In 1998 I arrived with my husband Mikael to work on a linguistic survey in the Tete Province of Mozambique. Through our contact with the local Nyungwe people, we were determined to support the development of the Nyungwe language and training in the development of literature in the language. The Nyungwe churches asked for a Bible translation as well, and in 1999 the Nyungwe Bible Translation committee was born. David Ker was asked to partner with the local translation team as a translation advisor. He and his wife Hilary moved to Tete with three small children. This Bister-Ker partnership proved to be a match made in Heaven. After ten years in the Nyungwe partnership, David Ker felt it was time to get more formal linguistic training. Mikael was adopted by the Bible translation team as their exegetical advisor, and David moved on to broader horizons. While many things changed through the years, we never gave up the dream that Nyungwe people would have God’s Word in their language and that they would have the ability to read it themselves!
Development of the languages of Mozambique
In the very beginning, writing in Mozambican languages was seen as a kind of novel curiosity. Most people just spoke local languages. Academics studied them and the elite thought the cultural importance of these languages was a very big deal. Through the years, official support increased for developing Mozambican languages for bilingual education in schools. Orthographies for 17 Mozambican languages had been developed by 1989 by the University of Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) and the Nucleo or the Languages of Mozambique (NELIMO). These orthographies were revised every ten years. In 2006, bilingual primary school programs were begun on a very limited scale with somewhat inadequate materials. These were the early years of publishing in Mozambican languages, and while the national Ministry of Education promoted bilingual education and Nyungwe writing, provincial education leaders were often hesitant to commit fully to the implementation of these untried programs.
Nyungwe in schools and the challenge of reading
In 2010 when David began research for his MA at the University of Cape Town, he was welcomed into local classrooms at the edge of the Nyungwe urban district. He was able to observe classrooms of learners in grades 3-5 over a period of two weeks and gained insight into the “text chain” in Tete classrooms. Here it was common practice for teachers to copy text from the teacher’s guide to their notes and from the notes to the chalkboard.
Students diligently copied these same Portuguese words and paragraphs into their own notebooks. When David was allowed to interview children and teachers, he found that most children did not speak Portuguese and this particular school had no bilingual classes. Kids were copying and reciting in a language they did not understand. Reading as a meaningful activity was largely unknown.
By 2011, I had been visiting schools in the province for many years. I had come to know provincial bilingual educators, curriculum development personnel, and school improvement committees. I had estimated that as many as 90% of the students did not speak Portuguese before coming to school in much of the province. Portuguese was not taught as a language in school. About ⅓ of students managed to learn Portuguese well enough to understand what reading was all about by grade 3. The rest were at high risk of leaving school by grade 5. I looked for ways to encourage the use of Nyungwe in schools, but was told that while spoken Nyungwe was fine, written Nyungwe in the monolingual system was not allowed. During a workshop for school improvement, the subject of “currículo local” was debated. In the monolingual curriculum for Mozambique, a full 20% of each subject’s class time is to be devoted to locally determined content. The school committee, made of teachers, students, administrators, community leaders and parents would be responsible for determining the content that each community would teach in “curículo local”.
I saw a light at the end of the tunnel and approached the pedagogical director with the question: If there were stories in Nyungwe children’s books, could they be part of the curriculum at a local school through “currículo local”? I already knew someone with a dream to put books into kids’ hands directly.