29 June 2014: Lots of B-words

The main thing that happened on Sunday was a conversation with A. (who I have mentioned several times before). We met up too late in the afternoon to go anywhere really interesting, so we walked around Nyamirambo—near both of our homes, which I usually ride minibuses past on my way elsewhere. I do remember just about walking the length of the district, once—from the Regional Stadium, where I saw a Jehovah’s Witnesses Convention, to the Onatracom (Office Nationale de Transport et de Communication) office, practically in town—but I had done that on my own, and it was nice to get some explanations of what I was seeing.

Most of the interesting information that came out of the conversation had to do with the Biryogo neighborhood, which has a big market-type thing that isn’t quite the same kind of market, but rather just a major commercial area with lots of shops. I’ve written before about the really attractively painted, brightly colored storefronts.

I had known that Nyamirambo broadly, and Biryogo especially, were majority-Muslim; it is fully Rwandan, but it sounds like the Muslim population (predictably) has foreign roots. A. says that Muslims have a reputation for making really good food—sounds familiar, actually! People in Biryogo can often be seen cooking outdoors, by the road, and the food is very good and very cheap.

Extraordinarily cheap, actually. A sizable loaf of chapati for Fr. 100, and for another 100 a hefty portion of cooked beans to go on top—big enough for a meal, and only Fr. 200 (28¢). I kind of want to try it.

Biryogo is also a place where one can hear Swahili spoken alongside Kinyarwanda, which really isn’t common. Swahili is spoken natively by a few hundred thousand people in Tanzania, and as a second language by about 15 million more in Kenya and Tanzania. It is a regional trade language, with speakers extending far west into the Congo,¹ but hearing it fluidly around here is rare (at least from my experience).

What all of this suggests is that Biryogo experienced a very strong cultural influence from the East African coast, as Swahili-speaking Muslim merchants came in to do business and occasionally settled. Without a source I couldn’t say when, but as much as they have blended themselves into Rwanda, they have retained distinct aspects of their cultural heritage: the Indian-influenced food, the language, the religion.

It is a really fun place to be. I should also mention that we were walking there well after dusk, and the streets were downright bustling in a way that I don’t think would apply to many othe parts of this city.

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The other notable thing about that conversation was the conversation itself, which extended across a variety of topics and generally made me feel pretty good about my ability to communicate myself. (I am feeling more and more comfortable saying on my résumé that I speak “conversational Kinyarwanda,” not that anyone would check.) Some things I was able to explain:

• The unusual dichotomy in the United States great success among recent African immigrants and persistent poverty in the Black community as a whole²
• The lack of absolute poverty in the U.S., and the relative comfort of the American poor despite inequality and hardship
• Why I like the look of the signs on all of the stores in Nyamirambo
• How supermarkets in the U.S. are so common, and why they are able to offer lower prices than smaller establishments (which, for interesting reasons, is the opposite of the case in Kigali)³
• Why I so often chuckle when I see the names of shops in Rwanda

That last one launched into a couple of fun threads. First, the reason I so often chuckle is that, due to some combination of catering to foreigners, appearing professional or cool, adhering to national standards and who knows what else, most stores in Kigali have English or French names. Generally, the older ones are French and the newer ones English (though designations like quincaillerie, papeterie, bijouterie and imprimerie seem to have just entered the local vocabulary, and therefore persist).

Anyway, as English was very recently made the language of government and business in Rwanda, most people—and especially the subset of the population that would consider opening a small shop—do not speak it very well. But they try their best at the English names anyway, often with fantastic results.

For example, there is a restaurant in town, across from the Kigali City Tower, called Fantastic Restaurant. I went there a year ago, and it was indeed fantastic.

But you see what I mean, right? I think it’s a great name, but no native speaker of English would have thought it up! I guess it’s just my cultural understanding of how things are named.

Another example: the God Is Able Forex Bureau, where I have changed money at least once. There’s just something so hilariously incongrous about invoking divine power over the entrance to an establishment that stays afloat by taking people’s money and turning it into different kinds of money.

And on a completely non-cultural note, my favorite so far might be Chip Chop Restaurant, also in town. I can totally see how someone thought that would be a cool name for a business: it rolls off the tongue really nicely, and it sounds fun and inviting. It’s hard to put my finger on why it’s so funny… maybe the onomatopoeia lulls me into thinking that “chip chop” is empty of meaning, but then I remember that, wait a minute, those are two perfectly usable words!

I feel like I should make a Twitter feed of these, along with the hilarious second-hand T-shirts I see people wearing in Kigali.

Anyway, A. thought this was all very funny. She had a question afterward, which was about certain English words that people her age used very often at school, kind of to pad sentences, whose meaning wasn’t all that important in context. But she wanted to know what they meant.

The first one was bastard. She actually already knew that one. But she recounted her surprise when she found out that she had been unconsciously telling her friends that they were illegitimate, all the funnier because in Rwanda—as in pre-Hollywood America—that is a pretty serious insult, and the word is not one to be thrown around lightly.

The second was one she did not know, and let me tell you, it is really funny to hear someone with a strong accent and limited knowledge of English say the word bool-sheet when you don’t see it coming. I was happy that I happened to know the Kinyarwanda word for cow-pies (amasé).⁴ She thought it was hilarious, and said she would tell all her friends.

It occurs to me that this is what happens when people get their English vocabulary from watching American films. Very often, movies show us characters who use those and many other similar words as comedic tools bordering on verbal crutches. Native speakers have a full knowledge of those words’ meanings, and the many ways they can be used, and in that context it can be really funny—but to, say, a Rwandan, there is no indication at all of what they actually mean!

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There are a couple of reasons I have fallen behind on blogging in the past few days. One is that I have legitimately been doing stuff. Another is that I have been trying to make a map of public transit routes in Kigali, which I believe does not exist. I think public transit mapping is really fascinating, and I was able to find a couple of good sources of information on which routes run where—and I will blog about that another time!

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¹ Swahili is by its nature a language with a large number of cultural influences, and the way it varies geographically is actually fascinating. The cultural descendents of early Swahili immigrants to the Congo, for example, speak something that is recognizably Swahili but has drastically diverged due to isolation in recent centuries.

² Did you know that the ethnic group with the highest average educational attainment in the U.S. is Nigerians? It’s really interesting, and satisfyingly confounds some perceived racial hierarchies.

³ The norm in Rwanda is the small retailer, and supermarkets are big, shiny and reminiscent of their shiny American analogues. They cater to people who have the desire and the means to live like Americans, and as such they have higher prices. In America, on the other hand, supermarkets have such purchasing power that they can buy everything in bulk and thereby have lower prices than their competitors.

⁴ We actually had a whole lesson on the different words used for “feces,” “urine,” “defecate” and “urinate.” Kinyarwanda vocabulary is wonderfully rich in this area, often having animal-specific words for each of those, in addition to different levels of politeness when talking about humans.