As some of you might know, I am spending a portion of my summer in Kenya
with my mother to visit her side of the family. She grew up in the bustling
capital city of Nairobi where she got a top notch education, made friends, and
managed to graduate high school with good grades and a firm grasp of three
languages-Swahili, English and her tribal language, Kikuyu. One day, she decided to further her career by
going to University in the USA.
When my mother got to the United States, not only did she manage to
graduate with a few degrees under her belt including a Master’s degree in
social work, she also managed to land a husband (for a while), a couple kids, a
sweet job and citizenship. Isn’t that awesome?! I mean to leave her whole
family and move to a foreign land, and to actually make something of herself at
a rather young age is very impressive. Although I don’t say it enough, I really
appreciate what my mom has been through on her journey to where she is now.
Honestly, I doubt I would even survive childhood in a Kenyan boarding school
where the kids are vicious, the food isn’t that appetizing and the chances of
you seeing mom and dad are slim to none for months at a time.
However, there is one thing that I wish she had done. While she was busy
getting her life together and raising her children, she forgot to teach her
kids about her Kenyan heritage. Sure she often fed my brother and I traditional
Kenyan food and occasionally talked to us in Swahili and Kikuyu, however the
emphasis on really truly learning about her country and its people was not
there during our childhood. As a result, we grew up Americanized and generally
ignorant about life in Kenya.
That is, until we go there to visit our family. My mother considers going
to Kenya, going home. She falls right into the traditions, proper greetings and
the language as if she never left. My brother and I on the other hand are left
outside of this cultural bubble, forced to awkwardly listen to hours and hours
of discussions, lectures, jokes, prayers, songs, commercials, and greetings
without understanding enough to get the gist of the conversations or the punch
lines of the jokes. When we meet new people, they go from assuming we are one
of them to treating us like just another American tourist. We become the target
of “what a shame” looks, and an overall loss of dignity. Questions such as, “do
you know Swahili?” “Why not?” and “did you understand what they were saying?”
become the most common English phrases we hear. People look at us like we’re
stupid and we feel retarded, because honestly, we are. Does that sentence offend
you? The fact that I don’t understand a language I should offends me even more.
Our mother and the majority of her side of the family can in fact speak
Swahili, English, and Kikuyu. Even the small children know enough English to
carry out a conversation with us, but most speak Swahili around us, no doubt
asking amongst themselves why we don’t know what they are saying. During this
trip, more than ever before, I genuinely feel like an outcast, an untouchable.
When people discover I have no idea what they are saying, all I want to do is
crawl in a big hole and wait to fly back home to America. Isn’t it ironic that
at the very place my own mother feels most at home, I couldn’t feel any less
so?
Some people may understand what this feels like to an extent. Have you ever
been to a different country where the only people that speak your language are
your friends and the tour guide? That’s kind of like it, but imagine upon going
back home, you learn there was a law passed that changed the meaning of all the
words you were ever taught and nobody sent you the memo. Now everyone is
wondering how you’re even a citizen of your country and you can’t even speak
the language. In their mind, you have had your entire life to learn this
language just like the next person-everyone in the country including your whole
family speaks it except you and there’s really no good reason why. You’re usual
charms are worthless in this new language you don’t know. You have to rely on
an interpreter to understand what your children, parents, and friends are trying
to tell you. Imagine living a day at the place you call home where nobody knows
what you are saying, and you don’t know what they are saying. You might as well
be deaf and mute. Even though you’re in the same room where everyone is, it’s
as though you’re all alone with you and your thoughts, light-years away from
everyone around you. It’s extremely depressing and lonely.
Now, I have asked my mother why she didn’t teach me the languages of our,
or rather her people. She has a semi-valid explanation-my father who was
American did not encourage her to teach my brother and me her native tongue. In
fact, from what I can tell he blatantly put her down when she tried to do it. I
don’t know the conversations they had verbatim, but the result is my mom
stopped trying to teach my brother and I Swahili, leaving us without what I
consider a major birth right-our mother’s language and culture.
Sure, we can learn it now right? If I really wanted to learn it, I could
stop whining and start studying right? Of course I could, but it’s a lot easier
said than done. I’m trying to teach
myself Swahili, but it is so hard to pick up a language and stick to it when
you have other, more immediate things to do. First of all, I don’t have money
to blow on software like Rosetta Stone (my obvious first choice of instruction),
so the internet and books are the way I have to go. Now what? Learn vocabulary I guess. After
that maybe I could tackle verbs, and grammatical particulars. But who can help
me make sure the meager sentences I’m putting together are correct? What am I
doing, really? I am speaking for myself when I say I can’t just teach myself a
language. I can teach myself how to do difficult math problems, or memorize psychological
terminology, but a complete language is out of my league. I need structure and guidance
and so far, my questions outweigh my answers.
Secondly, I’m in college. I’m not just in college; I am an Honor’s student
who relies on good grades for scholarship money. Speaking of money, I have to
find a job before school starts again and once I get the job, I’m going to have
to work. So between working and studying, I have little time to sit at a
computer or read books not related to my studies to catch up on what I should’ve
learned by the age I was five or six.
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| "Can anyone hear me?" |
If only I could say all of this in Swahili to answer my family’s questions
about why I don’t speak Swahili...
