Aiello, F.

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Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale: CINECA IRIS

SWAHILI FORUM 24 (2017): i-iiiIN MEMORIAMJEAN DE DIEU KARANGWA28.10.1962-9.2.2017FLAVIA AIELLOThe Swahilist community of scholars, teachers and students mourns the shocking death of Jeande Dieu Karangwa, an esteemed colleague, editor of Swahili Forum and, for many of us, a dearfriend,  who  passed  away  prematurely  on  9th  February  2017.  He  was  married  to  ConsolataMurangwayire and was the father of two children.Jean de Dieu Karangwa was born on 28th October 1962 in Kigali, Rwanda, in a large, open,welcoming family which encouraged his precocious intellectual curiosity: an anecdote tells ofhow,  at  the  age  of  five,  he  insisted  on  going to  school  with  his  older  siblings  … and wasaccepted. After completing his secondary education (Greek-Latin studies) in Nyanza, he took adegree in African Languages and Literatures (Kinyarwanda and Swahili)  at  the University ofKigali and started teaching Swahili there. In 1990, he was given a fellowship for his doctoralstudies in Paris. He chose to write his Ph.D. thesis on the sociolinguistic situation of the Swahililanguage in  the  Great  Lake  Region,  supervised  by prof.  Pierre  Alexandre.  From 1994,  afterAlexandre  passed  away,  Jean  de  Dieu’s  work  was  directed  by  prof.  Gérard  Philippson  (LeKiswahili dans l’Afrique des Grands Lacs: contribution sociolinguistique, 1995, Paris). In themeantime, Rwanda had been ravaged by the civil war and Philippson advised him to prolong hisstay in France, offering him a temporary collaborative role in charge of research and teaching. In1996,  he  was  associated  to  the  CRIM  (Centre  de  Recherche  en  Ingénierie  Multilingue)  atINALCO, directed at the time by prof. Monique Slodzian. However, Jean de Dieu had not losthope of going back to Rwanda and was preparing for his return home when the Bantu section(Aziza Mohamed Aboubacar, Odile Racine and Gérard Philippson) asked him to help developextra Swahili courses in the Department of African Languages, since INALCO was restructuringits programmes for the national LMD (Licence Master Doctorat) system and needed to increasethe hours of language teaching.  He then remained at  Department  of African Languages  as aresearcher and mwalimu, loved by colleagues and students alike. Between 2013 and 2016, he alsoserved as director  of the department.  He was a  member of various research centres,  such asPluralité  des  Langues  et  des  Identités:  Didactique,  Acquisition,  Médiations (PLIDAM  -INALCO) and Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale (LACITO - CNRS). In parallel, Jean deDieu taught at the university of Ghent as he had taken his family to live in Brussels, where hiswife Consolata had found employment. He also gave Swahili courses at the Ministry of ForeignAffairs and at the University Sciences Po in Paris.Jean  de  Dieu  Karangwa  produced  a  number  of  publications  on  the  sociolinguisticdevelopments of Swahili in the Great Lake Region. Furthermore, he translated Cheikh HamidouKane’s novel, L’aventure ambiguë, and a part of the General History of Africa (UNESCO) intoSwahili. He had lately been working on a French-Swahili dictionary and for the publication of hisPh.D. thesis, under the supervision of prof. Marie-Françoise Rombi. His linguistic expertise alsoiiIN MEMORIAM JEAN DE DIEU KARANGWAfound application in extra-scientific fields, such as the media. He collaborated as a Kinyarwandaand Swahili language expert with a number of radio and television channels in France and wasalso responsible for the editing and English-Swahili translation of medical cartoons, written andillustrated by CHEPE and published by Chadu Editions, aimed at school pupils in East Africa (aUNICEF-OMS project).  Moreover,  with reference to the genocidary aspect of discourses andtexts in Rwanda, Jean de Dieu was called in as expert sociolinguist (Kinyarwanda and Swahili),hermeneutist and translator by, amongst others, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda(Arusha) and the International Criminal Court (The Hague). In this regard, he also contributedobservations  and linguistic  expertise  to  two academic  publications,  namely:  G.  Prunier,  TheRwanda crisis, 1959-1994: History of a Genocide  (1995), Hurst and Company, London, andRwanda: les médias du génocide (1995), ed. by J. P. Chretien, Editions Karthala, Paris.Jean  de  Dieu  Karangwa  was  also  a  very  early  participant  in  the  opening  of  INALCO’sDepartment  of  African  Languages  to  the  exterior  (he  later  served  as  International  RelationsCoordinator, 2001 – 2013). He was amongst the first lecturers to leave for Erasmus teachingperiods,  keeping  long-lasting  relations  with  partner  institutions,  such  as  the  University  ofHelsinki, the University of Warsaw, the University of Leiden and, especially, the University ofNaples “L’Orientale”. Here he was always heartily welcomed by the Swahili team (prof. ElenaBertoncini,  Maddalena  Toscano,  marehemu Abedi  Tandika  and  the  then  doctoral  fellows,Graziella Acquaviva and Ciro Marzio), by the colleagues in African Languages and Linguistics,such as Sergio Baldi and Giorgio Banti,  and by the learners of Swahili,  amongst whom weresome future lecturers, such as Irene Brunotti, Maria Suriano and myself. From when I first metJean de Dieu,  twenty  years  ago,  he (affectionately  called  Kaka Mrefu,  “Tall  Older  brother”)became a close friend of mine and of my husband, Moustapha Traore and proved himself to beloyal and supportive, in good and hard times. This is the way he was, applying to his everyday life his Christian faith and his profoundhumanity, utu, with humbleness, simplicity, wisdom and a sense of humour, be it in the family, inthe Rwandan community in Brussels, or with colleagues, students and friends. Sote tunakukosa sana Kaka Mrefu, Mola akulaze pema peponi.iii

In Memoriam Jean De Dieu Karangwa 28.10.1962-9.2.2017

https://unora.unior.it/bitstream/11574/185518/2/Volltext%20%28PDF%29%20Karangwa.pdf

In Memoriam Jean De Dieu Karangwa 28.10.1962-9.2.2017

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Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale: CINECA IRIS