel that changes the meaning.

Umusazi = crazy person

Umusozi = mountain/hill – there is really no difference in this country.

Umusuzi = a fart

I’ve messed this up many times, and have had roars of laughter in return to my simple mistake. Saying: I’m going to the umusuzi (fart), when I meant: I’m going to the umusozi (mountain), would be followed by looks of confusion, then the realization of what I meant, and finally roars of laughter. Also, this interaction sums up my first week at site. 

Kinyarwanda also loves its noun classes. There are sixteen of them. SIXTEEN.  Noun classes are different categories the noun is placed in, according to the subject it pertains to. People, things, places, all are in different categories.  

For example – the first four noun classes:

1.     People – for people we use mu – umugabo = man, umugore = woman, umuhungu = boy, umukobwa = girl

2.     Plural of People – ba – abagabo = men, abagore = women, abahungu = boys, abakobwa = girls

3.      Things – mu – umugati = one piece of bread, umutwe = head, umunsi = day

4.     Plural of things – mi – imigati = bread, imitwe = heads, iminsi = days

This continues all the way through to noun class sixteen. The others include: ri, ma, ki, bi , n, n, ru, aka, tu, bu, ku, and ha. Therefore the prefix of the word changes according to the category, as well as the adjectives, and conjunctions within the sentence. 

Okay, so maybe this sounds simple, or not as terrible as you might imagine. Whenever I look at my nicely typed chart Peace Corps gave us, I think: this is totally manageable.

Except when you're speaking, it is an entirely different ball game. So all the words in the sentence change according to noun class. 

Example:

Abahungu babiri = two boys (2nd noun class - plural for people - ba)

Imigati mibiri = two pieces of bread (4th noun class - plural for things - mi)

Umudugudus habiri = two villages (16^th noun class - places - ha)

So the word for two = kabiri (kah-be-ree), changes from babiri (bah-be-ree) to mibiri (me-be-ree), to habiri (ha-be-ree). Depending on the noun class. Kill. Me. Now.

This is fine when I speak Kinya. Usually I get the noun class wrong, then the person looks at me strangely, figures out the mistake I made, and repeats the word with the correct noun class. But when the Mamas are speaking rapid fire Kinyarwanda to me (see picture below), and kabiri sounds totally different then what I memorized, I am usually forced to respond with a “simbumva” or I don’t understand. My brain just cannot process the word forms changing that quickly.

The Mamas of Cyabayaga, who love to speak to me in rapid fire Kinya.

Then there are verbs. Conjugation. Which is okay, if it is present, habitual present, or future. When it comes to the past tense I am lost, again.

Take, guteka or to cook, my favorite verb to conjugate in the past.

First you add a prefix. You take the GU off of guteka and add the following prefixes according to the conjugation:

Na – I

Wa- You

Ya- He/She/It

Twa- We

Mwa- You (Plural)

Ba- They

Add the prefix to teka, for example Nateka – I cooked, Wateka – you cooked, and so on and so forth….but not really.

For the past tense you also have to change the ending. Which is different from present and future in Kinya. So a verb ending in ka would turn into a tse. I don’t know why, that’s just the way it is. And any Rwandan will tell you the same thing.  

So Nateka becomes Natetse, which is the proper form of I cooked. And doesn’t look anything, or sound anything like guteka, the original verb.

There are verbs ending in, ra, za sa, ya, ma, pa, ba and others I am probably forgetting. All change according to the letter.

Gukora – to work

Ra changes into a ze

So….conjugate....

Nakoze – I worked

My days spent in Mr. Mooney’s Latin class seem so simple now. What was I complaining about for all those years again? 

Sometimes I think I will never understand this language. Which is a possibility. Peace Corps pays for us to have a tutor, and I will probably have one until I close my service, July 2014. There is a common phrase in Rwanda: Buhoro-Buhoro, or little by little. I like this phrase. It is my friend, and many Rwandan’s are either a) impressed that I know Kinyarwanda, even if it is only a little, or b) say buhoro buhoro, and I take that as, “don’t worry you will get there someday, just keep studying.”

So study I do.  

Snow - A Cultural Exchange

Angel, a coworker, approaches me. She is the receptionist of the Health Center, and says “Caitie, I have a facebook but no friends, will you help me.”

Facebook is a new thing here. It is expensive to go online, so while most people have a facebook there are usually no pictures, friends, or anything written on walls. But it is still a big thing to have one. Oh the joys of globalization.

We get on facebook, and I instantly friend her. The next hour is spent looking through my photos, her asking me millions of questions: What is this? What is that? Who is that? What are you doing?  And explaining everything I possibly can with a language barrier. We happen upon one of my favorite photos (see photo below.) It is the street where I lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I took the photo during an epic snow day my senior year of college. Greenpoint was my home away from home, and Brooklyn will always be a home to me. A place, I hope, one-day to return to. I have never felt so much like myself in any other place besides New York. 

Angel points to the snow covering the cars. “What is this?” She says pointing the curser over the snow-covered sections.

“That is snow”

“What is snow?”

“Snow is wonderful.” I say without thinking.  

“What is wonderful?”

In Kinyarwanda, the national language, they don’t have many adjectives, or adjectives at all for that matter. I should also note that if Angel and I were to be tested, me in Kinyarwanda, and she in English, the results would probably be the same. She understands when I speak English, but can only speak very minimal English. I find that I have to decode most of what she is saying, because she knows a lot of English words but cannot properly string them together in a sentence. Her sentences sound a bit like Yoda.

Cat I hear want you. For example. She means: I heard you want a cat. I’ve had a month of practicing this, and I’ve gotten pretty good at decoding.

I’m sure I speak the same way in Kinyarwanda. We have an odd relationship of speaking a mix of Kinyarwanda and English, and eventually understanding each other through using both languages.

I spent the next half hour trying to explain snow, and failing miserably. “Is it like sugar but cold?” “Kind of,” I would respond, “but not as sticky, it is light.” “Light like the flashlight?” Again, I find the lack of adjectives in Kinyarwanda frustrating.  Likewise, if a Rwandan studies English, they usually don’t study adjectives because they don’t translate.

Through all the mess and confusion it suddenly dawned on me. In a place where cold things don’t exist (they don’t understand why I like cold water) I remember there is a fridge in the Laboratory for all the blood, urine, and other samples. I grab her hand and waltz over there. I open the fridge, scrap some frost off the side with my finger, and tell her snow is like this.

She touches my finger, and immediately steps back.

“Ah, that is bad.”

“No it is wonderful.”

In a country where, on the unusual occasion the temperature drops under 80 degrees, and winter jackets surface, I’ve should’ve seen this coming. Honestly, L.L.Bean, North Face, giant puffy jackets, Americans use in the dead of winter are worn as if it were mid-January in North Eastern America. In the event of an Ice Age I have little faith in the survival of Rwandans.

I tried to explain the wonderful nature of snow, all the great things about it. We even goggled pictures of children playing in snow to show her how happy people were about it.  But it was lost on her. She was freaked out that was cold, and that this coldness covers the whole land. “Eh, how do you live?!” Angel repeats over and over again.

Sometimes I forget that it’s September. It’s the beginning of the rainy season, which is not as bad as it sounds. It rains for at least two hours a day, but the rain here is warm, and needed. The temperature has cooled off considerably, but it still reminds me of a hot summers day in August on most days. And therefore I forget that in America the temperatures are cooling, and the leaves are going to start to change, or have already started to change. It is one of the things I will miss most in my two years. Fall, and snow. I love snow, unlike Angel I think it’s wonderful, and will be greatly missed.