Learning the local language

I commute each day from the village where I live to the research station where I work. It takes maybe 20 minutes by bike, or just over half an hour if I run. Near my home in the village, the scenery is still very rural—small fields and barnyard animals. As I get closer to work the landscape slowly starts to change—better roads, a small market, a school, some nicer, brick government houses, and then the research station itself.

On the commute in, I pass any number of Malawians on the way to farm their fields, or to work, or to school. As a white Canadian, I’m anything but anonymous, which means I’ll often stop on my way in to greet someone or to be greeted.

My central thought during my first months commuting like this was, “Get these greetings right!” To me, there was nothing worse than being that ignorant foreigner who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—learn even the basics of the local language. So I paid attention to the nuances, I picked up the quirks, and I never broke from using Chichewa. In just a few weeks I was smiling, waving, and greeting everyone I saw, and they were smiling, waving, and greeting me right back.

Smart, culturally sensitive me, I thought.

Or maybe not quite. Recently, I started picking up a different vibe. It was subtle, but present. From some people the warmth and smiles changed to just mumbles and a nod. Perhaps I was becoming old news, or maybe these responses had been present all along and I just hadn’t noticed during my effusive early honeymoon phase. I was certainly noticing it now.

Why the change, if there was one? Or why the difference, if I hadn’t noticed it before? I didn’t want to just shrug it off; there was something to this. I started trying to put it together.

Closer to the research station is where more affluent Malawians live. The adults have jobs with NGOs or the government. The teenagers have cell phones and wear trendier clothes. The kids go to better schools where English is taught as a main subject. Maybe to them Chichewa is passé.

I asked my farmer friend and host, Enos Banda, why some people near the research station didn’t respond much when I greeted them in Chichewa. At first, he said that they learn English at school, so they want to practice it. I thought this was maybe only part of the story, so I asked again, but a bit differently, why the more rural Malawians liked talking with me in Chichewa, but those near the station not so much. This time he told me, “Chifukwa cha chinglesi choposa zonse,” which means, more or less, that English is a much better language than Chichewa.

This struck a chord with what I had intuited. While I want to be culturally integrated and able to speak the vernacular, some Malawians want to integrate into the English-speaking culture and that means speaking my language. Enos also went on to say that for a Malawian the best ticket to a good job is to speak English fluently. No wonder the Canadian speaking Chichewa was less than thrilling.

So I changed how I commute. I practice my Chichewa out near the village, and I give others the opportunity to practice their English closer to work. I have my goals of integrating, and others have theirs. While these two goals seem to contrast, they’re actually quite similar, and, most importantly, both completely valid.