It wasn’t until we were pulling up to the house that he’d mentioned anything. It wasn’t until that moment that I had ever thought it possible. I was the one who couldn’t speak. I was the one who had moved across the globe toPortoviejo, Ecuador.
For the past three months, I had been struggling to be understood, begging to understand, fighting for some semblance of a normal conversation between myself and the people whose home I had interrupted.
To set my story, I should mention that a few days earlier I had gone for a drink with a friend after a day of teaching at the Universidad Tecnica de Manabi. I had gone for a drink with one of the few people in the city with whom I could speak with, in English, and be understood. It’s not that I didn’t want to speak in Spanish, I did. But sometimes, in a place where you are unsure of everything, including your words, you just want to feel the familiarity of something as simple as the sounds sashaying off your lips (instead of the staccato of broken syllables that can’t seem to find any sort of rhyme or rhythm as you force them out of your mouth and into the open air). Over drinks, he mentioned that he has family in the nearby campo. He revealed, as well, that they cook some of the best food he’s ever eaten. Aside from my avid curiosity, the promise of good, true, ethnic Ecua-food was irresistible. I weaseled myself an invitation for that weekend. And there I was, in the truck, pulling up to the house, excited, anxious, and naïve.
I was met with a flurry of greetings and arms and cheeks while stepping out of the truck, and the faint after-thought of what I heard as, “He doesn’t speak” from my friend, also enveloped by the immediate warmth one can’t help but feel from the people of this country. “He doesn’t what?” I asked myself, convinced I must have misheard, the languages all jumbled in my head must have misfired, or crossed signals, or he had misspoken. Then, again, I heard, this time without any sort of static or interference, “He doesn’t speak” accompanied by a pointed finger. “He doesn’t speak?” I confirmed, and he nodded. Well at least I won’t be the quietest one here, I thought to myself, just a close second. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been wrong since moving to this country, I wouldn’t be able to rightly call myself a volunteer.
Segundo maybe doesn’t speak, but can he talk. At 40 years old, he has a wife and two kids, and the expressiveness and confidence it takes to make yourself understood. After forty years on the compound, he’d only recently begun learning sign-language a few months earlier and it had become the challenge of learning a second language, not a first. He and his family had developed their own method of communicating, with signs, gestures, and perhaps even simply being able to read the wants and needs of a person who you are close to without any words being said at all.
I immediately felt at ease when he brought me a bag of mandarins to welcome me to his home. He took out his notebook of sketches, expressing in which he had the most pride with a puffed-chest and a smile, he taught me the latest signs he had learned himself (three fingers to your cheek for water, a fist circling your heart for love). He explained to me how he had picked the coffee beans, dried them, and ground them in order to make the coffee he served me with the same pride and care one might expect from a Cordon Bleu chef. My conversation with Segundo flowed more freely without a single spoken word than most of those I’d had with my faulty Spanish and within the confines of grammar and structure. And only then, I finally understood.
I was here in this foreign country, with a strange language, in order to teach Ecuadorians how to better communicate with more of my own. However, English actually has very little to do with any of that. English is simply a medium within which to transfer meaning, a method of strings and ties by which we can organize our thoughts and pursue connections. In truth, true understanding has very little to do with the shapes of the words we choose to speak, or even the signs we choose to make. Understanding truly comes from the bond we have as a people, as a species, a single voice united within the discord of culture. In English, in Spanish, in silence- I can make myself understood….I just have to be willing to understand, myself.
Susannah was a WorldTeach Ecuador volunteer from 2005-2006. She has returned to Latin America, this time to Chile, in order to work on an individual research project.
Nearly four years ago I left Riobamba, a small Ecuadorian city cradled in the Andes mountains, saying goodbye the place I lived for nearly two years. I knew I would miss my students, the looming view of Chimborazo mountain, the chaotic markets, the delectable helados de paila, the frigid mornings, the easy conversation among Ecuadorian friends, time spent with my host family. I also knew that I would not miss the barking dogs and whole roasted pigs for sale, splayed out on tables on nearly every street corner. What I didn’t realize at the time however, was that I would soon return to the Andes, after a two-year stint in graduate school (inspired in large part by the time I spent in Ecuador) and several semesters teaching Spanish in the U.S.
Once again I live in a sprawling valley of the mountain range that reaches as far north as Venezuela and dips deep into the Southern Cone; but my days have taken on a markedly different tone. As a Fulbright scholar living in Santiago, I no longer spend my time preparing lessons, teaching classes and imagining new ways to explain the past tense. Instead, I am working on an individual research project: looking at the impact of Peruvian immigration for Chilean women and the challenges Chilean women face in entering the local labor market. Some days I meet with social workers or observe job training seminars. Other days I confront Chilean bureaucracy head-on in order to gain access to public libraries. I often spend long hours on the metro and city buses, meeting with women who have had difficulty finding work or tracking down a specific book I need. The cultural and linguistic challenges I encounter are frequently different from those I found in Ecuador, but the rewards of life abroad are often the same. And many of the skills I learned in Ecuador are serving me well in Chile: deciphering vague directions given in the street; speaking Spanish over the phone; summoning up patience during a cultural snafu; the ability to flag down a speeding bus on a congested roadway.
I’m not sure yet where my time in Chile will lead me, but I am confident that when I say goodbye at the end of the school year this December, I will actually only be saying “¡hasta pronto!”
The recent oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico brings up much talk of the destruction caused by oil drilling. In this article a NY Times columnist discusses the difficulties Ecuador has faced since the 1960's when Texaco began drilling in its northern Amazon region.
Segundo maybe doesn’t speak, but can he talk. At 40 years old, he has a wife and two kids, and the expressiveness and confidence it takes to make yourself understood. After forty years on the compound, he’d only recently begun learning sign-language a few months earlier and it had become the challenge of learning a second language, not a first. He and his family had developed their own method of communicating, with signs, gestures, and perhaps even simply being able to read the wants and needs of a person who you are close to without any words being said at all.
