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.