Losing Your English

An odd phenomenon exists among the volunteers here in Panama. We spend so much time speaking Spanish, that when we get the chance to speak English, sometimes things come out a little strange. We can´t think of the word we need, or we translate directly from how something is said in Spanish, and we end up sounding like an outsourced customer service representative. Here are some recent examples:

-When trying to say something angers me, I said, ¨It gives me rabies.¨ In Spanish, you would say me da rabia. It gives me anger.

-In Spanish, the word for ¨to train¨is capacitar, and we use it all the time. I caught a friend of mine referencing how many people we have ¨capacitated,¨and interjected that it sounded like an awkward use of the word in English. She indignantly insisted that it is the only way to say it, and demanded to see my dictionary. When she didn´t find what she was looking for, she agressively responded, ¨WELL THAN HOW DO YOU SAY IT?!¨¨

¨I guess it´s more common to say trained,¨ I said.

¨Oh.¨ She looked confused and disappointed. When we describe our PC service on future cover letters, we better be sure to get them proofread. Volunteers?

- A lot of words I just don´t know in English, or I used them so rarely in the U.S. that I forgot how to say them. All my experience with them has been in Spanish. This happens mostly with technical words like spring box, or a tool which I know only as a koa, but is a pick used to break up earth. What´s that thing called anyway? Similarly, I can never remember the word in English for to plaster because that´s a word I used sparingly until I became a part-time mason here in Panama. I try to tell my English-speaking friends about how the repellando went and they remain quiet waiting for me to elaborate. I fail to realize I need to.

-When discussing options about how to keep my lice shampoo in over night (don´t ask), my friend suggested I wrap my head in a plastic bag. I responded, ¨But that will give me so much heat during the night.¨She paused and waited to see if I would notice what I said. I did not. A few more months here and I will start introducing myself by saying, ¨I am called Catherine. I have 23 years. It is pleasing to me to meet new people.¨

-Volunteers speak Spanglish when we are around each other. There are some ideas or sentiments which we only ever express in Spanish. One of them is cumplir con su compromiso, which means to fulfill your commitments. In English, I never had to remind anyone to follow through with what they say they will do. But that idea is a theme I return to over and over when I am busy capacitating the people. An example of what we might say, ¨Pancho really understands what Peace Corps is about and is motivated, but he has a real problem cumplir´ing with his compromisos.¨

- Double negatives. A friend was recently complaining about a hamburger she ordered that came with little in the way of condiments or french fries. She said, ¨It came WITHOUT NOTHING!¨ Una hamburguesa sin nada is correct. The former is not.

Spanish also changes the way you look at things because it is such a passive langauge. In English, if something breaks while you´re using it, you might say ¨I broke it.¨ In Spanish, you say it was damaged to me. Se me dañó. If you forget your keys, you might say you left them behind or forgot them. But in Spanish? Nothing is ever your fault. They stayed behind to you. Se te quedaron. The keys just decided not to come with you today. Your absentmindedness has nothing to do with it. Similarly, if your are sick, you don´t get better of your own volition. The sickenss removes itself from you. Se te quitó. This isn´t just campesino Spanish either. Doctors say it exactly the same way, which makes you wonder if they believe in the efficacy of the medicines they prescribe, or if they are just biding time until your scabies descides to resolve itself.

It is always a shock when a word you used to know escapes you, and it happens to me now more than ever. Sometimes I hear myself put accents on the wrong words, or phrase something completely awkwardly. When I was home over Christmas, I played Bananagrams with my friends, a fast-paced version of Scrabble. I sat there bewildered with all of the tiles in front of me. The words that used to bounce around in my head and form themselves in front of me weren´t coming. I used to play so competitively that my friends had to gently remind me that my pace and agressiveness were frightening to new players, and maybe I should stop being such an intimidating shrew. Now I can´t even keep up.

Communication issues can be frustrating, but at least I have a new way of looking at it. The words have removed themselves from me, temporarily at least. But I am sure when they are ready, they will come back.

My first year of medical school (updated)

So by now the secret´s out that I harbor delusional fantasies of practicing medicine, but posess neither the will or the skill to actually pursue a professional, (legal), career. But you know? Sometimes when you really want something, you are provided with opportunities. (I think I just heard you all roll your eyes.)

Yesterday I went to the nearby community of Valle de Agua Arriba, where another Peace Corps volunteer is wrapping up her service. The community was hosting a gira medica, which is essentially a traveling clinic made up of doctors, dentists, vets, and students, that descends on a town for a day and sees as many patients as possible. Unfortunately, I didn´t get to see much of what was going on in the medicina general room, but that all sounded quite boring compared to where I was stationed in the dental room.

Of course, my role was to translate for the students and nothing more, because none of them spoke a word of Spanish. And for a rural population who has never seen a dentist and has trust issues with gringoes and foreigners, my services were appreciated by both parties. I felt most useful when even the Spanish-speaking Costa Rican doctors asked me to speak with patients to explain medicine or treatment, because they could tell the Ngobes were more willing to listen to me.

But besides all of that, I got to see some pretty gruesome tooth extractions, record-amounts of plaque scraped off teeth, and explained how to brush teeth about 100 times (I have never seen anyone in my community brush teeth. Toothpaste is sold in the tienda, but I am quite sure I am one of perhaps three QP dwellers who purchase it.) I also felt the fierce defensivenes I´ve lately been experiencing when it comes to ¨outsiders¨talking down, or badly about the people here. It´s easy for some people to criticize when you have no idea about the context of their lives.. But people who have never lived alongside them, haven´t seen them haul buckets of water for 15 minutes uphill just so they can cook, or seen how little money they really have, cannot understand all of the barriers poor, rural populations face in trying to be healthy.

In between translations, I did decide dentistry will not be the fake medical-specialty I adopt in the vast vallies of my imagination. It is the only area of modern medicine that makes me cringe more than orthopedics.

Other Asuntos Varios on the health front:

So if you are wondering how my feet are, the answer is much better, thankyouforasking. The infections are gone, and I had a blood test today to make sure there were no more creepy crawlies hanging out in my blood. Luckily, there were not, but there are some other creepy crawlies hanging out in my skin.

So I had been suffering from a REALLY SEVERE ITCH ALL OVER MY BODY THAT WAS DRIVING ME CRAZY for about two weeks. Like crazy itching, especially at night, when I would wake myself up digging at my skin like a mangey flea-ridden dog. Then I broke out in a rash on my knees, which was a charming addition to the scars, cuts and bites that already inhabit my legs. These gams are getting pretty hard to look at, folks.

The doctor says I have scabies, and all of their egg-laying and pooping under my skin causes an allergic reaction. Which is beyond disgusting. I hope he is wrong and it is just an allergic reaction to the jungle. He didn´t dwell very long over the diagnosis, just pointed to two nearly miscroscopic dots on my scratched-up hand and said ¨That is where it went in, and that is where it went out!¨

So let´s allow ourselves to float around in the hopeful fantasy that it was a hasty, incorrect assessment. Because even though I am an imaginary medical professional, mites burrowing around in my skin is just a little too Victorian-England-jail-cell for my liking. Furthermore, you usually need to have some close human contact to get scabies, if you know what I mean, and I am a very single young lady living a very single life in the jungle. If I caught this wretched disease from having kids crawling all over me, then well... NO MORE COLORING AT CATI´S HOUSE!! Scabies... seriously?

So anyway, I am in Changuinola for the weekend, getting some PC work done and catching up on some R and R before I head into a marathon couple of weeks doing stuff in site. You might be hearing from me again.

Maestra Cati

I have been teaching English once or twice a week to a diminished but determined group of students since the end of January. While it´s not part of my official Peace Corps assignment, I told everyone that I would be happy to offer a class as long as people showed up, studied, and took it seriously. I am still en la lucha (in the fight) with the studying, but most of the group continues to impress me with their dedication and patience.

I say patience because most of them have been out of school for years, and as one remarked recently, ¨I haven´t written anything in 23 years.¨I struggle with trying to teach them because the only way I know to teach is grammatically--that is how I learned and understood Spanish, and drawing comparisons and explaining structure grammatically is what makes sense to me. But they don´t know what subjects, verbs, nouns, objects, or anything else are, and half of them didn´t make it past sixth grade. And pobrecitos (poor things), they sit there and listen to me trying to navigate my way through Spanish and English and never criticize, just copy, copy, copy. It´s a strange experience correcting their homework, because often their Spanish is wrong, and I am never sure whether to correct their conjugations and spellings in Spanish as well. I am unsure whether it affects their understanding of English. Despite all of that, they do rather well and I was impressed with the results of their first test.

In mid-May, we´ll have our last class of what I have named Ingles Basico I. Those who wish to continue will graduate and start Ingles Basico II in June. I plan to present them with certificates and a photo of the class as a reward. (Some students who have dropped-out heard about the picture-taking and certificate-earning, and they have become very jealous! I have been receiving petulant visitors to my house trying to find ways to bargain for a certificate. All denied!)

I´ve gone back and forth trying to decide whether I enjoy teaching. Some days I throw a lesson together right before class, and just go through the motions. Other days I feel a certain glee in seeing what they´ve learned and the smiles on their faces when we play the games I´ve prepared. I´ve always tried to keep the class lively-- participatory learning is of course the cornerstone of Peace Corps. We have plenty of activities, competitions, prizes, and games to keep them on their toes. I only wish I had more resources or time to prepare better classes, but lack of computer access makes things difficult.

A picture of the happy students, who really are happy, despite their straight-faced Ngobe picture-taking style:

We never know what the other will say

One of my volunteer friends Anita once asked me how my community was responding to my sense of humor. She knew me well enough to know that this could possibly spell disaster. She asked back in December, and I could only say that I was never very funny in site, and the thought hadn´t crossed my mine. I was still trying to navigate more smoothly through conversations and cultural norms, and wasn´t thinking of making many jokes.

But in the last month, my sense of humor has started to trickle back into my interactions. Attribute it to more facility with language, better confianza with my community, frustration with routine conversation. I call it dumb because the last things folks here understand is sarcasm. Bear witness to my failures and please laugh with me because they certainly didn´t when the following things happened.

1) When I lived with Roberto alla arriba, many of my friends liked to make a big fuss about how far I had to walk and what an injustice it was that they sent the gringa to live so far away. They were horrified to think about me walking alone and fighting with the hills, mud and snakes on a daily basis. After such a remark while visiting at my now-neighbor´s house, I leaned toward their seven-year-old daughter and said ¨So, when are you going to come with me?¨She grinned sheepishly and I continued talking. At some point, she got up and changed into what I can only describe as a first-communion dress. I finished talking with her parents, and went next door to my soon-to-be house to drop something off. As I came through the gate, ready to leave, she was outside on a bench. Her hair was done, she had her boots on, and an overnight bag on her back. She was ready to come with me.

I had to kindly explain that I was just joking? I had said similar things before and no one had ever outfitted their child for the overnight journey. I told her maybe another time, because Roberto´s house had 7 kids in it, a pregnant wife, and of course a gringa. There was little space to spare. She took the news well, but her older sister told me a few days later she back to her house and wailed.

Oops.

2) I am surprised this family still talks to me, because the following incident happened with their son. One day when he came over, I was tickling him, and his legs were flailing into my table, on which I had a kerosene lamp. I promptly stopped ticklng him, and said, as seriously as possible, ´´If you break my kerosene lamp, I will break your bones.¨ It just sort of came out. I was also having a not-so-good day that day, so maybe my tone of voice was less than playful. It was meant to me one of those ´´Quit it or I´ll smack you into next Tuesday¨ lines that everyone knows are said just for the fun of the threat. He didn´t look especially horrified, so I assumed he knew I was joking.

Another neighbor, who was also present, looked at me soberly and said, ¨Cati, and if he dies?¨
I quickly replied, ¨Oh no one ever dies from a broken bone!¨

In retrospect, I read this situation terribly and didn´t realize everyone thought I was serious, and frankly, was quite afraid of me, until he came back the next day and inquired about what exactly I meant by that threat. I apologized profusely, explained again it was all in fun, and he said, ¨Oh you were just joking with us?¨

I felt really bad about that.

3) But still not enough to learn the lesson for good. Last week I was visiting at one of my favorite houses where my favorite old man lives with his daughter and her five (soon to be six!) children and hubby. Her 5 and 7-year-olds were leaving to go bathe in the quebrada and they invited me to go with them. I said I wanted stay in the house and talk, so they ran off, all smiles and giggles. As they scurried away, I yelled ¨Bring me five shrimp!¨ More giggles erupted, and they disappeared down the hill. At least an hour passed before they came back to the house and delivered into my hands five extremely large and still very living shrimp.

It is dificult to catch shrimp with bare hands, and I was embarassed that they must have spent so much time trying to collect exactly the right number for me.

Lesson learned: Don´t be sarcastic in your Ngobe village. Stick to slapstick, hyperbole, and falling in the mud, and you will have a sufficient laughtrack. Sarcasm leads to crying, paralyzing fear, and handfuls of aquatic creatures you didn´t really want in the first place.

At the intersection of four languages

One of the things that makes Bocas so unique is its varied cultural history, which today results in the rich blend of Spanish, Caribbean, European, and indigenous influence seen throughout the province.

Language is part of that unique blend. Each day, someone tries out their limited reserve of English phrases with me, but many times I don´t even realize they´re speaking my language because the pronounciations are so garbled.

"Gerd marning, herr you!?"

Whenever someone asks me to teach them an English word or phrase, they always repeat it back to me in a strange voice, peppering it with superfluous ´r´s. I´ve yet to figure this out, as Spanish doesn´t sound like that either, but it always makes for an interesting lesson. They take little offense to my grins or giggles. They enjoy themselves just as much when I stumble over my Spanish.

Then there´s Guary-Guary (I don´t know how to spell this and my half-hearted Google searching turns up nothing), a Creole-infused English, some colonial left-over with a nearly indecipherable accent. Guary-Guary is spoken choppily, lips thrust forward, and with hardly any mouth movement. Sometimes it´s easy to understand, but certain words are unrecognizable. "Cow" is pronounced more like "Go," and if you say "Cow?" they usually can´t confirm whether we´re talking about the same animal, leaving me to ask, "Vaca? Nivi?" in Spanish and Ngobere, respectively. "Yes, go!," they respond affirmatively.

Not many people in my village speak Guary-Guary, and I am still unsure of where they learned it and why. My host parents speak a bit of it, and it´s their chosen dialect when they fight because their kids don´t understand. And because they don´t understand normal English, I think they believe I am also in the dark.

"Dees es ho yoo treat me!?"

But oh, I know.

Then we have Ngobere. I yet to officially begin my lessons with my neighbor. Despite his intial enthusiasm and impromptu lessons on my site visit, he´s been dragging his feet lately. I´m eager to get started, because many people here, especially the older women, insist on speaking to me only in dialect. I can tell people my name, ask where they´re going, comment on the whether, but can say little much else. Frequently, when I pasear with a guide, I speak to the families in Spanish for 15-20 minutes, and then everyone lapses seamlessly into Ngobere, leaving me with nothing to do but sit, watch the rain, and wonder how it is that I have to wrap my mind around not one, but two languages.

Then, of course, there´s Spanish, which I navigate comfortably, more or less. I have a harder time deciphering the rapid Spanish of the Latino teachers and school principal. But I understand well and am well-understood (mostly) among my community members. It helps that I am here in the country, where people speak a brand of Spanish which could generously be assessed as imperfect. It´s as if I went to Appalachia to learn how to speak English. And whenever someone tries to speak to me in English, I respond in Spanish, partly because it´s what I believe I should be doing, but mostly because I usually can´t understand their English.

As I´ve said before, there is certainly a lot to see here in Panama. But there´s also a lot to hear.

Learning the language

A lot of people have asked me if I'm worried about being immersed in the Spanish language when I get to Panama. Mostly, the answer is ''no." I took eight years of Spanish, and still have a strong grasp on grammar, construction, and vocabulary. Obviously I'm not as used to hearing the language, or speaking it, especially since I took my last class in my freshman year of college. But I do feel pretty confident overall, and during our 10 weeks of in-service training, PC volunteers receive five hours of language training Monday through Friday. I've heard it's quite effective. Of course, because I'll be working in a rural indigenous community, I'll also be learning to speak their language. That will certainly be the biggest challenge, but I'll have to take that as it comes. Many Ngobe tribe members, for example, speak Spanish as a second language, so that will probably be our primary means of communication. Peace Corps places volunteers all over the world, where language barriers are much more difficult to transcend than what I'll be facing. Sure, the first few months of living with a host family that speaks only Spanish will be awkward and frustrating at times, but I consider myself incredibly lucky to be going to a place where I have an advantage.

But don't mistake my relative sense of comfort for overconfidence. Here are some of the ways I've been dusting off my Spanish skills:

Rosetta Stone- This is the second year that Peace Corps is offering a trial version of this software to volunteers for free. They've strongly suggested we log at least 40 hours in the program before we arrive at our staging event in August. When I found this out last week, I'd already completed at least 20 hours on a version Michael B. downloaded for me. Kind of stinks because those hours won't count toward my total.

Overall, I consider this a pretty useful tool for review. It's brought back a lot of vocabulary I'd forgotten, and forced me to think about and remember verb tenses. So far I've skipped forward through a lot to level 3 of 5, mostly doing review sessions until I find material I'm unfamiliar with. It's all been easy, and I'm getting a little bored with it, but I try to log at least two hours a day. I hope levels four or five provide opportunities to learn some new material.

I'm unsure how successful of a tool it would be for people who have no Spanish background. I learn languages best by memorizing grammar rules, conjugations, irregular verb tenses, etc. This software immerses you in the language, and uses a combination of images, listening, reading, and matching exercises to teach those things. They never, for example, show you how to conjugate anything in imperfect tense, but make you infer it from images that you think might be asking "When I was young, I played baseball often." It's great for me, because it brings back what I already know quickly and concisely. But I'm not sure I would ever really catch on if I couldn't already read and understand the sentences.

Further, don't expect this software to make you fluent. I don't expect I'll be saying the sentence "Necesito alguien que arregle mi lavaplatos" in the Panamanian jungles ("I need someone to fix my dishwasher"). Sometimes the vocab they focus on seems too narrow, but maybe I'm just too eager to learn more.

Berlitz Essential Spanish: If you're like me and benefit from having specific rules and tenses laid out for you, check out this book. It is incredibly easy-to-follow and covers everything from present tense to imperfect subjunctive. I poured through Barnes and Noble's selections of Spanish-language guides, and this was by far the best. It also comes with a CD-ROM for listening and reading exercises. I haven't tried it, since most of the material is either too easy or similar to Rosetta Stone's. Buy this book if you want a quick, concise, and clear review. Good book to study from.

Noticias: The speakers on the Rosetta Stone software talk very slowly. I watch Univision news to help me get used to hearing Spanish at the pace natives speak it. Plus, I watch their Nueva Inglaterra edition, so I still get to hear what Mayor Tom "Mumbles" Menino is up to.

Maybe I should come up with new ways to learn. Perhaps going to a Mexican restaurant and ordering things like "tequila" or "margaritas" or "guacamole" could help me practice my accent.