Broken Chichewa Reflections
As my year as a Global Health Corps fellow is coming to a close, I can’t help but think back to when I started last July. On our first day at the office, my co-fellow Wezi and I received a really warm welcome from our coworkers. It was an inspiring day, and I loved learning more about our placement organization mothers2mothers and our scope of work for the fellowship year.
However, there was one thing that I noticed a couple of hours after arriving at our office. Work and personal conversations were mostly in Chichewa, one of the national languages of Malawi, with snippets of English intertwined. While I received a Chichewa 101 document from one of the former Global Health Corps fellows, I knew it would be difficult to become fully conversant in Chichewa with people who are native Chichewa speakers.
I realized I needed to get serious about learning some Chichewa. I started writing different phrases in my notebook, and Wezi helped me with the pronunciation. However, I couldn’t dedicate all of my time to Chichewa, since we were also having all of our orientation sessions with the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), Programs, and Training Departments during the first week of work.
In our meeting with the M&E Manager, we went through different client management tools. I was surprised to learn that most of the tools are printed in Chichewa. While all of our databases are in English, Mentor Mothers, who are HIV-positive women that support other women in the prevention of mother-to-children transmission of HIV (PMTCT) through education and psycho-social support, use these tools to track clients. Mentor Mothers in Malawi have a minimum education requirement of about eight years of school, and many have limited English proficiency. As the M&E Manager translated and discussed how each indicator is measured during our meeting, I furiously took notes.
Flash forward to the following week and I was in the car from Lilongwe to Mzuzu, the major city in the northern region of Malawi. At this point, I was still mixing up my basic greetings in Chichewa and trying to keep all of the different tools and indicators straight in my mind. However, I was excited to continue learning and to travel for work.
Throughout the first day of our meeting in Mzuzu, I definitely felt somewhat out of place. Despite the meeting being conducted almost entirely in Chichewa, I tried to stay attentive. Luckily, the Mzuzu-based Project Manager translated for me. When I began checking the extraction sheets, I was apprehensive at first, but once I got into the groove of things and consulted my translation guides, my nerves calmed. A lot of the Mentor Mothers in Mzuzu also speak English fairly well, so between their English skills and the few words in Chichewa I knew at that point, I began to feel more and more at ease with the work. I realized though that I would need to learn to be okay with discomfort as I worked in a context where my own native language was not primarily spoken.
Flash forward to May of this year. I traveled to Mzuzu again to assist with the rollout of our updated quarterly assessment tool. Although my Chichewa was still very “broken,” I was no longer nervous. I was excited to see the Mentor Mothers, who I had gotten to know through different projects and meetings. It was also bittersweet since I knew this was probably the last time I would travel to Mzuzu before the end of my fellowship year in July. On the last day, we said our goodbyes and took pictures, and they gifted me a beautiful chitenje cloth. I feel so fortunate to have been welcomed into this community as an outsider and a “broken” Chichewa speaker.
Getting fully settled in, leaning into the discomfort of not always understanding meetings conducted mostly in Chichewa, and becoming accustomed to working with women whose native language was different than mine took time. My lofty goal of becoming conversant in Chichewa during my fellowship year fell by the wayside as I became busier with tasks at work.
Now, as my fellowship year winds down, I continue to reflect back to how I was feeling those first couple of weeks at work. While there are still days when lunchtime conversations are all in Chichewa, and I have to rely on my “master guides” with my English translations scribbled on them, I realize how much I have learned this year. In addition to picking up the ability to communicate in broken Chichewa, I have learned so much from each person I work with, from the Mentor Mothers spread across the country to the high-level managerial staff.
Working in a bureaucratic and donor-focused field, I have noted the challenges of funding, resource constraints, and working alongside the Ministry of Health which experiences its own slew of obstacles. However, I have also directly observed the successes of the PMTCT Program in Malawi. With support from Mentor Mothers and other lay healthcare workers, more and more HIV-positive women in Malawi are staying in care until their two-year old children receive HIV negative test results.
Recently, I was talking with two Community Mentor Mothers, and they were excited to tell me that all of their children are HIV-negative because of the PMTCT Program in Malawi. Hearing those stories, and going through our data each month and noting how many HIV-exposed babies are now HIV-negative because of advances in care is encouraging. While my Chichewa knowledge is nothing to write home about, I will forever take this inspiration with me in my future endeavors. I know that I will also take the friendships I developed along the way with me. Through traveling and working together, sharing nsima (Malawi’s staple food), meeting their families, and sharing many laughs and cups of coffee at the office, I have formed life-long bonds with my mothers2mothers coworkers.
Entering into communities where the culture and native language are different than your own can be challenging, emotional, inspiring, and enlightening. Upon reflection, here are some of my main takeaways:
Make an effort!
Learn all of the greetings.
Learn funny phrases so you can whip those out on long car rides when you need a laugh with coworkers.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions, ask for help with language phrases and pronunciation, or ask about other peoples’ stories.
Share your own story.
Have an open mind.
Don’t give up or get discouraged if you don’t understand.
Use context clues.
Learn about others’ traditions.
Share your traditions.
And most importantly, have fun!
