My Son Speaks Luo, I'm Kamba: Multilingual Homes and the Languages of Caregivers

Achieng Odundo speaks English with a British accent. In fact, having a conversation with her might make an average English speaker feel self...

Achieng Odundo speaks English with a British accent. In fact, having a conversation with her might make an average English speaker feel self-conscious about their own fluency. This level of spoken fluency didn't come easily; she put in a lot of effort to master it.“Learning English was a big achievement, especially because I grew up in a village where the language was only used in schools for teaching and exams. We knew how to read and write in written English, but speaking it was considered prestigious,” says the 36-year-old woman.During an interview at her home in Nairobi’s Greatwall Gardens, Ms Achieng takes us back to three decades ago when she was a young girl walking to school barefoot like her classmates. They all spoke their native language. Their teachers, she remembers, had no choice but to use their mother tongue to teach so that students could understand better.Just as she was about to join the upper primary class, a tragedy struck her family. Ms Achieng's mother passed away, leaving her under the care of a caregiver who then asked for her transfer to Lwak Girls Primary Boarding School. It was there that she started using Kiswahili and English, as it was a school rule.“On certain days, we were required to speak English for half the day and Kiswahili for the other half,” she recalls.Read: How to raise Gen-AlphaBeing in a school where most of the children, some younger than her, spoke English and Kiswahili in their daily conversations, inspired her to learn these languages, even though it was challenging.“It was hard to keep my tongue in English for three days a week, but it trained us, and by the time we finished primary school, our tongues got used to the language. I became fluent and confident, which made my guardians very proud,” says Ms Achieng.When she became a mother 11 years ago, she set a rule that her child must only be spoken to in English. Why? She wanted to save him from the difficulty of learning the language the hard way.Millennial parent“In 2014, when I had my baby, I was an ambitious millennial parent who did not want her child to speak their mother tongue because it was fashionable for your child to speak in English or Swahili,” she says.Being a working mother, she hired a nanny to take care of her baby. She told the nanny to only speak English with the baby, and this worked well for nine years. Her son didn't know how to say anything in his mother tongue (Luo).“Everyone used to admire him and say, 'Oh my! That child is small and speaks English very well. Even in the kindergarten he attended, the teachers used to ask me, 'How does your son speak English so well?'” says the mother of one.“During family gatherings, my relatives would ask me which school my son went to because everyone believed that fluency had a lot to do with the school. When they realized that I had home-trained him to speak English, they were impressed.”Later on, she got another nanny who broke the English-speaking rule.“She speaks to my son in Luo and treats him like her own. I am okay with it now, after all, he does know how to speak the language.”Fading mother tongueLanguage preference in Kenya has shifted towards English, and to some extent Kiswahili, at the expense of mother tongue, particularly in upper-market homes and those in inter-tribal marriages. Parents are to blame for not talking to their children in their mother tongue or for inter-tribal marriages, where parents wonder which language to pass on to their children.Interestingly, some parents are relying on their nannies to pass down mother tongue to their children. One parent, a Kamba by tribe, who spoke to Lifestyle, says her nine-year-old son now speaks four languages; Luo, which he learned from his nanny, Kamba and Swahili, which he learned from her, and English, which he learned in school. She loves the fact that her son is multilingual even though she doesn't understand him when he switches to Luo to speak with the nanny.Sometimes, she feels a bit left out when her son and nanny switch to Luo and chat animatedly, leaving her in the dark.Elsewhere in Nairobi, we meet Damaris Lubanga, an advocate of the High Court and programmes officer of access to justice at Pendekezo Letu, an organization that assists vulnerable children. She was born, raised, and lives in Nairobi. Her parents went to work every morning and returned home in the evening, limiting her interaction with them to a few hours in the evening and on weekends.Read: Where parents pay for their children to learn British accent“I would be at home with my nanny, and she talked to me a lot because she was the one who was with me. The stories I hear are that I was a very healthy child because of her. She took care of me like her own,” says Ms Lubanga.Her parents come from different communities. The nanny who raised her in her formative years was Luo, just like her mother, and is the one who taught her how to speak Luo fluently.“My nanny would sing a lullaby to me in my mother tongue. Sometimes, if I did something bad, she would correct me in Luo gently. She never used force on me. Through that, I got to learn that my mother tongue is a beautiful language of love,” she says.She recalls that her parents were surprised to hear her speaking Luo fluently.When this nanny left after Ms Lubanga turned three years old, her parents employed a few more nannies who took care of her, and although they came from different communities, they did not teach her their mother tongues. They preferred speaking in Kiswahili.“My first nanny was very instrumental because it is very difficult to learn a language as an adult. A child learns a language from experience, and when the mind is more active.”Learning her mother tongue at a young age, she says, has been beneficial for her career.“When I have clients who can only speak in Luo, I can connect with them, and this means that we are able to offer better services and give them the justice that they deserve.”Although she is not yet a parent, she says that she would welcome her children to learn their mother tongue, since she has experienced the benefits.Allure of foreign languagesToday’s generation prefers to speak foreign languages rather than their mother tongue. This is according to the founder and CEO of Kenyan Aged People Require Information, Knowledge and Advancement (KARIKA), Mr Elijah Mwega.“They speak English without caring whether their grandparents understand what they are saying. You can imagine a family where parents, children and grandparents are all present, yet the grandparents, who carry rich stories and deep wisdom, cannot share them because of language barrier,” says Mr Mwega.He recalls that during his childhood in Gatundu, Kiambu County, community gatherings were common, and people spoke their mother tongue everywhere they went. This, he says, made it easy for children in his generation to learn their mother tongue naturally. Living closely with older people also made it easy for every child to pick up the language.However, things have changed due to increased urbanization and Western cultural influence.“Back then, speaking my mother tongue was normal. We should appreciate nature and understand that we are unique as a country with many tribes. All over the world, people know where they belong. A generation that does not speak its mother tongue not only excludes older people from daily conversations, but also forgets its roots,” he adds.Read: Blame the older generation for death of our cultureWith Kenya having more than 40 ethnic communities, Mr Mwega notes that many elderly people can only speak their mother tongue, adding that it would be unfortunate if such people cannot communicate with their grandchildren simply because the younger generation does not speak the language.He attributes the shift from speaking mother tongue at home to the growing preference for English, to changes in the academic syllabus and the desire for employment opportunities with foreign companies, locally and abroad.“We are so focused on foreign countries that we forget our culture and where we belong. Even our schools no longer teach mother tongue, yet during my school days, it was one of the subjects taught.”Despite parents wanting to position their children competitively for education and job opportunities, Mr Mwega says they should still normalize speaking their mother tongue at home.“If you want to succeed in life, you must own your origin. Charity begins at home. Our young generation no longer starts at home; they start with English and work backwards,” argues Mr Mwega.Follow our WhatsApp channel for breaking news updates and more stories like this.tebbyotieno62@gmail.com

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