Learning Nyanja

There’s a guy in the petrol station who keeps trying to teach me Bemba. It started innocently enough, with a few repetitions of hello and thank you in his first language: ‘Mulishani’ and ‘Natashumkwai’. After a year of his persistence that’s all I can remember. If I could, I would avoid the petrol station and the humiliation of feeling stupid, but the shop sells Cadbury’s Whole Nut chocolate that hasn’t gone white from the heat...

It must be a universal law for petrol stations the world over, to sell chocolate bars and crisps. It’s my favourite store in Mfuwe.  Or it would be, if I wasn’t subjected to a test every time I step inside. 

At first, it was charming to be offered a few words in a different local language.  But as the months went by and I failed to remember all but two, it became embarrassing. He offers me a basket at the door and looks at me with expectation, holding on to the basket ever so slightly as I reach to take it, as I would in training a child to say thank you for sweets: not until you say those magic words...

I’ve explained to him that I’m learning Nyanja – the dominant local language – and that my tired old brain just can’t cope with two new languages at once but he just doesn’t buy it. I have tried to dazzle him with my stock phrases in Nyanja – ‘Zikomo Kwambiri’ (thank you very much) and ‘Kodi banja ili bwanji?’ (how is your family?) – but he isn’t impressed. Bemba is an easy language to learn he insists and I should just try harder. I pay for my chocolate with a thin smile, repeating parrot-like the words he’s just said, knowing that as soon as I step out into the sunshine they evaporate.

My enthusiastic pedant doesn’t work the checkout, so a few times I tried slipping in unnoticed, hiding behind the shelves of spices and tinned tomatoes. But he would always appear, basket in hand, with an expectant smile. One time, I thought I had a brilliant idea. I would turn the tables and see how he liked it, to have a foreign language thrust down his throat. ‘How about I teach you something?’ I said.  ‘A little French, perhaps?’

‘Non, merci, je parle déjà couramment le français’ he replied.

Dammit.

Every Saturday morning for the last six months I’ve had a Nyanja lesson. My tutor is a young primary school teacher. For the first few weeks he would turn up with a lesson plan designed for five-year olds. We’d sound out the alphabet together and start to pair up letters to make sounds. Yes, but how do I say to a child ‘Don’t tease the dog’ I would ask? Or what’s the Nyanja for ‘That’s just too expensive’ ?

Over time, we’ve reached an understanding: he brings a plan and I take him off track with my questions. 

Last week, I decided on the spur of the moment that it was time I learned some insults. I’m sure I’ve been insulted many times, especially by the gaggles of teenagers that hang around with motorbikes outside the petrol station. There’s something universally unsettling about gangs of teenage boys with nothing much to do. With the seemingly endless time of youth on their hands, they pose, Instagram-ready, astride or beside their spotless Hondas under the shade of a Winterthorn tree. I try not to look intimidated by the guffaws of laughter as I cross the road to the little row of market stalls on the other side.

I tell myself it’s probably not me that’s the butt of the joke. Perhaps they’re laughing at the goats frisking across the road or the young lady sashaying past with a basket balanced expertly on her head. Or perhaps it’s the sweaty white woman that’s just dropped 3 bars of Cadbury’s Whole Nut chocolate in her haste to leave the filling station. The point is, I just don’t know. How I would love to be able to turn round and wag a motherly finger and surprise them with a few choice words of my own.

So last Saturday I casually diverted our Nyanja lesson from buying tomatoes at the market to asking about the word for penis. I lowered my voice as if that made my request more respectable, and explained that I believe to truly grasp a language you have to know how to insult someone. My teacher was surprisingly compliant. He took his pen and silently wrote the word in my exercise book. ‘Is that what you would say as an insult or is that the medical word?’  I pressed. It would be an insult he confirmed. I felt there was so much more to learn; I’d discovered a new seam of knowledge and I was diving right in.

‘How would you really insult someone?’ I asked. ‘For example, how would I say large penis or small penis?’ As the words left my lips, I realised I was looking at a young man who would rather die right there on the spot than answer the question.

I backed up and looked for safer territory. ‘Or what about women?’ I asked. ‘How would you insult a woman?’   ‘Ermm... cunt?’ he croaked.

I looked at my watch and declared the lesson over.

When he’d gone, I folded myself onto the kitchen floor and placed my forehead on the cool concrete. I stayed very, very still. When the urge to smash my head on the floor had safely passed, I stood up and put the kettle on.

In this week’s Nyanja lesson, we’ll stick with buying an array of vegetables at the market but I think I’ll give ‘aubergine’ a miss.