Returnee children face language obstacles in schools

In her khaki uniform, Hélène Niyonkunda, 15, looks like any other student at Kanyosha Primary School in the southern sector of Bujumbura, Burundi's capital city. When she speaks, however, her accent and poor grammar in French and Kirundi mark her as very different, an outsider. "They laugh at me, saying I speak an odd language," she said. Niyonkunda was born in Kigoma, western Tanzania, to parents who fled their native Burundi in 1972. She grew up speaking either English of Kiswahili at home and at school. The family moved back to their homeland in 2004, and adjusting to life in what is essentially a foreign country has not been easy for her. Back in Tanzania, Niyonkunda had started secondary school but with a very basic knowledge of Kirundi and French, Burundi's languages, administrators placed her in a primary class. "When they told me to start in the fourth year, I felt like giving up," she said. Because of the language barrier, Niyonkunda takes all of her class notes in English. Language is Niyonkunda's greatest obstacle and makes her feel academically inferior to her fellow students. As a result, she has become shy and introverted. With only rudimentary knowledge of French and Kirundi, she does not volunteer to read aloud when required. "Even now, the highest mark I have ever gotten in French is 15 out of 40," she said. Niyonkunda's grades are no indication of her intelligence, according to her teachers. She excels in maths and works at the secondary level in the subject. She will sit for her secondary school entrance exam at the end of the academic year. The language situation is familiar to the other 100 children whose families have returned to Burundi from Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) following a vastly improved political climate at home. Like Niyonkunda, many of them were born abroad and followed the local school curriculum in their adopted countries. Reintegration has been easier for refugee children who lived in camps either in Tanzania or DRC and schooled under Burundi's educational system, but students like Niyonkunda have had to adjust to a system for which they are totally unprepared - and offers little or no support. According to Agnès Masunzu, the headmistress of Kanyosha Primary School, teachers are overworked and unable to devote any time to bridging the language gap. "With 65 school children in one class, a teacher cannot give attention to everyone," she said. One possible solution is language instruction outside of school. Teachers have encouraged parents to pay for evening language classes for their children. "But I doubt they can afford the cost," Masunzu said. Bridging the language gap The Ministry of Education and the National Commission for the Rehabilitation of War Affected People (CNRS) are working to solve the problem. Commission Chairman Frederic Bamvuginyumvira said most of the schoolchildren with language difficulties belong to families who fled Burundi in the 1970s. "These children are completely uprooted and know nothing about Burundi," he said. To improve on this, Bamvuginyumvira said the commission and the ministry were running free language courses for the children. These courses are either given prior to the children beginning formal class or in the evening for those already in school. Etienne Kana, the head of a CNRS subcommission dealing with social reintegration, said so far 69 schoolchildren from Bujumbura and its neighbouring communes had completed the six-month language course at the Centre d' Etude des Langues du Burundi-CELAB, within the Burundi Public University. According to Bamvuginyumvira, the commission will contribute one million Burundi francs (US $1,000) to the language programme, which is mainly supported by the French Cooperation. The recipients receive certificates of competency in French at the completion of their training. Courses in the Kirundi language still needed greater planning, Kana said. The adviser to the minister of education and culture, Séverin Sinizeye, said that the language training would not be restricted to primary students. The language centre and the education ministry would offer courses to three groups: primary students, secondary pupils and those preparing to enter higher education. Until now, though, neither the ministry nor the commission has conducted a census to determine how many children face linguistic problems because of the curricula switch. The Burundi News agency, ABP, reported in September that in the southern town of Rumonge at least 100 children needed linguistic support. Kana said the CNRS planned to visit provinces where there are large concentrations of returnees such as Makamba, Ruyigi and Rutana to identify children needing help. The commission also plans to set up other similar centres in provinces bordering Tanzania and DRC, such as Ruyigi, Makamba, Rutana and Rumonge in Burundi's Bururi Province. A major impediment to this plan, however, is the shortage of language textbooks. According to Niyonkunda, two classes of 65 each share one book, which is generally allocated to the teacher. "Since the beginning of the year we have only had two Kirundi lessons because of the lack of textbooks," Niyonkunda said. Lawalley Cole, programme officer at the UN Children's Fund, said his agency was working to provide French and Kirundi textbooks to Burundi's education ministry. Niyonkunda praised the ministry's efforts to help assimilate children into the Burundi system, but said that such measures were not a real solution to the larger problem of reintegration. She said that it was abnormal to register a repatriated Burundian schoolchild in elementary school prior to adequate linguistic preparation. The solution, she proposed, would be for all the children who need to bridge this language gap being given evening courses in Kirundi or French or teachers should give lessons in Kiswahili.