Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday
“My sister, in Uganda they used to say, if you do not speak English, you are uneducated. Now you come here to Japan and you see the way the Japanese are doing business in their language. Shall we say, they are uneducated because most of them do not speak English?”Before I could respond to my tall brother from Africa, I shake his strong hand and introduce myself. He gives me his business card. The card says this brother is founder and director of hotels in Uganda.

When you are in a foreign country, every African you see is your relative, brother or sister. That is just the way it is. It is the solidarity in blackness or hunhu, ubuntu, which unites us. Behind my brother from Uganda I notice many Japanese and European people, and mostly African men in suits and a few African women here and there.

We were standing in line for food during the Japanese-Africa Business Forum held in Tokyo last week.

It was organised by the African Diplomatic Corps of Tokyo and the African Development Bank to create dialogue between various business sectors in mining, agribusiness, energy resources, infrastructures, health and tourism.

We Africans had a chance to talk in special sessions and exchange ideas with the Japanese on business opportunities that exist in Japan and in Africa.

In front of us there are three Japanese guys serving sushi, raw salmon and noodles. Then there is a big table full of various Japanese and Western dishes. My brother from Uganda skips all the Japanese foods and helps himself to curry and rice. I pick everything Japanese because, as the Shona saying goes, you must not refuse new food without tasting it. Chekudya chese, tanga waraira.

“So, my sister, why are we not like the Japanese? They were able to bring their culture into the Western world and they developed the best technology. Then they kept their religion, language, food and customs. What is wrong with us?”

My brother from Uganda follows me with questions. There is nowhere to sit. We place our food on a table and stand. We are joined by another brother called Ntando, a farmer from South Africa.

He blames the missionaries: “We Africans were misinformed and miseducated by the missionaries. They taught us to copy everything the white man did. Now look at us. We try to be more British than the British. We do not know who we are or where we are going.”

I leave my brothers for a while to join the queue for more Japanese food, especially those prawns called tempura, crumbed in flower and fried. Standing among men speaking Japanese happily and comfortably, I feel envious of their language. My mind wonders to the days when I left the village and went to the Methodist Mission boarding school.

It was a school of more than 500 mostly village kids. We were punished for speaking Shona. The missionaries said you cannot become a civilised nation if you stick to your native tongues.

Throughout the term, we learnt to be more English and later on we memorised the speeches in Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd” and Shakespeare’s “Henry the Fifth”.

In Bible lessons, we were taught a wide English vocabulary describing the village and the people back there as backward. It did not matter that the people were my grandmother Mbuya VaMandirowesa, my mother, uncles, aunts and everyone. All of them were somewhat associated with words like primitive, superstition, darkness, witchcraft, taboos, sorcery, wizard, barbaric, savage, lost, uncivilised and others.

The missionaries said once you accept Jesus Christ as your personal saviour, you leave the past behind. You become a new creature in Christ. New creatures do not have totems or ancestors nor do they have a history or language. I believed in all that. At one time, I did not even like being called by this name, Sekai. It sounded too African and backward. I envied girls with names like Millicent, Gladys, Lorraine, Locardia, Plaxedes, Inviolator, Evelyn, Patience, Primrose and many others.

When we moved to the city from boarding school, we soon realised that it was very prestigious to speak in English most of the time. It showed our levels of “civilisation” and class. Shona, Ndebele, Tonga and all the other indigenous languages had a lower status.

Many years after independence, our desire to be more English has changed little. We are teaching our children to speak only English at home and we ourselves struggle to be understood by the children because our accents are different.

There is a competition to send our children to the crèche managed and taught by that English-speaking European woman. Quite often, our children cannot speak to their grandmothers nor can they clap in curtsey to show traditional respect. In the old days, we were punished for not kneeling down, clapping and showing reverence by asking about the health of elders. Not anymore. We are “civilised”  now.

While in Japan, the door opens for us to a world where an ancient culture has maintained its religion, language and identity against the onslaught of Western civilisation. Japan has embraced globalisation on Japanese terms.

As for us Africans, shall we keep blaming the missionaries for teaching us English? Shall we blame them for the way we denigrate our own identity and wear long European hair wigs, smear more creams to make our skins look lighter and less black?

Still in Japan, the following day, I left the forum to join some European colleagues and met potential Japanese business people. We went to a big office right in the middle of Tokyo. On the way there, in a taxi, there was not a litter or rubbish on the streets. Nothing. Only clean spotless wide streets, tall buildings, water ways, parks and old temples where the Japanese worship their gods. At the business offices, six Japanese men bowed and shook hands with us in respect.

You never stop learning. Kufunda hakuperi. Our Japanese friend from London had been so kind, earlier on, in giving us tips on Japanese etiquette and culture of respect on how you attend a meeting. To begin a meeting, she had said; follow the rules of receiving and giving business cards.

A card is highly regarded because it speaks of who you are and the quality of your company. On receiving the card, you must hold it with both hands at the top two corners like its nice present. Then you look at it closely to show respect to the card. Never cover the name with your fingers. When you sit down, place the cards nicely laid out in front of you, facing the owners of those cards so you know who you are talking to. Never push a business card in your pocket or throw it in your bag carelessly.

During the meeting, the head of the Japanese team spoke English very well. The rest of his team members who did not speak English remained quiet. Then they ignored us for a while as they talked and conferred in Japanese. We drank Japanese tea with no sugar or milk. After the meeting, they bowed to us again.

Unlike some of us who are embarrassed to speak Shona in a business environment, the Japanese are proud to speak Japanese. They have incorporated their culture and language into business. Not speaking English might have its disadvantages. But the Japanese do not travel or study overseas as much as people from other countries do. And why should they? They have everything they need in Japan.

When we entered a restaurant we were greeted with shouts of ‘irrashaimase’, meaning welcome! As we left, the waiters shouted ‘domo arigato gozaimashita’ meaning thank you. At the hotel lift, a lady in uniform and gloves pressed the button and held the door open for us.

She let go of the lift and bowed her head down, bending over, her hands crossed around her waistline, looking straight down to the ground in respect. She stayed like that until the door closed. Walking along the corridor, the cleaners all bowed the same way.

Back here in Zimbabwe, from the time since independence, our indigenous languages did not have an official designated status. We maintained a colonial language policy and made English the official business language. Today, our own mother languages continue to be corrupted and they disappear slowly as we sit and watch more American television drama and more televangelist shouting miracles in American accents.

In losing languages, we are forgetting our collective memory and the way our ancestors saw the world.

We struggle to balance our quest for Englishness with the values in our own language and long for the transparency and ethics that once existed in our past business practices. Perhaps, there is a way to incorporate our traditional values of respect into the business culture.

Can we speak Shona or Ndebele in the boardroom without being seen as uneducated or disrespectful? Surely, if the Japanese can keep their language, culture and religion and still remain at the forefront of technology and change, we could learn something from them.

As my brother from Uganda said, to be educated, kufunda, is to speak our language, to know our culture and religion.

And not just the ability to speak English.
 
Dr Sekai Nzenza is CEO of Rio Zim Foundation. She writes in her personal capacity.

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