Simfite amafaranga

This post started out as an update about my daily responsibilities here, but somehow came out as my conclusions about the significance of language. So, I apologize, and promise to tell about teaching soon.

I have found that the Rwandans are quite difficult to understand when they speak French. Interacting with them in French tends to be fairly one-sided. I will say something that they understand, then they will respond, I will ask them to repeat what they have said and will get the general meaning by the one or two words that I can pick out through a heavy accent and low voice. At first I thought this was a sign of my poor audio proficiency in French. But one day at the end of training, a member of the Congolese soccer team that was staying at St. Paul's stopped to watch our game of Uno and talk with us. He spoke in French and I was surprised to understand every word he said. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later, while talking with Father Charles, that I found out why there was such a difference in his French speaking abilities and those of the Rwandans.

Most African countries are large and composed of dozens if not hundreds of small tribes, each of which has their own language or their own version of a common Bantu language. (Bantu is a group of languages that are spoken in East Africa. Swahili and Kinyarwanda are two examples of Bantu languages.) When the colonizers came and drew country lines and began to educate the Africans in their schools, it was only the language of these colonizers that the separate nations had in common. The people of small Rwanda however, all spoke Kinyarwanda and so had no use for French outside of school and business with the Belgians. This is why for them, trading in French for English as part of Vision 2020 is no huge sacrifice (except in schools, where all education has been done in French). It is also why French is associated with the well-educated and wealthy foreigners.

Whenever I leave the confines of the school, children and occasionally even adults follow me around on the streets shouting "amafaranga, amafaranga muzungu!" (give me money white person!) To this I can explain away in French or English that I am a volunteer teacher and that I do not have money to give away. Or I can respond with a simple "simfite amafaranga." (I don't have money). The response to the former is usually unimpressed looks. The response to the later is a huge smile and a quick trail of questions in Kinyarwanda to which I may or may not know the answer.

A common attitude that we have encountered here is that if you are Western you have a lot of money. Not only that, but you have the same color skin and speak the same language as the instigators of great oppression and exploitation in Africa. My impression is that our presence here is a reminder to Africans of the unfairness of life. As someone who has come out of the tunnel of fate with the long end of the stick, don't you owe them something?

On an individual level, I don't think that we do owe them anything. However, if we care anything about justice in the world this is where it counts. A few words of Kinyarwanda: this is the mustard seed, the yeast in the bread. I can give what is asked of me to the 12 year-old Rwandan child on the street: namely amafaranga. But, if I want to communicate to this person that I think they have value and that I respect them, a few words of Kinyarwanda is all I need. This situation, this decision between amafaranga and Kinyarwanda seems very familiar to me. I suspect that this same decision is faced every day in different forms and different locations, dressed up in different clothes, by people the world over.

This is why, though I am pleased to be using my French where I can, I have decided to make a dedicated effort to learning Kinyarwanda. And the giant smiles and pleased astonishment tell me that a purposeful "umunsi mwiza" is worth the effort. In fact, it's worth all the amafaranga in the world.