A River Too Difficult to Swim

When Dr. Susan Nyaga started school in rural Tharaka, Kenya, instruction was not offered in her mother tongue of Kitharaka, but in Kimenti, a neighboring language. Not only that, but the school added two more languages to the curriculum—English and Swahili—bringing the total number of languages she had to deal with to four. That’s a lot for any six-year-old to handle, and there was no structure in place to help her make that transition. Susan likens her experience to having a very narrow, weak bridge that she and her classmates had to use across a swelling river. She recalls, “My classmates and I did not have many options, it was either ‘sink or swim.’ ”  Sadly, many of her classmates fell into the river and were unable to swim through the language barrier in education.

Susan says that although she managed to cross, she always thinks of her classmates who were unable to cross along with her because the education system had not provided them with a wide, strong bridge – the bridge of learning in a language that one already speaks and understands.

Susan carried this memory of her classmates with her as she moved on to pursue a degree in teaching, majoring in English and Literature at Kenyatta University. Later, she earned a Masters in education in the United Kingdom, where she conducted research on bilingual/mother tongue-based multilingual education and became even more aware of the prevalence of the challenge of learning in an unfamiliar language, especially in Africa. When she undertook her PhD in South Africa, Susan’s focus was on finding inclusive classroom strategies that early grade teachers could employ to make learners, who come to school speaking a language that is different from the school language(s), feel welcome in the classroom.

Susan in Bangladesh in 2014 for International Literacy Day (she was a panelist discussing the role of local language in literacy programs), chatting with then-Director General of Unesco, Ms. Irina Bokova.

Since 2000, Dr. Nyaga has been involved in mother tongue-based multilingual education program implementation in a number of Kenyan languages, one of them being her own mother tongue - Kitharaka. Part of her role in the program was advocacy for mother tongue/home language use in education given the negative attitudes that persist towards such an educational arrangement in her context. For eight years, she organized meetings with all possible target groups, printed advocacy posters, prepared the advocacy message and delivered it passionately to her audience, and she included the advocacy message in every training she held with teachers and education officials.  But she did not gain much ground.

In the ninth year, in January of 2009, Susan finally saw tangible results from her advocacy efforts back in her language community, when her persistence helped convince the regional education officials to draft a “Mother Tongue Education Resolution in Tharaka,” which recognized that mother tongue education was the way to go. The resolution went on to list the many reasons why mother tongue education works better for learners, their parents, and the community. The resolution also proposed specific, actionable measures to “ensure the proper implementation of the [language-in-education] policy in our community and thus improve the quality of education.”

This document is just one example of what Susan’s persistent advocacy efforts have accomplished—but it is a work that is by no means complete. Time has passed and there are new education officials in Tharaka, who will need to be reminded of the value of mother tongue-based multilingual education. Not only that, but Tharaka is just one region out of the very large area that Susan serves.

In 2013, Dr. Nyaga began working with SIL International, assigned to sub-Saharan Africa, doing early grade reading materials development, teacher training, advocacy, and adult literacy. Her work has taken her to Ethiopia, Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and most recently back to her home country, Kenya. Along the way, she has continued to pick up new languages and is now able to confidently speak nine—mostly Kenyan, but some from other countries as well.

Throughout her career, Susan has continued to advocate for mother tongue-based multilingual education. She also continues to research and publish in peer-reviewed journals with the hope that one day, the findings and recommendations of her research will have an impact in language-in-education policy decisions and allow more children to “cross the river” on a strong bridge – that of a language they speak and understand.

Here she is speaking about the value of mother tongue-based multilingual education (she begins speaking at 2:10).

Dr. Nyaga became involved with SIL LEAD when she joined SIL International, through a project that SIL LEAD was part of in Uganda (School Health and Reading Program, or SHRP). She specialized in education materials development, working with three of the twelve languages that were being targeted by the program.

She also worked with SIL LEAD as a consultant for early grade materials development in the Reading for Ethiopia's Achievement Developed Technical Assistance (READ TA) program.

Throughout her work with SIL LEAD, Susan says she has felt very well taken care of by SIL LEAD and has been provided with all the information she needed in order to do her job well.

Susan says that she remains motivated in her work by visualizing the impact that mother tongue-based multilingual education will have on children’s lives. She remembers her classmates—many of whom were unable to cross the river and were forced to drop out. It is clear that she has continued to help build a strong, wide bridge to academic success, one that was denied her and her classmates when they were just small children in rural Kenya, facing a nearly impossible task.

The ‘dedication’ from Susan’s doctoral thesis positively thrums with her heartbeat for what she does and her commitment to stay the course:   

I dedicate this thesis to the millions of children around the world today who are struggling to make sense of education delivered in languages they do not speak or understand. I hope that the issues raised in this research report will someday brighten the faces of some little angels when their linguistic needs are considered in language-in-education policy decisions, as well as the design and delivery of curriculum. Until that happens 'a luta continua'!