Kinyarwanda slang of the day

My favorite bit of Kinyarwanda slang originated at the National University of Rwanda in Butare, to which the country’s most elite students are admitted. When I break this out around NUR-educated Rwandans (and others the slang has spread to) I invariably am received with hearty laughter.

Gutera akadobo (goo-teh-rah ah-kah-doe-boe) means “to throw the little bucket”: to reject someone’s advances. The first time I encountered this phrase, I was told it referred to a woman rejecting a man. I asked if it could also refer to a man rejecting a woman: “That cannot happen!”

Apparently there are levels of rejection. You’ll recall that “aka-” denotes the diminutive class. Therefore, gutera indobo “to throw the (regularly sized) bucket” is a deeper rejection. Most painful, following a relationship of several years, is gutera ingunguru: “to throw the big metal barrel/oil drum.” Ouch.

Is this what JFK had in mind when he came up with the Second Goal of Peace Corps?

The second goal of the Peace Corps is to u a better understanding of America and its peoplehos within the host country. Usually I fulfill this with casual conversation, sharing American food, or explaining pictures of Boston and home. Often, Rwandans ask me questions about how things are done in America, and I’m put in the position of distilling our massive and diverse culture into a neat answer that can be conveyed with my meager Kinyarwanda vocabulary.

I had the funniest conversation the other day with my counterpart and the head of my village. They asked me if men in America can take more than one wife, so I explained that they can’t do so at the same time but they can after a divorce, of which we have many (and likewise, women can take a second husband). And that some men, and some women, take girl/boyfriends despite being married, but that I think that happens in Rwanda too and usually it’s frowned upon in both cultures. They asked me if sometimes men might have kids with different women and therefore a few different families. They asked me who would get the kids so we got into court arbitration, child support, etc. I told them that there is a slight bias towards the mother getting the kids, and they seemed to think there would (or should?) be more men getting custody. I said usually a man (particularly athletes and rappers) who has children with several different women would rather find new women to have relations with than take care of the existing kids so usually the mothers get the kids.

I kid you not, the head of my village then said he wants to go to America some day and impregnate a woman. (Good luck dude, you’re a great village leader but with your middle-age paunch, your total lack of English and money you would not have so much game…)

Throughout the conversation, they kept asking my opinion on all of this and I kept navigating between keeping up my reputation as being “serious” and culturally appropriate while speaking for all of America on the topic with some semblance of nuance.

Nyoko! Or, your mama! A lesson in the (Kinya)Rwandan family

Kinyarwanda is a notoriously hard language. We’ve barely touched on the complications of the 16 noun classes (and how all adjectives, possessives, verbs and objects must match each class). Several sounds exist that don’t exist in English, and the spelling is sometimes inconsistent.

Family relations have been a particularly confusing topic, so much that I’ve heard multiple trainees swear they will tell people they have no family. Some of the confusion is due to the fact that Rwandans categorize family relationships differently.

An example of the different categories: to discuss siblings, there are 4 words.
- Mushiki (mu-shee-chee) is used to refer to a male’s sister. 
- Musaza refers to a female’s brother.
- Mukuru is an older sibling of the same sex, so a male’s brother or female’s sister.
- Murumuna is a younger sibling of the same sex.

Manageable? Try stepping up to cousins and nieces/nephews.
- Babyara is cousins – but only from your father’s sister or mother’s brother.
- Abavandimwe banjye (literally, “my siblings”) is your cousin by a father’s brother or mother’s sister.
- Similarly, Abana banjye (“my children”) are nieces and nephews from a same-sex sibling’s kids.
- Bisengeneza banjye are a woman’s brother’s kids.
- Bishywa banjye are a man’s sister’s kids.
- Nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles by marriage (e.g. your husband’s sister’s kids) have no appellation.

Complicated! Aunts and uncles are similarly divided – there are separate categories for a father’s sister, mother’s sister, father’s brother, and mother’s brother.

It is understandable that such a different culture and language might have evolved such different concepts of extended family relations and therefore the words to describe them. I can see the internal logic in the system.

What I can’t wrap my head around is that there are separate words for my father/mother/aunt/uncle, your father/mother/aunt/uncle, and his/her father/mother/aunt/uncle. Where English has 4 words for these concepts, Kinyarwanda has 18. If I talk about my mother’s brother, I say marume (ma-roo-may), but if I want to ask about your mother’s brother I must use nyokorome (nyo-ko-ro-may), and a third party’s mother’s brother is nyirarume (nyee-rah-roo-may). At least all possessive nouns don’t function this way.

In summary: My mother? Mama. His mother? Nyina. Yo momma? Nyoko!

(An aside for anyone who’s curious about how I’m describing my nuclear family – The word for mother, mama, is conveniently similar to the word for aunt, mama wacu (wah-choo), which literally means “our mother.” Nobody has been surprised that my ˆ lives with us, or pursued the fact that I don’t have a father. Many people here have conspicuous gaps in their family trees, and it’s rude to pry.)