Muli Bwanji!
Posted by Margaret G on January 18th, 2010
Muli Bwanji! Jambo! Bonjour!
These are all greetings in just a few of the many languages that are to be heard floating around Dzaleka, the refugee camp here in Malawi where I?ve been living and working for the past two months. While it took just a few days to learn the various greetings, conversational Chichewa (or Swahili for that matter) is something that I still struggle with despite my night guard’s best efforts to turn me into a native speaker. So, I rely heavily on the French I acquired during my years of immersion and, when combined with a few key phrases in Chichewa and English, that can usually scrape me through whatever interaction I am having. Needless to say, I am constantly in awe of the refugees and Malawians I meet at Dzaleka who can easily speak two, three, four, five languages- I have one friend who can speak fourteen different languages and dialects! With a bit of pronunciation help from me, he is quickly learning his fifteenth language: Spanish.
At any rate, I start this entry with the subject of communication because it is foundational to my work experience here in Malawi. I was partnered by WUSC with Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), an international organization which is responsible for all educational programs at the refugee camp. At this point in my placement I find myself involved in three different projects which at their core essentially involve the communication of ideas and concepts.
As a side, you might notice that none of the projects are what originally thought I was coming to do. This was my first and most important lesson: you have to be flexible and open to change in order to determine where help is or isn?t needed, where it is or isn?t wanted. In the end, I am more than happy with how my schedule turned out.
First of all, I am a teacher’s aide at Umodzi Katubza F. Primary School. There are so many students there (over two thousand) that they are taught in shifts. I work the afternoon shift with a standard four maths teacher, and together we bring the student-teacher ratio down from about 75:1 to 75:2. I have performed various different activities within the classroom which include helping with marking, discipline, the tutoring of small groups of students, but most importantly, I can take the time to actually sit with a student and go over a concept that they?ve not understood. Sometimes this is because of language- classes are taught in English according to the Malawian Ministry of Education, and many of the students are new arrivals to the camp and have not yet got a good grasp of English. Most of the time, though, it’s because a teacher with so many students simply does not have the time to sit down and explain things to a child on a one-to-one basis.
Despite that fact, the children still display such a pure energy in the classroom; they literally jump out of their seats and into the aisles, whipping their hands back and forth in the air and shouting ?Teacher! Teacher! Me! Me!?so that they might have the chance to participate in the lesson. In the face of such a desire to learn, how could I not love being with them?
My second task at the primary school has been to help implement a Girl Guides Club. Two of the female teachers had recently undergone training to become Girl Guides leaders, so I partnered with them to actually put the group into practice. We focused on targeting the standard (grade) eight girls seeing as they completed their final exams in early September and will have no more schooling until December when they will begin secondary school. With there being nothing for them to do in camp, the girls have eagerly jumped at the chance of having some sort of social/educational activity to do. We get together at least once a week after my math classes have finished for the day, and design meetings which involve songs, games, debates, and mini lectures.
Finally, the idea was thrown out by JRS that perhaps either I or my housemate and fellow SWB volunteer could take on the task of teaching some basic computer lessons. After the initial self-doubt subsided, I decided that this was something that I could do, after all. Teaching the class has been both my biggest challenge, and my most enjoyable teaching experience. The class runs twice a week for two hours a lesson, and during those two hours I get the pleasure of experiencing a more focused and intense class full of adult learners, who so very much want to learn this contemporary and marketable form of communication.
At the end of the day, I take most comfort and understanding from non-verbal forms of communication, for they are more basic, human, and instinctual. The clasping of hands as I pass the maize vendor on the way to work, the beaming of a student as I write ?well done!? across the page, the sudden brightening of the eyes as a concept finally becomes clear. However, there is also the emphatically outstretched hand that is clearly asking for money, the strong gesturing towards the stomach emphasizing hunger pains that are being suffered, and the silent stares (accusatory? simply curious?) which follow me everywhere I go.
These are all communicative interactions that as a whole make up my experience of living in a refugee camp. And I am thankful for every day that I am here in Dzaleka, for I am learning volumes as I teach.
