Week Thirteen: Kinyarwanda in a Time of Chaos

            Due to the anticipation of Thanksgiving break, I entered this week knowing that my language study was likely going to be a bit of a struggle. Lack of consistent internet access made it worse than I imagined, but given my poor productivity in the weeks leading up to break, I knew that I had to plan extra carefully if I wanted to get things done. So, in as much as I could, I attempted just that!

           

            As I mentioned in class, when I am at my family home, I can be a little deceitful when it comes to being productive. Although they want me to succeed and try to support me, I don’t think they recognize the full extent of my commitments, particularly how much time coursework, teaching, and independent language study take up. So, sometimes, I “lie.” After I wake up, I stay in my bedroom for a half hour to an hour and commit time to something productive. Or if that is not possible, for instance, when my mother knocked on my window to let her back in (because she had locked herself out), I take a “nap” later in the day or I “go to bed early” and have a little study time. This way, I can get anywhere between a half hour to three hours of guilt-free studying completed.

            In last week’s instance, I made sure to spend some time with the Bible in Kinyarwanda, as I recognized that was lacking in my study schedule in recent weeks. Even though I haven’t always necessarily seen the relevance of translation to my study, I have recently returned to it with a new fervor, because of my anticipated trip to archives with Kinyarwanda sources this summer. Indeed, I think the ability to translate is more important now than ever.

            In addition to studying while “sleeping,” I also managed to slip in some flashcard time at Thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t do it while at the table, because that would be rude, but I notice that members of my generation have their phones out during downtime anyway, texting, playing games, or scrolling through the internet/Facebook. So, I decided I would join them this time. Of course, I assume everyone thought I was participating in activities similar to my peers, but I was only looking through Memrise. Accordingly, it was a win-win- I fit in with my cousins (albeit deceitfully), and I got to study!

            Beyond Thursday, however, I did not have internet connectivity, so I was unable to meet with my language partner, but I intend to meet with her via Skype this week.

            In conclusion, it wasn’t a perfect week, but I’m not sure I’ve encountered one of those yet. I am proud of my accomplishments though, because I think it’s almost a little more noteworthy to study even a little during a chaotic week than it is to study extensively during a relaxed one.

Week Twelve: Kinyarwanda-ing While Sick (Again)

Following up my particularly grim post about the president elect is another equally upsetting post about illness (Part Two and Three). I had the sniffles last week, and I didn’t think much of it, because the weather was changing, and that happens. Then my nose became like a faucet, and pressure built up in my head. Finally, I went to the doctor, and she told me that I had a very severe ear and sinus infection, and kindly prescribed me an antibiotic. I have taken these horse pills as I should since Friday evening, and I thought I was getting better (for the most part), but now I have entirely new symptoms that impact upon my stomach. It’s totally distracted me from most of my studies, including that of Kinyarwanda. I am so disappointed, but I’m not sure I could have done anything differently.

Needless to say, I did not meet with my language partner this week. In the interest of self care, I slept in until 10:00a.m on Saturday (which is unheard of in my household). When I felt up to it, however, I tried to spend time on what I would classify as the less active activities, including reviewing digital flashcards and contributing to Google Translate.

As per the syllabus, I constructed a page for my language-learning website. I decided to make a lesson on three practical verbs, to be, to have, and to want, and as simple as that should have been, I found it to be a bit of a challenge. Indeed, I did not want to overwhelm them with information on verb tense and object prefixes, but then again, I didn’t want to leave them ill-equipped to handle these verbs either. I ultimately decided to give them a glimpse at the present tense and the present habitual, knowing that I will explain them, as well as other verb tenses, at greater length later.

I also submitted a final self-assessment tool, but I modified the one I used last semester, because though I found it to be effective, I also identified areas where I thought it could be more challenging.

Anyway, I’m sorry there was nothing terribly exciting to report this week. I hope to provide a more riveting narration once I feel better. Hopefully, that will be next week, but I have learned there are no guarantees! I am so tired of being sick.

Week Eleven: African Studies after *Him*

This week, I don’t think any of my schoolwork proceeded along particularly well. I tried to implement a system of self-care in order to cope with the election news, but I don’t think I am through processing yet. It hits me in utterly destabilizing waves, in which I come face-to-face with the recognition that he is going to be our president for the next four to eight years and what that means for me- what kind of impact his presidency will have on area studies and on federally funded fellowships, and what it will mean for my personal relationships. Then, I have to think of what it will mean for those around me- my classmates, my colleagues, and, yes, Africans, more generally, and Rwandans, in particular-, and the thought, though completely necessary to bear in mind, is almost crippling.

With that said, I tried to follow my routine this week, with some amount of fallback. Indeed, for the past few weeks, I have been attempting to translate the Kinyarwanda Bible into English, approximately one book a week. I made the choice to do this, because it was a resource available to me, and I had a ready English translation to confirm my work. I’m still not sure it’s the most effective choice, however, likely due to the fact that the vocabulary used isn’t what I would otherwise come into contact with. I also have Ntihazasigare N’Uwo Kubara Inkuru, which is a Kinyarwanda translation of Allison DesForges’ English text, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, that I could work with, and it is more relevant to my research. Last semester, I tried to read various sections in order to get an “idea” of what it meant, but now as I am potentially preparing to travel to Rwanda and Tanzania, in order to conduct archival research, I recognize that I will likely have to do a fair amount of translation in order to include it in my scholarship, and it’s a skill I am now interested in practicing.

To that end, I also made an effort to listen to testimony about the genocide, making sure to ignore the English subtitles (at least during the first viewing). I haven’t always adhered to this practice, but I recognize that it makes sense to do so, so I tried to write down words that I was unfamiliar with in order to look them up later. Sometimes I could find them. Sometimes I couldn’t, but now I have a working list to ask my language partner, J, about.

In addition, a new practice I started last week was to contribute Kinyarwanda translations to Google Translate. So far, I have contributed 27 translations to the site, and that makes me feel measurably productive. Also, I definitely understand why one of my classmates, L, might enjoy a point-based system of language study. L, I get it now! J However, I have a few critiques of the Google Translate structure. The first, as I have discussed with my professor and classmates, is that it asks me to translate ridiculous things that probably wouldn’t be fully translated into Kinyarwanda, such as “suit up” or “Gangnam Style.” It also is a little unclear sometimes what they want you to translate. For instance, they asked me to translate “turn around,” which I took to mean the imperative tense, but I hope they don’t think that they can merely put a first person pronoun before the verb and it be correct (i.e. I “turn around”). In any case, I can now see why Google Translate is not a perfect structure. In addition, though the site offers a generous amount of space for multiple translations, it doesn’t offer enough to account for all of Kinyarwanda’s noun classes and the agreement rules that accompany them. I can’t remember the phrase in which I ran into an issue, but I think it involved the word “it,” and depending on what noun class the “it” belonged to, it could be any number of translations. So, I tried to insert them all, but the site only provided me five spaces, when I needed ten.

Anyway, back to my studies. Even if African Cultural Studies isn’t even on his radar, I can imagine that by participating in it, I am a thorn in his awful, orange, scaly side, and I like that. It gives me (slightly petulant) purpose. Plus, it certainly incentivizes women’s studies as a prospect as well…