N.B.: I was recently asked by my former GW French professor to comment on how my degree in French has assisted me in work overseas. What follows is a reflection on the subject.
A former Belgian colony, Rwanda is amidst a national transition from French to English as it integrates into the anglophone East African Community and seeks to engage China, Japan, the US, Middle Eastern and Western European countries as partners in development. My ability to read, write, understand and speak French has nevertheless been extremely useful since arriving here in 2009. In my role as a language mentor, I teach and tutor English to adult district leadership and the teenage girls at my school. I am constantly drawing on analogous grammatical structures to explain the usage of English verb tenses (e.g. simple past/passé composé, past continuous/imparfait), as most of my students have a working knowledge of French but have had little exposure to English until recently. Teaching vocabulary, I naturally point out cognates, which is generally followed by an ‘aha’ moment or a sigh of relief (one less new word to learn!)
French has helped me in my study of Rwanda’s local language, Kinyarwanda. The structure of this Bantu language akin to Swahili has little resemblance to French, but there exist many cognates between the two -- generally words in Kinyarwanda that have been adapted from the French name. Some food examples include inanasi (ananas), isucari (sucre), karoti (carotte), ibyeri (bière), coca and avocat. I feel more confident about learning new languages (Kinyarwanda and Swahili) since I’ve done it before (French, Latin and Italian), and am fully conscious of how many doors it opens in terms of cultural integration. Rwanda and Burundi are distinct in that the two regions have spoken only Kinyarwanda for hundreds of years, while neighboring countries like the DRC are home to hundreds of local languages and French serves at the unifying language across the country. This means that a Congolese from Goma (Eastern DRC) could meet a Congolese from Kinshasha (Western DRC) and have no means of communication other than French.
In Rwanda’s transition to English, I’ve had many opportunities to translate documentation from French. This includes government issued chemistry and physics curricula, official correspondence at the Bugesera District office, and the 5-year strategic plan of a primary school operated by the francophone Frères Maristes, which will be used to raise money from African, European and American supporters of the school. My ability in French has also been integral to my work at the district health centers, where I was asked to report inventory of supplies and interview the (francophone) health directors to find out how NGOs operating in my district can be of best assistance.
Apart from my work, I use French regularly at the market, when negotiating the price of a bike taxi or moto ride, and in accessing bus transport across the country. Understandably, using Kinyarwanda yields the best price, but numbers can be very complicated; cela m’arrive petit à petit. The times I’ve been perhaps most appreciative of my ability in French are when using it to get to know Rwandese and their extended families; when invited to a home to celebrate a new birth, share a meal or attend a dowry ceremony. My best friend here is Rwandan and he became a friend because we both speak French. These days we alternate between French, English and Kinyarwanda, but this is just one of the many ways that French has connected me to the world beyond our borders.
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