Language: As Wide as a Puddle, But Deeper than an Ocean

If there was any quality from an animal that I could take for myself, it would have to be the tenacity of an African fly. Compared to their American counterparts, you can shoo them away, they’ll fly around in a circle for a few seconds, and then land in the exact same spot that you tried to remove them from. And they’ll do it all day, until somehow you get more tired than it and just give up. My long-fought battles with the African fly have, most of the time, ended in my defeat despite my size, intelligence, and various other advantages. Take, for example, last year, when I took a trip to Togo with my mother. I would be there for two weeks and two days, and my mother would be there for a month. From the moment I stepped out of the airport, maybe even the moment I heard we were going on the trip, I knew I would have a hard time: I don’t speak Ewe, my parents’ native language. My command over it consists of a single word: “woezɔ̃”, meaning welcome in English. Despite this, I wasn’t really worried: how hard could it be to introduce myself to a couple of people here and there? At worst, I could get my point across with a few exaggerated gestures. As we drove to our lodging, the driver turned on the music and Julio Iglesias’ voice gave me a rush of  “nostalgie”: It was one of the songs my parents would play in the car when I was little. Little did I know, communicating with others is much deeper than a few words of welcome, and I would discover this over the next few days.Nostalgie (Nostalgia)

About a week into the vacation, we drove to my mother’s aunt’s house. There was a family meeting to be held on her side of the family due to the death of her father and deciding what would be done with his estate. We greeted my great-aunt and waited for everyone to arrive. After that, we sat in a semicircle and my great-aunt told everyone to introduce themselves. One by one, everyone said their name, followed by “Hiamabe”, my mother’s last name. When it was my turn, I said in English, “My name is Mark”. My great-aunt added to the end of my sentence with the same surname. But confused, I rebutted her with another couple words: “But I’m not Hiamabe, I’m Amevor.” When my mom explained what I said, everybody laughed, but little did I know that the words I had said would foreshadow the events of the evening, and even recontextualize the trip for me. As the meeting began, my mother and the aunts, uncles and cousins I had never met before started conversing in Ewe. As I did not speak the language, all I could do was sit and wait, like I basically had done for most of the trip whenever my mother talked to someone who didn’t speak English. That and swat away the buzzing flies that are inescapable in Togo. But as the hours drew on and the sun lowered in the sky, boredom crept in and settled like a fog.. Suddenly, there was drama! Something brought up in the conversation had made my mother angry, and I do mean angry – the expression on her face instantly reminded me of the many spankings I had received as a child. I sat up a little in my chair, more interested in the conversation. But although my interest was now piqued, the language of the conversation did not change. While my grand-aunt tried to defuse the situation, I sat in my chair and slowly wilted as the moon came out. After the meeting had ended, my relatives talked amongst themselves, and it was here where I truly felt the gap between us. It was the first time I had met them in my life, and even though we had just spent hours together, I felt as close to them as I do a stranger on the subway – that is to say, not at all. Because of the towering barrier between us called language, only crossable at an impractical pace with my mother as an interpreter, I wasn’t able to build a bond with my extended family. I had thought that it only encompassed speech itself, but surprisingly, without the ability to share your thoughts, your hopes, and your beliefs, connecting with another person is extremely hard, especially past an acquaintance level.

Vous les femmes (Pobre Diablo) On the car ride back, I sat deep in thought while Julio Iglesias continued to serenade us in French – Our driver only had the one CD of his, and over the past week I had well-familiarized myself with the same seven or so songs, the most memorable of which was playing then: “Vous les femmes”. I thought about what just happened: I couldn’t contribute to the conversation (which didn’t bother me too much, because I’m not that talkative of a person). As messy as it sounds, I wanted to know what had gone on in the conversation, the heated argument between my mother and her family. As we traveled along the sandy and bumpy roads, the weight of the language barrier pressed down on me even more, almost flattening me under its pressure. I was in a land that I was “from”, yet I couldn’t understand the people, I couldn’t understand the signs, hell I couldn’t even really understand the music playing in the car right now. While I wallowed in misery, I heard my mother talking to our driver. It was in that that moment that I realized:

Language is a powerful tool- it is the means by which we communicate with one another. That might sound like a simple sentence that’s easy to wrap your head around, but until you encounter the giant valley formed between you and others you so badly want to share your ideas with because of an inability to speak with them, you won’t understand just how much of a blessing it is that you can talk to someone and have them know what you mean. Without that, that person standing next to you, no matter how close or similar you may be, might as well be a stranger. This is likely the reason so much discrimination is pointed towards those who don’t or cannot speak English: without the ability to communicate with a person, it’s much easier to dehumanize them. Because there is no connection of language, those people are subconsciously seen as alien, as something separate from most people. I ended up learning that lesson the hard way with the experience I had on the trip.

Reflection:

Going into this assignment, I thought about any significant experiences I had with language, and though I had a few from which I could choose, I settled on the Togo trip because it was the most recent and I could recall details about it more easily than those that occurred in the past. Not just sensory details or setting, but also about how I felt during certain moments. The peer review I had helped me realize that I needed to expand on my challenges, how they affected me and if I was able to overcome them. This was a tough point for me because personally, I don’t feel like I’ve overcome the specific challenge I write about in my narrative, so I’d have to attack it from another angle, mainly talking about how I felt about my specific challenge. While working on the narrative, I learned the importance of not only a second read, but an aloud read in order to adjust the tone and vocabulary as needed. When I wrote the rough draft, I was mainly just focusing on getting down the ideas in my head and making sure I got most of the details. I ended up changing many sentences and words until they finally had the feel I wanted. While writing this narrative, I tried to manage my use of rhetorical appeals by focusing on my experience and using vivid details to instill ethos and pathos into my work.