In Mozambique, classes come alive in local languages

Manhiça, Mozambique: About 50 children sit on a bare classroom floor in front of their teacher in what could be any lesson in Mozambique, except that they are not learning in Portuguese, the country’s official language. The class is being taught in Changana, a local language spoken in southern Mozambique and in the capital Maputo that is closely related to Tsonga spoken across southern Africa. Wearing backpacks and surrounded by a pile of books, the children aged six and seven are gripped by the teacher’s every word — a concentration level almost impossible to achieve in Portuguese. “Kids are breastfed by mums speaking Changana and grow up until the age of five speaking Changana,” Helena Joaquim Arguenha, their teacher at Mitilene primary school in the rural district of Manhica, about 80 km from Maputo, said. “It is very important that the children learn in their native language because it opens up the kid to learn more.” Arguenha has taught at the government school for six years, but only last year started teaching in Changana as part of a Food for Knowledge project funded by US aid and the local action group ADPP Mozambique. Almost all teaching in Moza- mbique is in Portuguese — a legacy of the country’s colonial era before independence in 1975 — but the majority of Mozambicans speak one of more than 40 local languages. The ministry of education said that only 10 per cent of children start school knowing Portuguese but now around 1,300 primary schools out of 13,000 offer some bilingual teaching. In Arguenha’s class, only one child spoke Portuguese at the start of the year. But speaking in Changana, communication between teacher and pupils is fast and lively, with children throwing their hands up high to answer questions. “In Changana the students are more creative, they understand better and they are not shy. They speak freely, they express themselves,” Arguenha said. “When it is in Portuguese they are very shy, they are scared to speak and hide themselves.” The NGO Associacao Progresso, which works to improve literacy in the country, has first- hand experience of how much children struggle when they have to learn in a language they do not speak fluently.