“Babu NoNo” – Trials and Tribulations of the Language Barrier

The trainees are learning three different languages in our village. The Community and Youth Education (CYE) trainees, myself included, are learning French first, and then Hausa or Zarma as our secondary language. I will be placed in “Hausaland,” so my host family speaks Hausa in the home. For those who test out of French, they can start with their second language, but I’m not so lucky. The French here is slightly different, so it sounds somewhat like Spanish the way they roll their “R’s.” I’m picking it up pretty quickly, but it can be very frustrating at times. It really is the most intensive language program I’ve ever seen. We have language classes almost every day (up to 4 ½ hours a day), tutoring for 2 hours for 2 nights a week, and language immersion programs and incentives to speak it at every turn (lunch, breaks, and in the village). I guess it’s all for a good purpose because we have to meet an “intermediate mid” level of language before they will allow us to swear-in and move into our villages.

One of the natural occurrences that happens when learning a new language is the innate ability to make some hilarious mistakes. My favorite thus far came from a volunteer friend of mine. Every morning in the village, he would order a cup of tea without milk (because we aren’t allowed). The way he said this in Hausa was “Babu NoNo” – Babu meaning “No” and NoNo meaning what he thought was “milk.” When he spoke to an instructor one morning, he told her that he ordered his tea “Babu NoNo” and she said “uh-uh…” and started shaking her head no, while cupping her hand below her breast. He had been telling the man in the market that he wanted his tea “without breast milk” every morning. No wonder the man always looked at him so weird in the mornings. Haha! I’ve never laughed so hard.