{"id":7490,"date":"2018-12-07T15:01:31","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T15:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages-draft\/?p=7490"},"modified":"2019-06-17T19:22:54","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T19:22:54","slug":"cynthia-malambi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/2018\/12\/07\/cynthia-malambi\/","title":{"rendered":"Cynthia Malambi"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI am interested in international human rights; particularly on the continent of Africa. French is spoken widely in many nations there, and China has been investing widely across Africa over the past decade.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Every year on her birthday, Cynthia Malambi\u2019s mother tells her the same story.<\/p>\n

It was the year 2000, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo was in the midst of the Second Congo War, also known as the Great War of Africa\u2013a conflict involving nine African countries and 25 armed groups that would ultimately claim 5.2 million lives. Cynthia was three years old when she and her mother, then pregnant with her brother, fled from Congo amid the violence and chaos. \u201cEvery year my mother tells me the story of the man who took a bullet for us,\u201d she says. \u201cWe were under fire and he stepped in front of us to save us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cynthia and her family were among the approximately two million people displaced by the war, and her early childhood was marked by dangerous moments and sickness. They made their way to the Kpomass\u00e8 refugee camp in Benin where they lived before emigrating to the U.S. when she was 10 years old. She relates her extraordinary story with humor, warmth, and gratitude, counting herself among the lucky ones. \u201cI have researched the refugee camp where we lived and it is one of the better ones,\u201d she explains. \u201cWe had houses to live in and we were able to go to school.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Cynthia\u2019s mother expected her to do well in school. \u201cShe made it clear that she didn\u2019t go through everything she did for us so we could be uneducated,\u201d Cynthia says. Her mother\u2019s desire to provide an education to her children was so strong that even when she got sick with malaria, she didn\u2019t want Cynthia to stay home and care for her. \u201cShe told me to go to school, but I didn\u2019t want to leave her. So I pretended to go, but stayed behind to watch over her,\u201d recalls Cynthia, who suffered three bouts of malaria herself while living in the refugee camp.<\/p>\n

Like many children in West Africa, Cynthia learned French in school, and since she grew up surrounded by different accents and dialects, she is comfortable with the idea of mastering new languages. Swahili and Lingala were spoken at home and the refugee camp brought together people from a variety of nations. \u201cI heard Kikongo, Fon, and Mina. I know few words in them and can understand them when someone speaks to me but I can’t fully speak them,\u201d she says. \u201cWe had to use language to connect to each other so it was something we just picked up without learning it formally.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Cynthia came to the U.S. it was hard for her to assimilate. \u201cIn the U.S. there is a culture of individualism, so the assimilation process is really ongoing,\u201d she says. Her mother\u2019s commitment to education paid off for her in school, where she skipped two grades. She and her mother also watched world news together and from a young age, Cynthia expressed the ambition to become a humanitarian.<\/p>\n

At the University of Rhode Island, she majors in political science<\/a> and French<\/a> and is also studying Chinese<\/a>. \u201cI am interested in international human rights. Particularly on the continent of Africa. French is spoken widely in many nations there, and China has been investing widely across Africa over the past decade,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

\"Cynthia
Shanghai, Photograph courtesy of Cynthia Malambi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cynthia\u2019s language skills in Mandarin were put to use during a semester in Shanghai<\/a>, where she attended classes in the morning and explored cultural sites in the afternoon. \u201cI was surprised how much Shanghai reminded me of New York,\u201d she says. She is especially interested in the policies that support development and how countries can grow economically and politically, while still retaining their own culture.<\/p>\n

The semester in China also challenged her to examine her own cultural preconceptions. \u201cI thought I was going to be treated differently because I am African and don\u2019t look like the people there,\u201d she says. \u201cThey made me feel welcome, so I really had to examine my own bias,\u201d she says. Many of the communal aspects of their culture, like the way they eat together also remind her of Africa.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI want to do the impossible in life. I really believe that I went through what I did for a reason.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Cynthia is also the recipient of a Beatrice S. Demers Foreign Language Fellowship to study abroad for a year in Rennes, France<\/a>. \u201cI had to submit the scholarship application from China, which was a challenge because you have limited access to the internet there,\u201d she says. She worked with the close support of Kathleen Maher<\/a>, director of the Office of National Fellowships and Academic Opportunities<\/a>. \u201cKathleen had to download, print, and email everything to me because I wasn\u2019t able to get on the website myself,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Before leaving for France, Cynthia got some hands-on experience in public policy over the summer, as an intern in Senator Jack Reed\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

And after she graduates?<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to do the impossible in life,\u201d she says. \u201cI really believe that I went through what I did for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in West Africa, Cynthia learned French in school, and is comfortable with the idea of mastering new languages. Swahili and Lingala were spoken at home and she heard Kikongo, Fon, and Mina during her years spent at a refugee camp in Benin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1962,"featured_media":7493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-profile"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1962"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7490"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9226,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7490\/revisions\/9226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/languages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}