Rehema on a mission to inspire and expand Kiswahili around the globe

With her primary mission to inspire and expand Kiswahili around the globe, Rehema Majollo, founder of Habari Academy, has introduced Kiswahili to hundreds of families in the US, England, and Canada.

The online classes that are held via Zoom, a video conference app, started during the peak of the Covid pandemic in 2020, when all schools across the US were forced to shut down.

Students were getting frustrated with boredom, and parents had limited options on what to do to keep the minds of these young people occupied as the world leaders were grumbling on what to make of the unprecedented pandemic.

This was when Ms Rehema, a former high school mathematics teacher before the pandemic hit Houston, Texas, started teaching the children Kiswahili online classes to help them have something new, fun, and challenging to do as they were all locked indoors.

Four years later, the classes have strived and expanded, with hundreds of students joining worldwide.

Ms Rehema, who is doing her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, has mastered the art of keeping the kids entertained and engaged while learning Kiswahili.

She emphasises the importance of creativity and preparation of the lessons so that the children can fully understand and remain concentrated throughout the teaching.

She says it is easy for a child to lose interest if he does not understand or finds the language hard to learn.

“That’s when kids lose interest and disengage,” she mentioned.

She creates her own curriculum and improvises so that her students can learn faster and easier.

“When you are a teacher, you get desperate; you try everything to make sure your students understand,” she laughed.

She has gone to a great length to perfect her craft, constantly studying new ways and improving her teaching methods.

She admits that as the years go on, she gets better, and so do her students.

In learning a new language, the first lessons are crucial in keeping the students interested in learning the language.

It is simple words that open their door to the world of Kiswahili; they are first taught the greetings shikamoo, the name of the fruits and animals, as they work their way up to learn the language structure.

She has utilised songs and more in teaching her students; with these Swahili songs, she has taught her students about Tanzanian culture and told the children about Tanzania, where the language originated.

With great efforts come great rewards, and her work hasn’t been overlooked.

When they had their first anniversary, they invited the Tanzanian Permanent Representative to the UN to watch these American kids who have learnt Kiswahili.

He was very impressed and welcomed them to the UN.

Coincidentally,  when Kiswahili became the first African language to be recognised by the United Nations, she was invited alongside her students to the United Nations headquarters in New York, where they got to sing in Kiswahili and showcase their language skills in front of an audience.

Ms Rehema creates her own original songs that the kids perform;

She has many songs that she composes that she has to record so that she doesn’t forget; she finds inspiration from everyday things, anything that will improve her students’ use of Kiswahili words;

In “the songs she composes, they learn about Africa, the first president of Tanzania, Mwalimu Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkurumah;

All my songs I write are meaningful,” she said.

She also makes sure the kids can easily remember the lyrics and, most importantly, have fun while doing it.

The online classes grew exponentially, and she had to quit her job and fully concentrate on the Kiswahili lessons as her full-time job.

She even wrote her own book that the students use to learn.

She created a song called “Tuilinde mipaka yetu,” which translates to ‘let’s protect our borders.’

The song talks about peaceful coexistence between Tanzania and her neighbours, spreading a message of peace but also learning about the countries that surround Tanzania.

The songs help them remember important everyday words that are used at home or songs that improve their Kiswahili vocabulary.

As the number of children grew, she had to hire more teachers to help her accommodate all the students.

She has used the opportunity to promote Tanzania and its tourist attractions, from Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar, and several of her students have visited the country.

Her students went further and did their own research on other attractions in Tanzania, like the waterfalls and the less known places.

Ms Rehema has been in the United States for more than two decades; her contribution to promoting Kiswahili and Tanzanian culture and its tourism has not gone unnoticed.

She was recently nominated for the Diaspora Awards in the Cultural Ambassador category; the awards will be held in Austin, Texas, from September 26-29, 2024.

She recognises the merits of these awards in bringing awareness to what she does and could help her business expand even further.

She is saddened by the new trend in Tanzania, where parents discourage their students from speaking Kiswahili and instead insist on adopting foreign languages, especially English.

She says that leaving the kids without proper knowledge of their mother tongue and growing up without a good command of the Kiswahili language will make the kids alienated.

“Research shows that children can learn multiple languages and be fluent in all,” she said.

She gave an example of some of her European students who speak more than five languages.

“They speak French, German, and English, and now they are learning Kiswahili,” she said.

She cautioned parents not to despise Kiswahili, which is our language that the whole world is interested in learning, while we take it for granted.

“English is good and it has its opportunities, but both languages can be learnt by the kids and they can be fluent in both languages,” she added.