The Amazing Race Comes to Bushenyi!

A new group of Health and Agriculture trainees arrived in Uganda two months ago. Like my Education cohort did, they completed their “Boot Camp” and have moved on to stay with host families for intensive language training. The Southwest group, about 9 volunteers in total who will be placed in the Runyankore/Rukiga language region, is staying in Bushenyi Town, not too far from me and Kris. They attend language classes in town six days a week and every Friday, Kris has arranged for them to compete in…The Amazing Race: Uganda! If you’re not familiar with The Amazing Race, it’s reality TV show where teams of two race around the world to complete various tasks in different countries. It also turns out to be a great concept to adapt for language learning.

Part of Peace Corps language training is known as “community experience." This involves the trainees being set free in the local area in which they are staying and told to use the language tasks that they have been learning. They are supposed to practice greeting, ordering food, haggling, finding transportation, and, of course, talking up the Peace Corps with whomever they can find. It sounds fairly simple but in reality, as any language teacher knows, that's a monumental assignment for a student, especially when they're an adult. The uncertainty, fear, and exhaustion of being in a new culture coupled with attending classes eight hours a day, six days a week means that most students are too reluctant, too nervous, or just plain too tired to take their own initiative to practice their new language in a real-world context. 

One way to combat this is to give learners more specific assignments to complete. Creating guidelines and a safe, predetermined space to practice mitigates a lot of the anxiety adult learners can feel. After all, when you’re speaking a brand new language to native speakers, you really do feel like a child again a lot of the time! Add this idea to the fact that, when you’re American, you will naturally turn these tasks into a competition, and The Amazing Race: Uganda is born. The prize? Homemade baked goods, of course, from a selection of the six I’m able to make here. There are few things a Peace Corps trainee dreams about more than food (sorry, friends and family – they still love you).

So, each week, Kris has been traveling around Bushenyi Town and speaking to our Ugandan friends, asking them to provide tasks and interact with the trainees in local language as part of the Amazing Race. In a fringe benefit that we weren't expecting, the locals have absolutely been loving it. It means a lot to them to see foreigners really making an effort to get to know who they are while caring so obviously about their language and their culture. Plus, it’s funny to see a bunch of Americans running around frantically, trying desperately to remember the word for bananas.

This week, the race came to our trading center and schools! Kris set up tasks around the area and I waited at my primary school while Kris “released” the teams five minutes apart in Bushenyi Town. They had to travel by public transportation to our trading center, complete four tasks and one detour, and then travel back again.

The first clue:

You have to haggle for almost everything here, including transport, so 10,000 shillings can go fast if you're not good at bargaining!

Second clue:

Those might have been our clothes that the trainees were washing...

Third clue:

Immaculate has actually seen the Amazing Race, so she was super excited!

After talking to Immaculate, the trainees were given a fourth clue directing them to my primary school. Upon arriving, they had to enter the Primary One or Primary Two classroom and be taught a song by the pupils and teacher. My headteacher and deputy headteacher were there to greet them when they arrived, bemusedly shaking hands and directing the sweaty Americans to the correct classroom block. 

Each class presented its own challenges and advantages. Hope, the P1 teacher, was very strict about pronunciation, but she had written down the song for the trainees and allowed them to sit in the back with the class. 

Rebecca, the P2 teacher, was less strict about pronunciation, but she wouldn't let the trainees write anything down and made them stand in front of the class to learn the words.

Such good sports!

It is a simple song that the teachers sing with the little ones when it's time to practice handwriting: 

Kampandiike gye

Kampandiike gye

Kampandiike kurungi

Ndyaba karaani!

Let me write well

Let me write well

Let me write so very well

I will be a secretary!

Its length didn't make it any less difficult to sing in front of a class, however! But with the promise of baked goods on the line, the trainees performed beautifully.

Receiving their next clue from the primary school secretary.

The last clue involved a trip to the banana stand clear at the other end of the trading center. The volunteers had to haggle the price down to a reasonable 2,000 shillings and hope that they had enough left out of their 10,000 shillings to make it back to Bushenyi Town!

The set aside items might also have been from our grocery list...

It all ended up in a sprint to the finish line between two of the four teams, with one victoriously claiming their prizes of no-bake cookies and coffee cake. Hopefully, however, everyone also left with a better understanding of how to navigate around Uganda, a greater proficiency in Runyankore, increased confidence, and some good, albeit ridiculous, memories. 

"That was fun, but it wasn't fun."

- JJ from the Amazing Race

Confessions of a Language Geek

After our month and a half of Peace Corps language training, a time I also refer to as heaven, Kris and I continued to study Runyankore on our own while searching for a tutor to help us. This is a more difficult task than you might imagine because simply knowing the language does not necessarily mean that person can explain it to us. For example, you might know that the sentence, “He got on the car,” is wrong but "He got on the bus" is right, yet you would probably be hard put to say why or give a concrete rule that would help your student.

Finally, after months of self-study and well-meaning tips from our Runyankore-speaking neighbors and friends (“Don’t ask ‘What?’ so quickly! Look where I pointed! At my nose! I said I have the flu! Now repeat."), we have finally found a tutor! As the first agglutinative language I have studied, advancing in Runyankore has been pretty fun.

Words can be incredibly long; for example, the three-word sentence Tindamuhandiikiire nkamugambira bugambizi means I didn't write to him, I just told him. Some of the words are also fascinating, and looking through my Runyankore/English dictionary has become a favorite pastime of mine during those long lunch hours where I can grasp about 1 out of 25 words of the staff-room conversations.

Like in many languages, a lot of the words in Runyankore relate deeply to its culture and illustrate aspects of its history and daily life of its people.

Cattle, for instance, are extremely important and valued - hence the 50-odd specific words to describe their markings, horns, and patches.

emishubyo: n. milk of a second milking

emishura-ibiba: n. night jars

For those of you wondering, night jars are what you use when you have a pit latrine and don't want to venture outside during the night.

enkundwakazi: n. favourite wife

ekikondooro:  n. lap opened for grain; piece of cloth overhanging the belt

Family relationships are also extremely important, and you must be extremely specific about how someone is related to you. Kris uses a different word for his brother than I do for my brother because he is a man and I am a woman. When I say banyaanya, for example, it means brothers, but when Kris says it, it means sisters. Irritating or fascinating? All depends on my mood.

Other words are slightly more mystifying to me and my American background…

omushuuzi: n. visitor of lonely people; one who checks on a trap

Now is this an either/or or both situation in terms of the definitions? Maybe these people are so lonely because their friends are fed up with all the traps they've been setting.

kusinda: v. be drunk; not say one's husband's name; sigh with pain, roar

Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word.

kujwarirana: v. hide inside one's clothes

kugongyera: v. whimper; low; moan when dying; moan when drunk

I think we actually could have used this word in college...

And some are downright incomprehensible.

obumeeza: n. occasional tables

Huh.

And then, of course, there are some that just make me giggle.

enkooko: n. bogeys

Heheh. Bogeys.

Interestingly enough, enkoko with one o and a slightly different tone actually means chicken. This leads to unfortunate sentences such as, "I was thinking about buying some bogeys."

One of my favorites though, is this one:

okutongoza: v. to walk slowly, especially when one is in his happy moments

On my walks home from school, listening to the wind rustle through the drying leaves of the banana trees, I think about this word and take some time to enjoy the beauty and culture that surrounds me here.

"I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything." - Steven Wright

Language Training

Since my last post, dear readers, Kris and I have headed to the Southwest with our language group – the other volunteers who will be living and working around us – and have been studying hard to reach an Intermediate level in Runyankore. We have been taking intensive language and culture classes six days a week from roughly eight to five. Peace Corps insists on their volunteers obtaining at least an intermediate level in the local language because it is such an important part of security, integration, and a volunteer’s success during their service. Plus, it’s fun! (And a lot of work, but hey, let’s focus on the fun.)

Runyankore Fun Facts:

-          Enyoni means both bird and airplane. This means that the cry of, “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Superman!” would be slightly more confusing here.

-          Airport is ekishayi ky’enyoni, which literally translates as “playground of birds.” Pretty much the best thing ever.

-          There is no winter and summer here, just the rainy seasons and dry seasons. When it rains here, it really rains. This is illustrated by the fact that kuteerwa means both “to be caught in the rain” and “to be beaten.”

-          Greetings are extremely important and there are many different ways to greet someone. It is polite to inquire after how someone has spent the night, how their family is doing, what news they have…and that is just when you pass by them in the village. When you finally want to leave someone, a common way to say goodbye is ogumeho, which is extremely illustrative in that it literally means, “Stay there!”

-          Amaizi, depending on how it is pronounced, can mean either water or feces. No awkward moments at the local market there at all.

-          Cute one: egaari y’omwika, which means train, translates literally as “bicycle of smoke.”

-          When asking for sauce (emboga) in a restaurant, someone in my group accidentally asked instead for buffalos.

-          There are at least five different words for bananas, depending on their size, type and ripeness.

-          The most embarassing one: Yesterday in class, when trying to describe how long it took me to get to my site, I accidentally stated how it had taken me six hours to impregnate someone.

In our little bit of free time, we have been enjoying the beautiful scenery here in the Southwest, bonding with our group, and having a great time with our amazing homestay family (who gave us our Ugandan names! I am Rukundo, which means love, and Kris is Nimsiima, which means grateful). Pictures to come later, when I hopefully have better Internet!

In Runyankore:

"What did you do before you came to Uganda?"

"Because pineapple."

           - Fere and Jay