For those of you receiving the monthly issues of Exile Calling, you should have something new to look forward to in the near future: Newer, Sleeker, more technological layout.
Being immersed in photography and graphic design has allowed me the opportunity to understand better ways to produce a more appealing vehicle for my writing, and I hope the May issue (Exile Calling is released on the first Monday of the month) will be the first to showcase this change.
In a world where things change while those remaining constant perish, I think this is a good sign for the progress we're making. The seventh issue should be in your email boxes on April 5th.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
A Native Tongue
Most people come from households where a language other than the predominantly used international languages such as French or English is considered native. This fact is easy to miss since the rise of the internet and the expansion of the global village which brought about the need to communicate with as many people as possible. Although French is considered the language of international law, English has quickly taken over as that of international business. English culture- mainly American through Hollywood and other entertainment influences- threaten other cultures to the point where certain countries such as France and some Arabic countries establish laws to limit its influence within their borders. While the need for universal understanding is a logical one, is one to satisfy it by giving up the native language? Are we to die murmuring words in a different language from the one we used to utter our first as babes? When does one find use for a native tongue fast on the trail of the dinosaurs?
My native language is Kinyarwanda. I learned to read kinyarwanda primarily from the bible and the newspaper, and, because of that, I grew up speaking a form of kinyarwanda that was deep, flowery, and ancient even at the time I was learning it. I was fascinated to be able to read and understand words few people in my house other than my grandparents could understand. My being beamed as I read scripture to audiences and they marveled at how I could read so well at a young age. I didn't know it then, but I had started on a path towards language appreciation...a path that would lead me to this exact point in time.
I, however, failed to see the turns and detours fate would dress my path with. My beloved language slowly eroded away by flight through different lands strewn with other languages one had to learn in order to survive. Along the way, English supplanted all other languages and established its supremacy hold on me. I loved the language, its writers, and its ease of use. I read voraciously, covering the classics and the contemporary. I read magazines and books about lands a thousand miles away and my mind was transported through time and space to experience what I was reading for myself. The more familiar I became with English, the more I unconsciously relinquished my Kinyarwanda until one day I picked a Kinyarwanda bible and I spent more time scratching my head for meaning than in actual reading. This was the beginning.
Time moved on, as time only can, and I attended high school and university where Kinyarwanda wasn't only impossible but also unhelpful. English dominated and soon even contact with people who speak Kinyarwanda was few and far between. By the time I finished school, I could speak kinyarwanda only as long as it littered my English like potholes on a Beverly Hills road. I considered it as one of my many languages I can understand but not speak. Then it all changed when I moved to Atlanta.
Contact was reestablished with Kinyarwanda speakers and soon it had blossomed. I have many people to thank for helping me revive my use of the native tongue, but prime among them is Job Muhumuza. Little by little, as I lived with his family during my first months in Atlanta, he coaxed kinyarwanda words out of me and I began to realize how beautiful a language it was. My first book or play I write in Kinyarwanda will be dedicated to this loving father and his family...to whom I owe much.
As of now, I'm still trying to relearn it enough to be able to write a quality work completely in it. I have begun to write my status messages on Facebook in Kinyarwanda and I'm happy to see others doing the same. In diaspora, it's easy to forget one's past, one's journeys, and one's beginnings, but I believe that without the past as a strong foundation, it's only a matter of time before our house of cards comes tumbling down. Besides, I have begun to see the beauty of my native tongue that I used to see when I was young.
Kinyarwanda is a thousand times as poetic as English. Everyday usage is garnished with proverbs and idioms that excite imagination and thrill the senses. As you listen to a skilled orator, you are left wondering how a mind can come up with such arrangement of words, and the only thing you can do is applaud and hope to remember a few things to help build up your own abilities. This is why I hope to one day be able to capture the beauty of Kinyarwanda in my own literary works for others to admire. Until then, however, I will continue to learn from others and online resources such as this website. I hope you, too, can can focus on your native tongue and appreciate what makes it beautiful beautiful.
My native language is Kinyarwanda. I learned to read kinyarwanda primarily from the bible and the newspaper, and, because of that, I grew up speaking a form of kinyarwanda that was deep, flowery, and ancient even at the time I was learning it. I was fascinated to be able to read and understand words few people in my house other than my grandparents could understand. My being beamed as I read scripture to audiences and they marveled at how I could read so well at a young age. I didn't know it then, but I had started on a path towards language appreciation...a path that would lead me to this exact point in time.
I, however, failed to see the turns and detours fate would dress my path with. My beloved language slowly eroded away by flight through different lands strewn with other languages one had to learn in order to survive. Along the way, English supplanted all other languages and established its supremacy hold on me. I loved the language, its writers, and its ease of use. I read voraciously, covering the classics and the contemporary. I read magazines and books about lands a thousand miles away and my mind was transported through time and space to experience what I was reading for myself. The more familiar I became with English, the more I unconsciously relinquished my Kinyarwanda until one day I picked a Kinyarwanda bible and I spent more time scratching my head for meaning than in actual reading. This was the beginning.
Time moved on, as time only can, and I attended high school and university where Kinyarwanda wasn't only impossible but also unhelpful. English dominated and soon even contact with people who speak Kinyarwanda was few and far between. By the time I finished school, I could speak kinyarwanda only as long as it littered my English like potholes on a Beverly Hills road. I considered it as one of my many languages I can understand but not speak. Then it all changed when I moved to Atlanta.
Contact was reestablished with Kinyarwanda speakers and soon it had blossomed. I have many people to thank for helping me revive my use of the native tongue, but prime among them is Job Muhumuza. Little by little, as I lived with his family during my first months in Atlanta, he coaxed kinyarwanda words out of me and I began to realize how beautiful a language it was. My first book or play I write in Kinyarwanda will be dedicated to this loving father and his family...to whom I owe much.
As of now, I'm still trying to relearn it enough to be able to write a quality work completely in it. I have begun to write my status messages on Facebook in Kinyarwanda and I'm happy to see others doing the same. In diaspora, it's easy to forget one's past, one's journeys, and one's beginnings, but I believe that without the past as a strong foundation, it's only a matter of time before our house of cards comes tumbling down. Besides, I have begun to see the beauty of my native tongue that I used to see when I was young.
Kinyarwanda is a thousand times as poetic as English. Everyday usage is garnished with proverbs and idioms that excite imagination and thrill the senses. As you listen to a skilled orator, you are left wondering how a mind can come up with such arrangement of words, and the only thing you can do is applaud and hope to remember a few things to help build up your own abilities. This is why I hope to one day be able to capture the beauty of Kinyarwanda in my own literary works for others to admire. Until then, however, I will continue to learn from others and online resources such as this website. I hope you, too, can can focus on your native tongue and appreciate what makes it beautiful beautiful.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Magic of Charlie Chaplin
Recently, my girlfriend was looking for a birthday gift for one of her friends who likes classic movies and I was asked which of the Charlie Chaplin movies I considered to be the best. The decision seemed to be an easy one, but before I could answer she said, "one that's not Modern Times." Now, I love Modern Times, but I don't consider it to be my favorite work of his. Actually, I was stumped as to which of his work I considered to be my favorite, or his personal best in my view.
Growing up in Rwanda, there were no television stations to show feature films as they do in other countries. We watched most of our movies either from home or make-shift theaters with 20-inch screen television sets. One of my earliest comedic experience was watching Charlie Chaplin. We called him "Charlot" and the pleasure of being able to retell his films to colleagues who had not seen them was only second to reenacting them. Our imitations, inferior in their imperfectness, were as much a source of importance to the performers as they were to the witnesses who, in turn, would become performers to a new group of dazzled spectators who would take their turn, ever widening the myth and legend of our beloved Charlot.
When I came to the United States, I was lucky to find a ready selection of his films for me to quench my curiosity. The library was my favorite hangout in the summer as most of my friends found some job and others left for season-long family visits. At the time, as I did in Rwanda, Chaplin's movies provided little stimulation aside of comedic relief. I watched, laughed, grew enraged at the maltreatment he received, but was always overjoyed in the end. I had yet to experience the most important part of Charlot's magic.
Charlie Chaplin was always identified with the political left and was hounded by controversies in regard to his lifestyle and views. In Modern Times, we see him criticize the Capitalist system and the emerging machinization of the industrial scene. Social unrest, poverty, inept and corrupt authority, and injustice mingle with hope and abundance of dreams of the common citizen. In Gold Rush, we see the extent and futility of human dreams; its resiliency and that of the hurdles strewn across its path. We are shown love for others in City lights, and that of humanity in The Great Dictator. Chaplin shows us that even in the simplest of beings, hope, chance, dreams, and love intermingle to form that which makes us humans.
However, Chaplin's magic was not in portraying that, but rather in entwining them with comedy to paint a present that is also the past and the future. If there is one person who ever used the time machine, Chaplin is the one, in my humblest of opinions. A feeling of timelessness haunts his movies even as one watches them a century after they were crafted. Whether I'm watching Modern Times, The Kid, or the Circus, I feel as if they are meant to address the issues of our time. Listen to his speech in the Great Dictator and you are led to believe he is speaking today rather than 40 years ago. I am forced, without much coercion, to laugh at situations that make society unequal, yet in my laughter is also a nagging thought encouraging me to identify what is wrong with the scene and what can be done to right the ship.
So, as I pondered my favorite Charlie Chaplin film and left my girlfriend to her own reading in the living room, I sat in front of my computer in the office and watched some of his films. I watched City Lights and laughed as Charlie weaved through the streets and in the company of the affluent. The encounter with the flower girl ever haunting his actions, he manages to accomplish that which he wishes for her- for her to regain her sight- while he ends up incarcerated. The end of the film made me think back and revisit his other finishes. What do his endings tell us about the films? Why doesn't he leave with the circus even though he's offered a job? Why does he set off down the road in Modern Times? What does the flower girl's realization at the end of City Lights mean? What happens after the speech in The Great Dictator? Maybe, that it's the beginning of another adventure, that life itself is a never ending adventure and we can go through it despite the setbacks and triumphs we encounter. That, as the saying goes, this moment, too, shall pass, and life should be measured in adventures rather than moments of success or failure.
Chaplin was a genius well ahead of his time, and that is evident in his films. My girlfriend selected The Kid, but I'm not sure which one I would have selected if it had been my friend. I would have leaned towards the whole set for $500, but even as easy spending as I am, I know that wouldn't have happened. Maybe, I wouldn't have considered a Charlie Chaplin movie as a gift, but I know I would have found a way to send some of Charlot's magic. Whatever method I would have chosen would have been an adventure, itself...not in the great master's way - for that can never be duplicated- but, maybe, in a way that would have made him smile as his has made me. That, also, is the magic of Charlie Chaplin.
Growing up in Rwanda, there were no television stations to show feature films as they do in other countries. We watched most of our movies either from home or make-shift theaters with 20-inch screen television sets. One of my earliest comedic experience was watching Charlie Chaplin. We called him "Charlot" and the pleasure of being able to retell his films to colleagues who had not seen them was only second to reenacting them. Our imitations, inferior in their imperfectness, were as much a source of importance to the performers as they were to the witnesses who, in turn, would become performers to a new group of dazzled spectators who would take their turn, ever widening the myth and legend of our beloved Charlot.
When I came to the United States, I was lucky to find a ready selection of his films for me to quench my curiosity. The library was my favorite hangout in the summer as most of my friends found some job and others left for season-long family visits. At the time, as I did in Rwanda, Chaplin's movies provided little stimulation aside of comedic relief. I watched, laughed, grew enraged at the maltreatment he received, but was always overjoyed in the end. I had yet to experience the most important part of Charlot's magic.
Charlie Chaplin was always identified with the political left and was hounded by controversies in regard to his lifestyle and views. In Modern Times, we see him criticize the Capitalist system and the emerging machinization of the industrial scene. Social unrest, poverty, inept and corrupt authority, and injustice mingle with hope and abundance of dreams of the common citizen. In Gold Rush, we see the extent and futility of human dreams; its resiliency and that of the hurdles strewn across its path. We are shown love for others in City lights, and that of humanity in The Great Dictator. Chaplin shows us that even in the simplest of beings, hope, chance, dreams, and love intermingle to form that which makes us humans.
However, Chaplin's magic was not in portraying that, but rather in entwining them with comedy to paint a present that is also the past and the future. If there is one person who ever used the time machine, Chaplin is the one, in my humblest of opinions. A feeling of timelessness haunts his movies even as one watches them a century after they were crafted. Whether I'm watching Modern Times, The Kid, or the Circus, I feel as if they are meant to address the issues of our time. Listen to his speech in the Great Dictator and you are led to believe he is speaking today rather than 40 years ago. I am forced, without much coercion, to laugh at situations that make society unequal, yet in my laughter is also a nagging thought encouraging me to identify what is wrong with the scene and what can be done to right the ship.
So, as I pondered my favorite Charlie Chaplin film and left my girlfriend to her own reading in the living room, I sat in front of my computer in the office and watched some of his films. I watched City Lights and laughed as Charlie weaved through the streets and in the company of the affluent. The encounter with the flower girl ever haunting his actions, he manages to accomplish that which he wishes for her- for her to regain her sight- while he ends up incarcerated. The end of the film made me think back and revisit his other finishes. What do his endings tell us about the films? Why doesn't he leave with the circus even though he's offered a job? Why does he set off down the road in Modern Times? What does the flower girl's realization at the end of City Lights mean? What happens after the speech in The Great Dictator? Maybe, that it's the beginning of another adventure, that life itself is a never ending adventure and we can go through it despite the setbacks and triumphs we encounter. That, as the saying goes, this moment, too, shall pass, and life should be measured in adventures rather than moments of success or failure.
Chaplin was a genius well ahead of his time, and that is evident in his films. My girlfriend selected The Kid, but I'm not sure which one I would have selected if it had been my friend. I would have leaned towards the whole set for $500, but even as easy spending as I am, I know that wouldn't have happened. Maybe, I wouldn't have considered a Charlie Chaplin movie as a gift, but I know I would have found a way to send some of Charlot's magic. Whatever method I would have chosen would have been an adventure, itself...not in the great master's way - for that can never be duplicated- but, maybe, in a way that would have made him smile as his has made me. That, also, is the magic of Charlie Chaplin.
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