Ndaamba Chitonga! (ashyonto)

A couple weeks ago I finally had the chance to formally study Tonga, the language spoken here in Macha and most of Southern Province. There are a few local dialects with variable vocabulary depending on which part of the province you are in, but the grammar is the same and one can be understood if you have that down. Kind of like British English compared to US English. Anyrate, MCC has three new couples coming into the country, two of which will be based in Choma (the town just an hour away from Macha where I go to shop), and the other will be our new country reps based in Lusaka. The Southern Africa regional reps decided they should all get some language study, and I was able to join also. Although my co-workers in the hospital all speak English, the patients, most young children and people in the villages around the area do not. It has been frustrating to not be able to have simple conversation with the moms I work with, the kids who come by my house and people I run into walking in the area.

It actually was good timing after 15 months of hearing Tonga and learning a few words and phrases, I was able to understand better how they all fit together. The main trick that was hard for my brain to wrap around is that verb endings don't change. The root, which comes at or near the end of the “word” has many prefixes which let you know, who, when and to whom or what the action is being done. In short, the heart of the word/phrase/sentence is towards the end, the beginning is the fine tuning. This is a characteristic of bantu languages which was quite foreign to my minimal language experience. Before arriving here, I spoke only English and Spanish. The other difficult issue for me is that there are over 15 classes of nouns in Tonga. Each class has its own prefixes for singular and plural and other words in the sentence must also have a corresponding prefix. That issue I am just going to have to fumble with for awhile. This time I focused on verbs and sentence structure.

Most educated adults in Zambia speak at least 4 or 5 languages. Many children speak 2 or 3 before they finish school. There are over 70 languages in Zambia, English is the Official language of the country, but there are 8 Nationally recognized languages of which Tonga has the second largest number of speakers. The Ministry of Education's curriculum is printed in these 8 national languages plus English up to grade 3, from there all educational materials are in English. You can imagine the cost this puts into any publication of news or health information campaigns for example when so many languages are spoken. The reason most adults speak so many languages is the mobility of the educated class. You may grow up in one (or two depending on your parents' jobs) areas of the country and learn the language there. Your parents may be from another area and speak a different language in the home. Or your parents may be from two different regions adding another language to the mix. Then, when you apply to school, high school, technical school or university, you may be selected to attend a school in another region of the country. There are very limited slots for higher education. You usually apply to several places and go where you get selected. The nursing school here in Macha usually has over 400 people apply for the 50 spots each year. Though you will be taught in English wherever you go, your classmates will be from many different regions, and as you shop and go to church in the surrounding community, you will learn that language also. Then, if you train as a teacher or nurse for example, the government will post you wherever they need you, irrespective of your language abilities. Therefore you may need to learn another language in order to communicate with your students or patients. Then there is a trade language in Zambia, Nyanja, that is used in the capital of Lusaka, and many people can speak at least a bit of that. So, for instance, if one of my co-workers is Bemba and the other Lozi and one or the other of them isn't yet fluent in Tonga, they may speak English with each other, or they may speak Nyanja. In the beginning they all sounded the same to me, but now I can at least tell if someone is speaking Tonga or another language.

I had a week long intensive course together with Jan and Kajungu. Kajungu is Tanzanian and Jan lived in Tanzania for 11 years, so they are fluent in Swahili and familiar with other bantu languages. Even though they were brand new to Zambia and Tonga, that put us on a similarly equal footing. Their familiarity with Swahili allowed them to understand the basic structure of Tonga. It would have been the same for me, for instance if I was trying to study Portuguese, already knowing Spanish. We studied 4 hours a day for 5 days with Uncle Jebby. Uncle Jebby has worked with the Peace Corps for the past 15 years helping orient their 100 volunteers a year to Zambian culture and language. He has mostly taught Bemba, Nyanja and Kaunde, but has recently moved to Southern Province and is beginning to teach Tonga. He was a great teacher. It was his first time teaching such an intensive course and he was impressed with how well we did. Usually he deals with people brand new to the country and things move much slower. We focused a lot on conversation. It is so nice to speak with someone trained in the art of speaking to language learners. He would speak slowly and repeat things and use simple words and phrases while also trying to keep the conversation real.

The hymns at church suddenly have more meaning and I can get the general gist of what people are saying to me and I am trying hard to use simple sentences on a daily basis and look over my notes each night. I am so happy to have had this opportunity and window into being able to speak with people in their own language. Now I just have to keep the self-discipline going. I am supposed to get together with Uncle Jebby for a few follow-up appointments, so that should be good also.

This past weekend I rode my bike out to Halwiindi village near Nemfwe to visit my co-worker Cliff's family again. I figured it would be a good place for me to practice my Tonga. I brought along a few of the beginning reader books from the Ministry of Education's Literacy program. I keep them at my house for the local kids to read and also use them myself to help with my Tonga learning. 8 year-old Mary and 4 year-old Chris were there to read along with me. After a quick wash of the hands, they must have spent two hours looking at the 5 small books I brought along. After reading them to them a couple times, Mary put herself to memorizing them. Chris just enjoyed holding them (often upside down) and making up his own stories. Books are so rare in Zambia, even in the schools. Teachers usually write most things on the board and students copy them. Even the young men at the house(late teens, early 20s) were picking up the books and trying to read them.

I was able to eat lunch with Chinyama, Cliff's wife, this time, because Cliff was at work. That was really nice to sit and chat with her a bit. She has very good English, but was happy to oblige me with a bit of Tonga and helping me practice a bit. She finished grade 12, but did not do so well on her exams. She says she needs to resit biology and math to be able to apply to nursing school, which is her dream. She is hoping to resit this next year. Currently Chinyama volunteers each morning as a cleaner at the nursing school. She has been doing this for over a year now in hopes of getting a job when one opens up. Her husband, Cliff, worked almost three years as a volunteer before getting his position. Volunteer here does not mean you come in once or twice a week. It means you work on a daily basis. There are many full-time volunteers at the hospital. People are so desperate for work they will do this. It often pays off, but not always. Remember, it is a 40 minute bike ride to Macha from their village. Cliff bikes to work, but Chinyama walks. Chinyama says she likes to read, so I told her I would bring a few books next time and she could pick one to borrow.