I’d like to think I’m “becoming African” the way the people here tell me. But I think it’s more of an encouragement thing than anything else. Maybe they think it will make me feel more at home and I’ll stay longer, bringing more aid and encouragement to their often powerless lives.
Language study is a constant reminder of just how un-African I am. So much of language centers on culture, ways of thinking, heart orientation to the world around us. While the Babwisi constantly reiterate that “Lubwisi is the easiest language in the world”, I am not convinced. Lubwisi IS astonishingly simple in many ways. The number of nouns in a primitive culture, for example, is just going to be significantly less. Also, a lot of words that they acquired through contact with the outside world can be used interchangeably with English words (radio, video, shirtie, skirtie).
BUT, the big BUT, the African way of thinking. If Lubwisi is your third in a slew of Bantu langugages (as for many here) . . . . It’s so simple. You already have good eighty percent of the language through the others you know and totally key, you know how to think, not to mention, how to assemble your words into an order that makes some sense here.
Yesterday in my language time we were working our way through a role play conversation with a young child. These role play conversations are always such good learning experiences as so much more is communicated than the actual Lubwisi words. The gestures, tone and direction of conversation often teaches me much more than the words themselves. As we continued in the conversation, I learned that for African women talking to young boys in the culture it is appropriate to tease them about taking you as their wife and ask when they are coming to bring the bride wealth to your father. I haven’t decided whether I’m willing to try conversation out yet.
We discussed meeting someone on the road and asking “okwika ha?” Where will you reach? The answer, typically African, goes along the lines of “I am reaching there.” (There, Down, and Up are some of those frustrating African English terms that require further translation for us Americans.) But what really amazed me was the response that I was given and carefully wrote into my language book. It translates like this; “The bird that says ahiahi; you hear it when it’s near but it travels far.” Apparently this translates in American English to ” what exactly do you mean by the word ‘there’”.
Does anyone understand why my brain often feels like mush from daily interactions? Please say yes.