“How are you! How are you!”
That’s about the limit of my English conversations with most women and children throughout my stay here in Zambia. In case you were wondering: no, I didn’t make a type error in the title. The exclamation points indicate the lack of inflection or questioning involved with the statement made by children as I pass by on my bike. It is more of a demand than a question, beckoning the ‘Misungu’ to respond. Since “I am fine, How are you?” (in that exact sequence) is the only understood response, the communication obviously leaves something to be desired. Thus, my quest to speak IciBemba (the local language) began.
Progressing marginally in my conversational Bemba, I’ve found it very rewarding but also extremely frustrating. As anyone who has learned another language will agree, speaking a foreign tongue gives incredible insight into a culture, and also allows one to connect on an entirely different level. However, the point of this blog entry is not to give an inspiring story about how my minimal progress in learning Bemba has helped me relate to local friends, or to teach fish farming (although it has done both). Instead, it’s to point out an interesting distinction between the culture of the Zambian people with whom I’ve shared the past 9 months, and the American culture of the family and friends who enriched my life prior to that.
During my journey into IciBemba, one of the first verbs I learned was ‘ukulefwaya’ which means ‘to want’. For instance, if I was seeking some water from a neighbor after a long bike ride, I would say ‘Ndefwaya amenshi yakunwa’ which means (translated directly, in sequence) ‘I am wanting water for drinking’. As you might imagine, the weather here gets extremely hot, and people travel extreme distances by foot or bicycle. Despite these hardships, I have learned in recent months that there is no way in Bemba to tell my neighbor ‘I need water for drinking’. That is: there is no verb distinction in this language for the difference between ‘to want’ and ‘to need’.
Maybe an important step to take now is to differentiate between a ‘want’ and a ‘need’ in our own language. This distinction is actually very difficult to make, but for the purposes of brevity we’ll say that a ‘need’ is something required by a person in order for survival, and a ‘want’ is anything else desired by a person which is not required for survival. In this regard, we could consider air a ‘need’, while a new car would be a ‘want’. This obviously leaves room for some gray areas – such as primary education. Also, it can be argued that the adaptation of some modern cultures has increased the number of ‘needs’ required for daily survival in comparison with more primitive cultures. However, these technicalities are beside the point.
The lack of differentiation between a ‘want’ and a ‘need’ in IciBemba hints at the incredible resiliency and optimism of this culture, an insight which could only be gained through learning the language. It is also hard to miss the irony that this ambiguity represents: A culture in which poverty presents an overwhelming amount of daily, physical need, whose language contains no word to express these needs. For instance – the need for clean drinking water, food with nutrients for starving and malnourished children, shelter from sweltering heat and relentless rains, medication for life-threatening diseases, and even the need for a basic education.
In stark contrast to this ambiguity of the IciBemba language is that of modern English, since our tongue has a clear distinction with the use of two separate words: ‘want’, and ‘need’ (although, as mentioned above, the connotations and even denotations of these words can be debated). The further irony is this: America is a place in which ‘need’ (by the definition established above) rears its ugly head less than in almost any human civilization – not just in the world today, but in any time in human history. Unfortunately, this lack of need has created complacency within our society, and today the word ‘need’ and the word ‘want’ are often used interchangeably. For instance – I found that while still living in America, after I broke my hockey stick while taking a slapshot, I complained to my teammates that I ‘needed’ a new hockey stick. I hope we can all agree that I misused this word, and that new sports equipment represented only a ‘want’ in my life.
The point of all of this (my apologies if it was long-winded) is to suggest that every one of us, in our daily lives, takes for granted the ‘needs’ which we no longer consider, since for most or all of our lives, they have been all but guaranteed. After living in a society where daily food consumption, the availability of medicine, etc. are daily problems, I have become painfully aware of how I, and most of those who are closest to me (including those reading this blog), use the words for ‘want’ and ‘need’ interchangeably. While this may seem like a very small issue, it gives insight into our culture – just as IciBemba’s lack of differentiation gives insight into theirs. So, next time you are watching a commercial on television, and the relentless media pressure of our culture convinces you that you ‘need’ to purchase some new technology, or the next time you find yourself thinking that you ‘need’ to purchase an item while shopping – please think twice. Despite the outstanding education which our great Country has helped to provide, we still often confuse our “Ws” and “Ns”.
