On November 29, 2009, Rwanda was admitted into the Commonwealth despite its lack of historic links to Britain dating back to the colonial era. Rwanda became the second member of the 54-nation community without such links – after Mozambique.
On November 29, 2009, Rwanda was admitted into the Commonwealth despite its lack of historic links to Britain dating back to the colonial era. Rwanda became the second member of the 54-nation community without such links – after Mozambique.Among the impacts this would have on the East African country was adopting to the English language. Over the years, an improvement has been registered.With the Paralympic Games in London, Rwandan athletes can now find comfort in learning and expressing themselves in the Queen’s language for the entire month they will have spent in the United Kingdom.Conversations among the athletes have in the past two weeks been in English, especially now that they have acclimatized with the Athletes Village where English is used by most of their counterparts.This is not to say that Kinyarwanda has been discarded; however, the presence of their Dutch coach Peter Karreman on the squad means that effort to embrace a language that can be understood by everyone else is necessary.James Rutikanga, a member of the sitting volleyball team talked to Times Sport, "Our spoken English has greatly improved since we arrived in the United Kingdom and we know that by the time we return home we will be far better than we were when we arrived here.”The Paralympic Committee Assistant that was allocated to the Rwandan delegation, Maureen speaks only English unlike the French speaking National Olympic Committee assistant that was allocated to the Rwanda Olympics team a month ago.Proper tenses with less grammatical errors, interviews with international media in the absence of interpreters and a huge leap in the confidence of the Rwandan athletes while in consistent speech is but a line-up of achievements so far with more promising to come.Such is the victory that Team Rwanda has registered so far even before the Paralympic Games commence on August 29 to spring roll more on both the court and track.Rwanda opens its campaign for more Paralympic medals on August 30 when they face depending champions Iran at the Excel South Arena. This match will be played at 10pm (Rwandan time).