Search term: What does the word “Reham” mean in Arabic?
Answer: It means “dew”.
Was not so boring, because I presented a talk to a group of senior citizens (read grown folks over sixty) along with Reham in an event called Dialogue With Seniors. It was titled “Life in two of Africa’s biggest cities: Ibadan and Cairo.”
I enjoyed it because, contrary to my early apprehensions, they were quite amiable and relaxed. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience of speaking about everything from food to dressing to greeting to customs to religion and to malaria and HIV/AIDS. I showed them a picture of real Nigerian yams, as well as cocoa, both of which they were seeing for the very first time. They had seen Hershey’s, M&Ms and Snickers before, but this was the first time of seeing what cocoa really looked like. They asked questions and I responded. When Reham spoke, I learnt a few new things about Egypt and Arabic as well. It’s funny how much of what we had to say bounced off each other, as well as off the Americans. Cairo is Africa’s largest city while Ibadan is the second largest – by geography. The Nile in Egypt is the longest river in Africa while the Mississippi just close by is the second longest river in the world. (This fact about the Nile has amazed me since I grew up to realize that – contrary to the song we were taught in primary school – the Mississippi was NOT the longest river in the world. I wonder who came up with the song then.)
Yesterday, I participated in a similar seminar, this time for a class of students of English language teaching. Along with visiting scholars from Iran and Azerbaijan, we sat and answered questions about the difference in the University and learning environments in our countries and the United States, where they diverged, and where they were similar, and what we thought each could learn from each other. That was fun too. There were no “high tables”, just chairs. One thing I learnt from that event was that in Iran, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, boys and girls were separated into same-sex high schools and don’t have any form of social interactions until they gain admissions into the University. According to the Iranian speakers, this causes a lot of frustrations when they eventually get into the University and have to engage in social interactions, it becomes awkward. I could almost say the same for Nigeria of a few generations back as well, but not as a result of a government decision or anything. Most parental restrictions on their children (derived from a claimed divine injunction to “train the child in the way he should go”) often result in poorly sociable human beings unleashed on the society.
In all, it has been a wonderful week so far, except for the ugly news of the loss of my files and all my student’s data and academic scores in my now unrecoverable hard drive. Well, the week is just half gone. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
This post was first published on Clarissa’s Blog today as part of a guest-writing project. Clarissa a cool Professor of Spanish language and literature at my department will also be a guest-blogger on KTravula.com in the coming days. Watch out.
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Prompted by two related observations in my mind at the moment…
One was the search term in my blog statistics today. Some random person had apparently been directed to my blog by searching for the term “barking in a foreign language”. This is not so strange when I realize that I had once made a blog post about the cartoon that I found on the glass entrance to my department.
The second was this very comprehensive article, and discussion, in the New York times about why, or whether Americans will really, learn Chinese. I enjoyed reading it and picked up a few nuggets, one of which was the fact that the interest of many Americans in learning foreign languages came from political and economic expediencies: They learnt Russian during the Cold War, Arabic after 9/11, Spanish because of their neighbours, and now Chinese in the wake of China’s global economic uprising. Thus said the writers of the article. Not me, even though I have learnt also from a few interactions on the matter that many American students now study Chinese for the purpose of gaining leverage in the emerging economic world.
The article doesn’t mention Yoruba, Swahili, or any of the other minority world languages being learnt in Universities all over America, but that is not the point – I guess. As much as this point in the article could be seen as a generalization of perhaps a genuine interest of students in expanding their worldviews, I believe that there’s something interesting about the said American foreign language fad. For a fact, the govenment of the United States has shown more interest in languages spoken in parts of the world with some economic, political or cultural relevance to its own survival. At the Fulbright conference in December, I had made friends with a guy called Osama from Yemen, a Fulbrighter on a similar programme. That was before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, and its subsequent link to Yemen. After the terror attempt, I asked a friend if she thought that Yemen will now get a lesser slot in subsequent Fulbright programmes because of the terrorism incendent, and she said NO. Quite the opposite, she said. If this all rings true, then Hausa will also soon become another language of interest for Americans in the coming years, because of the failed bombing attempt of Christmas day. This creed can then be summarized somewhat thusly:
“If he has tried to kick your ass, kick his ass too, and then learn his language. You might understand him more, and thus prevent any further aggression.”
Whether this is true, or whether it ever works as planned in the long term, is of course subject to debate.
There is an interesting article about my fellow FLTA Reham Othman in The Alestle, SIUE’s campus newspaper, today. It is very well written. Reham is from Egypt and she teaches Arabic, one of the oldest and most populated of world’s languages.
But reading the first comment on the article, I am convinced that exporting and exchanging language and culture might not always be the easiest way to correct deeply-held prejudices and mindsets, even though it is the best and most powerful means accessible to all. Find the article here.