PHONIE WARS

PHONIE BALONIE

Rwanda is a curious country; a mix of so many cultures especially since so many people came from the Diaspora since 1994, you have the first dichotomy of Francophone and Anglophone, then other distinctions. Those born and raised in Burundi or Uganda or Tanzania, even the Congo all have cultural quirks they brought from their places of refuge. Add to these people others from further away like Europe, North America, West Africa, the Arab world and you have a heady mix. These barriers are quickly disintegrating as a recent spate of marriages has shown. It is common to see a Kevin wedding a Marie-Christine or a Jean-Claude marrying a Kate. This didn’t used to happen; Franco-phones and Anglo-phone used to view each other with bewilderment and even suspicion, wondering what on earth they were saying.


There has been a concerted drive to unify the nation with a common identity and Rwanda is Rwanda-phone but every so often the language barrier is impassable. I must declare my bias now; I hate French, with a passion. I think it is pompous, long-winded, pointless, philosophical to the point of stupidity and I can’t wait till it dies out, which is inevitable. I have tried so hard to learn French but my total disrespect for the language has impeded my progress. I remember taking French classes in 1994 but when the teacher was explaining that a table is a woman and a chair is a man and I wanted to have her sectioned. Surely a table is a ….. table and a chair is a chair; it doesn’t have the prerequisite genitals to qualify as either gender.


As Rwandans we are all the same but when faced with modernity the Anglo-Franco prisms are evident. Why is that? We aren’t French or English, we are Rwandans but a product of colonialism is that we were used to fight proxy wars that date back to the battle of Hastings in 1066. The French and British are full partners in the EU but we still carry the baggage of Hastings and Agincourt. I get so worked up about it; when I go to the bank I speak fluent Kinya-rwanda and so does the manager but they insist on using French numbers, ‘cinqante’ ‘deux mil’ and by the time I am trying to figure out what they are saying I have been conned. I realised that these language barriers go deep because language is a vessel for knowledge and these languages are how we understand the world. When we are in our own cultural context then we are all the same but put modernity into the mix and how we understand the world is different.


This problem first occurred to me at University; my housemate was a Cameroonian called Eddie, we got on fine but every now and then our differences would pop up. He was telling me about a great French mathematician called “Pythagor” who I noticed was pretty similar to the Greek nerd called Pythagoras. No! said Eddie Pythagor was a Frog, I countered that he was a Greek but we had to agree to disagree. In his school he was told that all great men were French such as “Socrate” and “Aristole” and the like. The burden of colonialism is such that we are still stuck in the old mentality of slavishly believing all that our masters told us. In Rwanda the education system was so bad that it actually made people more ignorant than when they first enrolled. There was no syllabus, no curriculum, and no Exam board so stupidity was the major of most teachers. This has had sinister consequences as the genocide showed; teachers taught genocide theory, separated Tutsi children to be killed and generally played an active role in the whole scheme of things.


Recently this has alarmed Rwanda as a report on the school system showed that genocide theory is still widely taught, children are sometimes made to wear different uniforms and a general bias is sometimes shown. This is because the education system has been left largely unchanged on the lower levels of management; English is supposed to be taught equally to French but it isn’t because most of the teachers pre-date the genocide and are Francophone. I realised my negative view of Franco-phones was down to their isolationism and ignorance displayed by some of them. Rwanda was one of the most isolated countries in the world prior to the genocide; the government kept the people ignorant and told them there was a horrible world out there and they were lucky to be oppressed as they were because others had it worse. Few Rwandans had ventured outside their own borders to see what the world had to offer, there was no outside media of any kind, no TV, no foreign papers, and few tourist mingled with the locals.


Rwanda had the misfortune of being colonised by Belgium; the arse of Europe, an insignificant buffer-state created as an afterthought to keep France and Germany from swinging fists. A Frankenstein state that surgically attached two separate body parts with a Francophone head and a Flemish body. After Leopold saw all the other kids were getting sweets and he wasn’t, he convened the Berlin Conference and got Congo, the biggest sweet, too big to swallow. Rwanda-Urundi went to the Kaiser but his son was naughty and lost the plot as well as Rwanda and we were awarded to the laughing stock of Europe. Now remember I think that all colonialism is bad but some colonisers are worse; if Rwanda was colonised by Britain our present situation would be better.


The bumbling Belgians weren’t able to provide for the emerging Rwanda and like a dashing pimp the French promised to treat their whore better. She would be able to choose her johns and keep a larger share of her ill-gotten earnings. The French were intertwined in the politics of Rwanda, they used it as their backyard; Mitterand’s son grew copious amounts of marijuana that was flown back in military planes. Our economy was pegged to the French economy. The former French colonies were really free in just name; Sekou Toure of Guinea had pushed for his fellow Africans to go for full independence but most chose to be in Francophonie and have the CFA franc as their main currency, the French government provided security and were power-brokers. Jack Dennard is a prime example of this; he managed to overthrow countless government with a handful of soldiers. There is recently antagonism toward to the French in all their major former colonies and decades of interference has led to riots; Chad, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Niger have all had riots.


Back to Rwanda; there needs to be a promotion of English not just for the sake of it but because we are in the East African community and English will coax the Rwandan out of their Francophone shell. When you talk to a Rwandan, especially an illiterate one they always feel the need to impress you be throwing in French word, you should see the grin on their face when they do it yells “Look at me, I am so clever, I know a French word.” Whereas I am trying to speak Kinya-rwanda as best I can minus all the bastardised words. So much of Kinya-rwanda is made of bastardised French words for example in the news you will hear “Ministeri wi leta” meaning minister of state. What was Rwandan about that? Leta is L’Etat, trousers are Ipantaro (pantalon) Ifrigo (Frigo) so much of what we speak is French, which is ironic because the French have an academy to keep their language pure from English infection. Since I have come back my Kinya-Rwanda has improved and I am trying to speak it as best as is possible, I often make mistakes because I have to adjust to the local idiomatic expression and slang.


It is estimated that half of the worlds 6,000 languages are going to disappear in this century and in the long run only 5% of languages are viable, as geographical and cultural barriers are broken down then the need for languages and cultures disappear. The only viable languages are English, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic and Spanish so bye-bye French, German, Portuguese, Hausa, Wolof, Laotian, Russian, Persian, Pashtoon, Zulu, Afrikaans, Kikuyu, Xhosa, Tamil, Japanese, Mongolian, and sadly Kinya-Rwanda. All these languages make us who we are but keep us apart as well, cause wars, reduce inter-communication. One day we’ll all be like Star-Trek, all colours speaking the same language; even aliens will speak English apart from those stubborn Klingons. So let’s enjoy our cultures while we can because soon we’ll all be a homogeneous blend of neutral everything; neutral language, neutral culture, neutral race, neutral gender.


I can’t wait for Rwanda to be more Anglophone; we have a cricket team, rugby team, we’re in the Commonwealth. English helps us not because of the British but the Americans; the Franco-phone world has little to offer us, we can read Voltaire, Descartes, Satre in English. We can straddle both sides and benefit; even the French are learning English because globalisation dictates. We will try to protect our culture from infiltration but culture never stays still it has to evolve. Bantu evolved into hundreds of languages, Latin spawned into dozens of European languages but now language is shrinking into fewer tongues and dialects. So I won’t have the frustration of asking “Nangahe?” (how much) “Senhendi” (cinqante) “Ngwiki?” (what?)
“Senhenti! Nabwo uvug’ikinyarwanda? (Don’t you speak Kinya-Rwanda?)