Pardon my Chichewa: Pardon My Chi...tumbuka

The two- to three-month period known as “pre-service training” in the Peace Corps is often likened to boot camp (an analogy that would probably offend anyone who has actually experienced boot camp), but I’ve heard it repeated so often that it must bear some kernel of truth, and there’s no doubt that the challenges were legion: often physically uncomfortable, sometimes emotionally exhausting, always mentally taxing.

We faced the wider community’s constant scrutiny, along with a host of new bacteria ready to invade any and every orifice. Under the glut of weekly vaccinations, copious handouts, strenuous language sessions, restricted movement, tightly reined schedules, and the looming threat of giardia and schistosomiasis in every body of water, those first two months were basically about learning how to live in a place that wanted to hurt us. (But with daily tea breaks. And sometimes doughnuts.)

The sudden loss of independence was the bane of our collective existence, but it also happened to be the greatest gift we could have gotten. We floundered and stumbled and babbled in an unfamiliar world while there were still hands all around to guide us, and to me that was by far the best (and most interesting) thing about those first two months. Stripped of self-autonomy, I had the experience of a second infancy – but with all the self-awareness of an adult.

Everyday felt like an episode of Sesame Street, filled with elementary greetings and songs to help us remember things. My host mom packed me a lunch to take to school, protected my baby hands from scalding pots, and worried that my ten hours of sleep just wasn’t enough. I slowly gathered the basic tools of survival, such as cooking banana fritters and knowing (at least theoretically) how to start a fire. But most of all I was aware of another channel in my brain being opened – of the sights, sounds, and smells around me packing new labels and layers. I looked at a chair and the word “mphando” flashed above it. I was offered peas, honey, peanut butter, or eggs and each one seemed to be tagged with invisible ink: sawawa, uchi, chiponde, masumbi. And there was such meta-cognitive magic in all of this – in learning a language and being able to reflect on the learning that was happening.

There is an obvious downside to learning a geographically isolated Bantu language spoken by a minority ethnic group in an already tiny African country: it’s likely that these two years will be the only time I ever use it. But for everything it lacks in long-term practicality, Chitumbuka makes up for it in sheer musicality. You can’t help but fall in love with a language whose word for “difficult” is nonono, or whose word for “car” (galimoto) literally means “shining fire,” or that calls the morning “mulenji” and the early morning “mulenjilenji.” Chitumbuka’s lexicon is limited, so it blends a lot of the same sounds into different combinations to achieve a kind of semantic gymnastics. The result is charming: if chomene means “very much,” then “especially,” obviously, is chomenechomene. It has bouncy mouthfuls like Ichi ni chivichi? (What is this?), 14-letter monsters like tamupokererani (You are welcome), and bright little phrases like chimodzimodzi (the only English word that comes close to capturing its spirit: “samesies.”) It’s a tongue of multi-syllabic mazes, framed within a series of coos. During homestay, to say where I was living and with whom, I had to spew a ratatat sequence of k’s: “Nkukhala ku Katsekaminga kwa Nkomba.”

And though my rhythms are still a bit halting and staccato, stringing words together all feels like play (or at least a very rudimentary form of it, like punching out the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on a xylophone). By having new sounds to describe familiar things, I get to hear the world strike new chords – and my oh my, Chitumbuka is full of them.

Trainers and current volunteers have been repeating the same words of wisdom again and again: “Everyone has different strengths, so everyone’s legacy in his or her village is going to be different, and that’s okay.” Some volunteers are always out-of-site (and therefore out of sight), but their contributions arc toward the concrete, such as leaving behind a well or a library; others become a visible, integrated member of their communities, sticking to collective memory in more abstract, personal, but no less important ways (e.g., “She came to every wedding and every funeral, and she always greeted everyone.”) It’s way too early to tell what my impact will be – in fact, I’m supposed to just focus on my own survival for the next three months or so – but I can already tell where people think my forte lies.

On one of my good days, I pointed to a burning pile of trash outside the teacher’s lounge, muttered the slang word “viswaswa,” and was met with a veritable firework-show of praise. It was declared that I am “now officially a Tumbuka.” (If I’d known that was the code word, I would have said it a lot sooner.)

At this point in my service, the idea of leading teacher workshops or starting an income-generating project or applying for grants still kind of overwhelms me, but I study Chitumbuka and think, “Okay, this. This I can do.” And while I build up the confidence to shoot for more tangible things, it’s wonderful to know that I can walk into my village, point to some viswaswa, and feel like a success.