Posts Tagged ‘Kinyarwanda’
Rwanda-isms I
I can’t believe it hasn’t occurred to me to do this sooner. Like every place in which English is not the mother language, the English here can sometimes be funny. Certainly not as funny as my Kinyarwanda–I’m running around inflecting words wrong or simply confusing vocabulary, trying to negotiate the price of a [...]
Things you don’t want to overhear
I am too infrequently nursing a little burn I got hopping off a moto last week–it was my own fault, lacking as I do both balance and grace and forgetting momentarily to compensate with attention and will power. I’ve been careful since then, but lately I find myself taking up drivers not nearly so [...]
Maybe Kinyarwanda is actually the universal language
I was sitting in the bus station in Butare and four Asian men walked in. A tall guy in an Indian-style tunic went to the counter and said, “Mwiriwe, amakuru?” Good afternoon, how are you? He proceeded to try to get bus tickets in Kinyarwanda, but the prices tripped him up.
For the [...]
That is, literally, not what I meant
I was having a meal with a Rwandan friend earlier today, and in the process learned that “Dufugurua” means both “We am eating a meal” (as in, meeting to eat and enjoy each other’s company, I believe is the implication, not just “We’re putting food in our mouths”) and “We are open” (as in a [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [