Thursday, March 11, 2010

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Being a white girl in Rwanda is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, people can see me coming from a mile away and like to stare at me, touch me, and sometimes ask me for money. On the other hand, no one really expects me to be able to speak or understand Kinyarwanda, which I’ve found comes in handy for deflecting both requests for money and marriage proposals.


Earlier this week I was walking along the road when a little girl walked up next to me and said “good afternoon” and I responded in Kinyarwandan. Two men who were accompanying the girl rubber necked to me with a surprised look and asked me if I really spoke Kinyarwandan. At that particular moment, I couldn’t remember how to say “I speak a little” so instead I just started listing a few words that I knew, which got the point across and the family lost interest. About ten minutes later a group of children called out to me from the side of the road using vocabulary I’m more familiar with, and we had a little introductory conversation using conjugated verbs about what my name is, who I am, and where I am going. While I was running through this conversation with the group of children, the original family looked over and gave me a look that said “you do speak this language, you were just pretending so you wouldn’t have to talk to us.” I wanted explain again that I speak a little bit and it was nothing personal, but I had already used up all my vocabulary, so I let it go. Then I started to feel pretty good about myself that someone might hear me saying “what is your name?” and mistake me for someone who can actually speak this language but chose to pretend to be unable to understand. So, overall I’m calling that whole exchange a success.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Famous in a Small Town

I had heard about how life in Peace Corps can sometimes make you feel like you’re living in a fish bowl, but for some reason I didn’t think about how obvious it would be in Rwanda. After a couple of days in Kigali for orientation and enough shots to make a pin cushion blush, we moved on to Nyanza where we will be training for the next ten weeks. Immediately upon being dropped off at my training house, about a half dozen five year olds came running down the street yelling “Muzungu! Muzungu! How are you, muzungu!” over and over again. And then again. And again. And again. “Muzungu” is the Kinyarwandan word for “white person,” and coincidentally it is also the first word I learned in my new language.


I get stared at pretty much constantly when I’m in public, which is sometimes funny and sometimes frustrating depending on how I’m feeling at any given moment. It does give me a good excuse to practice my greetings, because really, what better way is there to make an awkward situation feel more comfortable than to take control of it? Sometimes people will call out to me in English first, and occasionally they will say “good morning” to me in the evening or “good afternoon” to me in the morning, which I really appreciate. Sometimes it helps to have a reminder that language doesn’t have to be perfect to get the point across. And, when the language I’m working with is Kinyarwanda and its sixteen noun classes, I’ll take whatever I can get.