Hi class! For this week's field note, I did an interview with one of the nurses I work with at the medical center at Dzaleka Refugee Camp. She works very hard and is one of the few people at the medical center that speaks some English. With many of my other coworkers and the patients, I have to communicate through hand gestures and the little Swahili I have learned or get someone to translate. Most people at the camp are from Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, and Rwanda. Therefore, both my coworkers that live in the camp and the patients speak only Swahili and/or French. This coworker decided to start learning English when she arrived at the camp only a couple of years ago. It's impressive to me that her English has gotten this good living in a camp where hardly anyone speaks English. She was very brave to answer my interview questions in English.
I purposefully didn't correct any errors she made in English in recording her answers below, so that you can see what it sounds like to live in a place where English is not someone's first language (sometimes not even their second or third!). It really forces me to choose carefully the words I use and the way in which I communciate so that I can interact with the world around me. I hope you guys enjoy learning about my amazing colleague and her story!
