Impressions: Grappling with Languages

I don’t know if I qualify to be a Linguist in one way or another, though at this rate, I think I deserve to be one. For starters, just like most people in this country, I grew up in different communities with different languages and dialects outside Rwanda. But being the child I was at the time and a quick learner, I always found myself very comfortable with the languages spoken in that particular community, getting along with a lot of ease; you would think I was a native of the particular community. While my Mum and Dad struggled to grasp Luganda (they would speak Kinyarwa-ganda), the children quickly got consumed into the system and spoke fluent Kiganda with a lot of ease like they were sons and daughters of the Kabaka. Soon, it was time to relocate to Western Uganda where only Runyankore was spoken and guess what? A few months after settling in, we became complete ‘Sheshes’ (Slang for Banyankore). On my part, when High school came calling, Kabale was my next destination and this is the part of Kigezi where a dialect known as Rukiga is spoken. So close to Runyankore yet so far away is this language. It is capable of getting out the Linguist in you or else you lose every other language you knew perfectly before being exposed to this complicated language. After six years of perfecting Rukiga, University called and Kampala was the next destination. While I thought I knew some good Luganda, my first day in the City after so many years away was nothing but a wake up call to start again and refine what I was now calling Luganda to fit into the modern day Luganda, characterised by slang and borrowed words. While all this time, I travelled to different destinations within the East African Community. Northern Uganda restricted me to English alone and you could even abuse me without me noticing. My next trip led me to Tanzania and I should never have lied to myself that I knew some reasonable Kiswahili and therefore EAC Compliant. No, these guys have an alternative word for whichever word an average Swahili Speaker knows. I struggled to eat and drink for I could not even grasp the prices and an attempt to use English fell on deaf ears and if I was lucky I would get the prices in English but twice inflated. Until recently, that’s when I realised why my Old people could not grasp all these languages at ago. Even after spending sometime in TZ, I could never be able to learn enough of this Conc.Kiswahili. My adventures have finally led me to Rwanda, where I call Motherland but then again, the fares are in French…but thank God these fellows here don’t inflate during the translation process, even the other day when I made a fool of myself, I went away with it. Haggling for a Moto ride, the fellow insisted on Turwasa (trois cent), I vehemently objected, offering him “Magana atatu”. Puzzled, he asked me what the difference was and I shamelessly told him that his was in French while me I was offering Kinyarwanda money. I jumped on the damn thing. Ends