Nations switching languages

Bujumbura, Burundi viewed from the Lake Tanganyika Beaches

I’ve always thought of Rwanda as a Francophone country. While I’ve been aware of the Rwandan government’s attempts to begin to switch the language of higher education to English, I was not prepared for the overwhelming Anglicizing that has happened here. Driving through the streets of Kigali, French is likely the third most prominent language, following English (probably 80% of all signage) and Kinyarwanda, the national language. While walking through the market today, most people addressed me in English. This country is in the midst of a major linguistic (and geo-political) shift.

Rwanda (along with neighboring Burundi) is a linguistic oddity in Africa. Both nations are linguistically homogenous with only one national language – Kinyarwanda or Kirundi – which are themselves mutually intelligible. They lack the linguistic mosaic that characterizes nearly every other African nation. Both were German colonies in the late nineteenth century and then came under Belgian rule from World War I until the 1960s, entrenching French as the language of education. With the uneasy relationship between Rwanda and France following 1994, Rwanda has made a strong move toward Anglophone East Africa, going so far as to join the Commonwealth.

I struggle to think of another recent situation in the world where a country has quite literally switched its major educational language. Certainly in the aftermath of 1991, the former Soviet republics moved toward reclaiming their national languages. Yet this was a political change. The populations, for the most part, already spoke their languages and most of them had been used to some degree in education at some point in the Soviet Union. This is not the case with English for most of the Rwandan population. I’m told that university professors and secondary school teachers are teaching in English while still learning English. Certainly this creates a bit of national linguistic dissonance.

The situation in Burundi is much more complex. Although the city is much more “Francophone” on the surface (I saw very little English signage, even at the airport, more like Francophone West Africa), it is clear that the professional and educated classes are increasingly learning English. Several universities are teaching in English, although seemingly with a transition at a slower rate than Rwanda. While Burundi has joined the English-speaking East African Community, it clearly intends to keep one foot in the French world as well. Interestingly, I saw nothing written about “Afrique de l’est”. Rather, it was always “l’East Africa”.

Listening carefully to several indirect conversations today, it was clear that Rwandans and Burundians are not unused to linguistic mixing. The predominantly vernacular conversations were peppered with Swahili, English, and French phrases. This is yet another place where identity – and language as a key marker – is very complex. 

I'd say in closing that both Kigali and Bujumbura and their surroundings were among the most beautiful places I have visited in terms of topography. Bujumbura, in particular, with the drama of the Lake Tanganyika shore, the climbing hills to the west and the dramatic mountains of Congo to the east, is a very striking place. Kigali was a more bustling city than rather sleepy Bujumbura. Both are worthy of much more exploration. 

A few experiences

This has been a remarkably rich trip, and it is not over yet. Sometimes I have to make a list of experiences. I do love my job.

• Interacted with 220+ people from 50+ nations at a consultation of theological educators.
• Argued vigorously with a taxi driver that I was sure was overcharging me. Managed to get his boss to lower the price on the driver's cellphone. Then came to find out it was a very fair fare in the first place. Humbled. 
• Gazed out at the wonder of a game park in the middle of a city (Nairobi National Park).
• Spoke to 1,500 university students with three minutes' notice. 
• Observed as same 1,500 university students listened to and interacted with a rather graphic sermon/testimony on sexual addiction (toward the top of my interesting and informative cultural experiences list).
• Saw a plaque commemorating the visit of the church where I grew up in Ohio to a Kenyan university in 1997. 
• While dining in the "Karibu Canteen" at said university, ended up with tripe stew for lunch by saying "I'll have what he's having" (it was quite tasty).
• Observed what I can only describe as a rather remarkable personal transformation in a leader I've known for nearly 15 years. 
• Watched several beautiful Kenyan sunsets while enjoying good conversations.
• Met with an Archbishop who insisted that I call him by his first name, rather than "your Grace," as I was instructed to do. 
• Was reminded that there are foods I don’t care for, namely liver.
• Learned that Rwandan chai (spiced tea) is perhaps the best in the world (heavy on ginger)
•  Ate one of the best omelettes of my life (one of the better legacies of Belgian colonialism).
•  Met someone from Angola in person with whom I've had e-mail contact since 1998.
• Was reminded that the Swahili word “karibu” has a much broader and deeper meaning than the English “welcome”.  
•  Ended up with everything in my suitcase covered in glitter that rubbed off a gift.
• Was left waiting at the airport in the middle of the night for the first time in my traveling life (for which I consider myself fortunate). Turns out I mixed European/African standard for expressing time (00.15) and American (12:15). He was planning to fetch me at noon; I arrived at midnight. All was well.
• Was able to hear a lot of people leading innovation in education. Perhaps best of all, was able to encourage them. 
• Was reminded once again how full of life Africa is. 

Kigali

View of downtown Kigali 

This has been one of the most intense, exciting, exhausting, enlightening, and stimulating trips I’ve experienced in a long time. The sheer variety of enduring friendships and relationships at the ICETE consultation in Nairobi still rings in my mind. I am truly blessed to be relating to such interesting, gifted, creative people. 

I write from the Rwandan capital city, the “city of a thousand hills.” The French version of this name, la ville des mille collines, is a truly fitting descriptor of the city, which flows over hills and valleys, knit together by continuously curving roads. The downtown area sits high on one hill, the airport on another, and the diplomatic and administrative center on another. Like all African cities, it has a vibrant street life, yet the pace is distinctly less harried than Nairobi, Accra, or Lagos. If there is something that really strikes me about Kigali, it is its orderliness. This impression bases itself in the tree-lined avenues, the seemingly spotlessly clean streets and gutters, and the overall tidiness of the place.

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon – the first free hours I’ve had on this trip – wandering through a market district near my guest house on the edge of town. The streets were packed with tiny cell phone shops, a block of papeteries (the English “paper shop” just doesn’t capture this), hole-in-the-wall tea rooms and restaurants, tailors, and barber shops/beauty salons. I continue to be impressed with African sign shops as an art form. Some of them are truly spectacular. Africa – in all of its diversity – is so full of life.

A few months ago, I wrote from Khartoum how the words “the separation” (the 2011 split of South Sudan from the north) surfaced so frequently in conversation, reflecting a kind of mass wound to the national psyche. You can’t engage in too many conversations in Rwanda before the words “the genocide” enter in, reflecting a national psychic trauma that makes most others look like a paper cut. Only 18 years have passed since this country literally tore itself apart. The orderliness of Kigali today stands in stark contrast. But it’s here, lurking beneath the surface, and reminding us of our humanity. To make any further commentary upon this seems somewhere beyond trite. 

Growing used to airplanes

It is easy to get used to air travel. My (rather chatty) seatmate today on a Detroit-Amsterdam flight remarked how I was so engrossed in the article I was reading that I barely noticed takeoff (I’m still more aware of them than my airline-pilot’s-daughter-wife, who once slept through what remains the worst takeoff I’ve ever experienced). Routines become set. As so often happens, the abnormal (crossing an ocean in six hours) becomes normal.

Yet airline travel isn’t normal. It wasn’t that long ago that crossing an ocean was a once-in-a-lifetime event, a severance of ties on one continent to settle on another. Today, masses move back and forth. My neighbor’s today included a Polish-born engineer working with Chrysler in Detroit returning to Poland for a week’s visit to his mother. A clearly very wealthy Indian family was visiting relatives in Mumbai. An Iraqi Orthodox Christian woman was visiting her relatives in Jordan. These were just a few stories overheard in snippets of conversation. Yet each story – in and of itself – is rather extraordinary. Each of these stories would have been nearly unimaginable 30 years ago.

I still remember the first time I heard a family speaking Spanish among themselves in the local Rink’s discount store in Lima, Ohio circa 1980. Things foreign were unusual in that world. A bit startling even. Even there, however, globalization is real. The polyglot nature of a place like Amsterdam, where I write, reaches another level, where Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas collide and mix into a patois that is the new Dutch normal.

Again, the abnormal through most of human history (the extreme mixing of people in mega-cities) becomes normal. All indications are that we still stand near the beginning of an arc of the greatest wave of urbanization and globalization the world has ever known. The article in which I was engrossed during takeoff was about the transformation of the Indian city of Surat in the state of Gujarat. This city of 4.5 million today (India’s eighth most populous) is forecast to surpass 9 million by 2025, surpassing the populations of both London and New York proper. Some theorize that mega-cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Shanghai could become the core of true megalopolises stretching for hundreds of miles and encompassing 50-60 million people. This is no longer the stuff of science fiction, but the emerging reality of Asia and beyond.  

I often wonder what the effects of these remarkable changes are on our human minds and hearts. We are remarkably adaptable creatures. Yet it seems to me that our natures are also change averse, at least in part. How fast of a clip of change can humans sustain emotionally, mentally, and spiritually? How do megalopolises of 60 million sustain themselves, both in physical terms but also in human terms? Change is happening so quickly in today’s world that we can become a bit immune, as I was reminded on my flight today. Sometimes, it seems to me, we need to step back from what seems normal and think about how abnormal it is. We need to contemplate what it might all mean. 

Back on the Peninsula

Wesley Methodist Church - Seremban, Malaysia

I’m now one step closer to home. This morning, after another al fresco breakfast in Miri, I flew to Kuala Lumpur on the Malay Peninsula or Mainland. The slower pace of Sarawak gave way to the bustle of a city of seven million.

The Malay Peninsula possesses a different kind of diversity than Borneo. Here, the presence of the majority Malay population is much stronger. Mosques in various styles dot the horizon. As we came south from KL to Seremban, the presence of the south Indian Tamils became more apparent. In the modest city of Seremban, many businesses in the city center are Tamil owned and form a kind of “little India.” Tamils’ roots in Malaysia go deep, dating to the height of the British Empire, when many came to what was then known as British Malaya to work on the rubber plantations. The rubber trees themselves were imported from Brazil. It was one of several historic waves of globalization, the same British Imperial wave that carried many Malays to the Cape Town area of South Africa.

Downtown Seremban remains a bustling place, with hundreds of small shops signed in some combination of Chinese, English, Malay, and Tamil. Restaurants cater to dozens of different ethnic tastes. So far, I’ve seen four churches (two rather imposing structures for the Catholics and Methodists, with two others for the Adventists and Assemblies of God), two Hindu temples, and several mosques in various architectural styles.

Masjid Jamek/Jamek Mosque - Seremban

Meetings continue to confirm the complex interethnic dance that in many ways defines this country. My neighbor at dinner tonight recounted that his family speaks a Hokkien dialect of Chinese in the home, his primary schooling was in Mandarin, his secondary schooling in Malay, and his university education in a mixture of Malay and English. Dramatic shifts in the country’s education system, especially regarding the language of instruction, have left whole generations more comfortable in either Malay or English. This of course presents great challenges for those seeking to lead higher education institutions. I enjoyed a couple of hours with the faculty of a seminary here today talking about a whole host of issues relating to theological education.

Hindu Temple - Seremban

Sometimes it’s nice to pretend that the world in which we live is a simple place, with nice, neat lines on the map that divide nation from nation, religion from religion, and worldview from worldview. But the real world is not that simple. The world we live in today is one that is deeply mixed, and has been for a long time. As I travel, I’m always struck by the fact that, although cultures and societies are very different, there is much that is fundamentally human. As I watched a young couple (probably in their early 20s at most) trying to shush and comfort their boisterous two-year-old during a church service earlier this week, it was the same scene that played out many times in our family’s pew in Indianapolis or Grand Rapids. The shared enjoyment of meat cooked over a good charcoal fire in Sarawak wasn’t all that different from a Midwestern barbeque in Ohio. The questions about what it means to be a good theological teacher are remarkably similar, regardless of whether the conversation is taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu, Caracas, or Krakow. Without bursting into an overly idealistic ode to human unity or pretending that differences don't matter, I’m reminded again that 1) we're all on this thing called earth together and 2) we have an awful lot in common. 

Eating in East Malaysia

A typical open-air restaurant in Sarawak

Dining in Southeast Asia requires a sense of adventure. For outsiders, such things as eating shrimp with the shells still on with chopsticks can be a bit overwhelming. Those with strong negative feelings about either chili pepper or garlic will not get terribly far with many cuisines of the region. Boldness of appearance, smell, and taste is valued. Yet as with so many things in the Asian context, this boldness is held in productive tension with balance between sweet, sour, spicy, bitter, and other flavors.

The influence of Chinese cuisine and cooking techniques is felt throughout the region. In East Malaysia, it is the interplay between various traditions of south Chinese cookery, Malay-Indonesian cuisine, and local Sarawaki traditions that I find most intriguing. I’ve had some fine Chinese food – including wonderful steamed freshwater fish. Sometimes, the dishes take on just a bit of a Malay hint, with the addition of coconut or some element of “curry”.

Sarawak-style laksa

Malay cooking has been especially prominent at breakfast time. As in much of Southeast Asia, breakfast often centers around soup. While Vietnamese pho is becoming well known in the US (although certainly not for breakfast), Malay laksa is something I’ve not experienced elsewhere. Laksa is hard to pin down, as it differs wildly from region to region and, I suspect, cook to cook. Penang-style laksa is heavy on fermented fish sauce and lime, while Sarawaki laksa includes generous amounts of coconut milk and chili pepper. All forms include noodles and are garnished with various fresh condiments like chili peppers, dried fish, bean sprouts, and boiled or fermented egg. Laksa is served at numerous open-air restaurants every morning.

Malaysian and Indonesian cooking has no fear of fresh garlic or chili. Both are eaten with gusto. Anytime that I’ve been served mee, or noodles, a small sauce dish is placed on the side of each place. Each diner mixes his or her own blend of fresh raw garlic, fresh raw red chilis, soy sauce, and/or vinegar together. An elaborate dance of chop sticks, a Chinese spoon, noodles, and sauce commences.

The indigenous cooking of Sarawak showed up most prominently at a cookout in Miri tonight. A large wood grill stood at the center of the circle, near a table laden with all kinds of dishes, with plastic chairs forming a circle. Other than the Chinese lanterns hanging from the trees, it could have been a Midwestern fourth of July picnic. But the food was far from Midwestern. Many of the students at the school I am visiting contributed a dish. One of the teachers contributed python snake cooked with chili pepper and greens. Vegetables that I’d never seen before like four-sided beans (looks a bit like cactus) joined more familiar fare like okra. Rice is of the utmost importance, with many touting the special nature of rice from their region. In this region of Sarawak, glutinous rice is often steamed in bamboo shells with coconut milk, giving a lovely perfumed sweetness.

I can’t speak of Malaysian food without mentioning drinks. I’ve never had lemonade/limeade finer than that served in Southeast Asia, which usually includes little bits of cane sugar still crunching in the bottom. But the variety of juices is breathtaking. Fresh carrot juice is popular here, mixed with coconut milk. Yesterday I had a wonderful concoction of sugar cane juice, lemon, and salt-preserved dates that quenched thirst while a tropic rain poured down outside.

Everything finishes with fruits. Most meals here end with assorted colors and varieties of melons and/or pineapple.  One meal, served in a very simple open-air canopy outside a home, finished with purple dragon fruit. While I’ve had white dragon fruit numerous times, this was my first experience of a purple variety.

Purple dragon fruit

 I remember well a great-aunt saying that one of the greatest joys in life was food. I clearly inherited this gusto. I’m also fortunate to do a job that involves a lot of conversations. Good work happens over food.