“It tastes like something, but I can’t put my finger on it..”
“What do you mean? What do you put your finger on?”
Today I tried ugali for the first time, and in the process remembered how important it is to foster good communication.

Here in Tanzania, the national language is Swahili with English also being used in many governmental and educational settings. On becoming independent in 1957, the first president, known often as Mwalimu (“teacher”) Julius Nyerere, established Swahili as the national language, with students being taught in Swahili through primary school and then in English for secondary school. This was an effort to unite speakers of the over 100 regional or tribal languages present in Tanzania. Today, most natives speak both a tribal language and Swahili.

The adoption of an official language, among other factors, has led Tanzania to develop a strong national unity. However, this can make it harder for outsiders to communicate. In countries like Malawi, where no one language is ubiquitous, many people are familiar with English. In Tanzania, however, it is unusual for us to meet someone outside of the university or hotel with conversational English skills. Even at the university, most non-technical conversations default to Swahili. For those in the outside environment that do speak English, they likely do not speak enough to engage in more technical conversations; this becomes significant when identifying needs and interviewing technology stakeholders.

Throughout my life, I have had the luxury of never having difficulty communicating. In my daily life in the United States, it has been a continuous assumption that anyone I communicate with will be able to speak English; additionally, they will often understand the idiomatic language that is used. At Rice, I have been working on projects with those of a similar or complementary technical background – this has led me to communicate with certain assumptions about the knowledge and perceptions of the other person. With this mindset, it is easy to become frustrated if a team member does not understand a discussion.

The language environment here means that it can be difficult to communicate about medical or engineering concepts. While the engineering students are well beyond what I would consider fluent, many phrases or technical words do not translate well or are not used frequently enough to be recognized. Other things are just described differently here – some (like lift) are familiar, but others (like using soldering gun for what I would call a soldering iron and soldering iron for what I would call solder) result in miscommunications that require us to stop and clarify terms. Additionally, the design team comes from multiple disciplines within engineering and Aarohi and I are the only bioengineers. Thus, technical terms are often not shared and must be clarified.

Over the week of work that we have done so far, I have been forced to reevaluate the way in which I communicate. Sometimes I am not clear in my definitions, and other times I do not understand concepts with enough depth to describe them without using specific key words. Over my time here, I must work on my ability to clearly communicate technical concepts to a variety of different audiences. I will work to better identify whether everyone in the conversation is speaking in the same terms and understanding each other fully. Because of this, I believe that I will return to Rice a better engineer and communicator of technical concepts.