Babel babel babel

Written July 11, 2011

Hey everybody,

Tudo bem? (Everything well?) Seems like I just posted a blog, but I’ll be coming out of Internet hiding early this month because next week I’m headed to a conference in the town of Boane, just outside Maputo (the capital).

I feel like it’s nothing but conferences these days. I just attended another one the last couple of weeks here in Mabote. Our donor organization and some other outside partners were training fifteen new home-based care volunteers for our association. I asked to sit in, but by about day three (out of twelve) I was kicking myself for that. It’s not that I didn’t get anything out of it, but it was hardly worth it to have to sit through session after session where they mainly spoke in Chitswa (or, in the trainers’ cases, Changana and Chopi, but they’re close enough to be able to communicate with each other). By day six I had come down with a cold that turned out to be quite debilitating, so I had to miss a few days. The timing was uncanny, I tell ya.

So in case you were wondering how my Chitswa is coming, there’s your answer… it’s not really. After a couple months of beating my head against the wall, I think I can say with some certainty that this is one language barrier I will not be overcoming. As it turns out, learning Chitswa is nothing like learning Portuguese. I think I’ve mentioned before that Chitswa isn’t really a written language. But in addition to the lack of written materials, the other challenge I’m finding is that no one knows how to explain the grammar. Even having a tutor just turned out to be frustrating (for both of us, I think) and unhelpful.

People will just say to me, “This is how you ask for water, ‘babel babel babel.’ And this is how you ask someone how they’re feeling, ‘babel babel babel.’” And that “babel babel” part is actually made up of really long and hard-to-pronounce words. Like, for example, today is July 11th. The word for eleven? Khumeniyinwe. The word for July? Malatacikwinyani. And I can’t just memorize a bunch of sounds for everything I might want to say… I need rules! Patterns!

Having recently started teaching English, I can commiserate with people not knowing the rules of their native language. “It just is!” I want to say sometimes. “That’s not right because it sounds wrong!” When I first started, I didn’t think I’d need a book. After all, it’s my language… I know it in my bones. But as I’m now seeing, that can be both a blessing and a handicap when you’re trying to teach it. So even though it drives me crazy that no one can explain Chitswa to me… I get it. They don’t even have books or rules they learned in school to rely upon. Like me with English, they just know it in their bones.

People often tell me that Chitswa is easier than Portuguese and that I’ll pick it up in no time (though they say that less and less these days…). One Sunday several months ago I was at church with my friend and colleague, Amina. The service, of course, was all in Chitswa. She translated for me for about the first ten minutes and then stopped. I assumed she got tired and I didn’t mind at all. But then an hour or so later she turns to me and asks, “Do you understand?” I was confused at first, wondering if they started speaking Portuguese after I’d zoned out. But they hadn’t, so I told her, “Of course not, they’re speaking Chitswa!” She looks at me, kind of perplexed, and says, “Open your ears!!” As if it were that easy.

I feel bad that my Chitswa isn’t getting much better because I know it would mean so much to people if I could speak more of their language – their real language. When Mozambique chose Portuguese as their official language after independence from Portugal in 1975, it was a pragmatic decision. They needed a language to unite them as a country, to start to form a national identity. I’m told that up to that point, and even after, many people identified more with their ethnic/language group – some of which cross national borders – than with this outline on a map called Mozambique.

Now, it seems like there’s a divide between more educated, cosmopolitan Mozambicans from larger towns and cities who speak Portuguese on a daily basis, and the large number of rural farmers who, if they speak any, only speak enough to get by. Just how little Portuguese many people in Mabote speak was driven home to me during the training these last two weeks. It actually started off in Portuguese but then it became clear that most people just weren’t following, even though one of the requirements to be a home-based care volunteer was that they could speak Portuguese.

But if you’re a subsistence farmer barely getting by and an international NGO says they want to pay you a monthly subsidy to work in the community, but only if you can speak Portuguese, then you obviously aren’t going to write “barely speaks Portuguese” at the top of your resume. People don’t like to admit they don’t speak Portuguese very well because they feel like they’re supposed to know it, even though many people here, especially women, haven’t had much of an opportunity to learn. It’s like there’s shame in only speaking Chitswa, which is sad to me. Why should someone have to feel ashamed for speaking their own language?

In fact, my closest volunteer neighbor, Mandy, told me that a friend of hers in Makwakwa has decided that she doesn’t want her baby to speak Chitswa at all, only Portuguese. In reality, if she stays here, it will be impossible to keep her daughter from learning Chitswa from other people. But it just goes to show how local languages are sometimes looked down upon.

As much as it’s inconvenient for me as an English-speaker to have to attempt to learn two new languages to live in Mozambique, and – from a practical standpoint – as inefficient as it is for one country to have so many different languages, I hope they hold on to their local languages even as globalization and development spread. It’s hard for me to imagine a Mozambique without them; it seems like such an important part of their cultural heritage.

And I don’t see why there’s not room for multiple languages. Even with the burgeoning demand for English, I can easily imagine Mozambicans speaking their local language, Portuguese and, if they want to, English (some already do). As it is now, students study English and French in school in addition to Portuguese. One thing that I’ve been impressed with here is their comfort with, and even thirst for, being exposed to other languages.

I’ve seen people keep their cell phones in English even when there’s a Portuguese option, and I’ve also seen people watch movies in Chinese, with English subtitles. One of my host families in Namaacha was doing that one night and they seemed to be enjoying the movie so much, laughing and carrying on, that I started to wonder if, somehow, they actually spoke some Chinese. When I asked, my host mom said, “No, but listen to how funny they sound!!” And then she tried to imitate someone speaking Chinese and everyone cracked up, especially me. So wrong, but the irony of someone whose primary language is Changana – as “funny-sounding” as it gets to my ears – doing an impression of someone speaking Chinese… priceless.

When it comes to openness to foreign languages, I like their attitude. We could use some of that in the U.S., where some people seem to think that the influx of Spanish is something to be feared and stamped out. (Did you catch the “This is Alabama; we speak English” ad from last year’s gubernatorial race?) People here just don’t get it when I tell them that before I came here, I pretty much only spoke English. “But besides English, what else did you speak?” “Just English.” “Not even French? And what about your local language… what do you speak with your grandmother?” “Just English.” They just look at me weird, not quite believing.

Anyway, I hope you’re all enjoying your summers and having some fun. I’m excited to be hanging out for a couple days in Maputo before the conference. Whenever I spend time in Maputo, it feels almost like I’m on a little vacation back to my old life… eating in restaurants, taking hot showers, and maybe most of all, that glorious feeling that I used to take for granted of being anonymous... i.e. no one gawking at me or calling me mulungu.

And the feeling of being on vacation is amplified because the city is a convergence of so many diverse influences that you don’t quite know where you are. It’s a port city and some parts are beautiful and feel almost Mediterranean. Yet there’s also plenty of communist-era square concrete architecture that makes you feel like you’re in Eastern Europe. And on top of that you never really forget you’re in Africa, with the aggressive street vendors and taking chapas (jam-packed minibuses) as public transport.

Incidentally, being in Maputo also makes me feel like my Portuguese sucks, whereas in Mabote I sometimes get lulled into thinking that I’m practically fluent. Just goes to show, again, the rural-urban language barrier. And I’m pretty sure if I arrived in Lisbon or Rio de Janeiro tomorrow, I’d be totally floundering.

After the conference I’m going to visit my friend Anne’s town, Fidel Castro, in Gaza province. (Yes, that’s actually the name of her town.) She’s invited me to go with her to a traditional lobolo (bride price) ceremony. Should be interesting!

Fica bem, (Stay well)
Julie