Breaking Barriers

There was only one thought on my mind when I plopped down on the couch with a cup of hot chai: paper mache is not for me.

The whole afternoon, my co-intern and I had been teaching the women and children residing in the institution for the destitute where we worked how to make masks from recycled newspaper. Well, more like my co-intern had been teaching everyone, including me, while I was left to translate using English, my meager Hindi and my even more meager (meager-er?) Kannada, the state language. It was not fun trying to translate sentences like "You have to apply more glue for the paper to stick."

The call for tea was a welcome break: a few minutes of silence to replenish my confidence in translating from English to either of the two Indian languages I had barely working knowledge of. My co-intern plopped down on the couch beside me and closed her eyes, dozing off, and I thought that I would have those few minutes all to myself.

No rest for the wicked - soon enough, a woman living in the institution (who had never talked to me before) wandered in and sat on the couch beside me. I felt my posture get stiffer as I prepared myself for another conversation that would probably have my face stuck in a quizzical expression.

To my surprise, she started talking animatedly to me as I shifted my position to face her. I caught some familiar words here or there, but I really could not understand what she was saying. I was prepared to have the words come in one ear and out the other, but when I looked at her, I saw both her facial expression and the melody of her voice changing.

Soon, I was rapt in the conversation, with her speaking Kannada and me replying in English. As she kept going, she started tearing up and I followed my instincts, reaching over and holding her hand, saying out loud to her: "It's okay."

My co-intern, unbeknownst to me, had woken up in the middle of the conversation and had been observing us. Later that evening in our shared room, she asked me what the woman and I had talked about. I replied that I didn't know, but that I understood her.

For every trip I had afterwards, the lesson I had picked up from a barely 5 minute conversation has remained with me. There's no discounting the importance of learning the local language when you travel. However, it takes more than words strung together to have a conversation.

Language is a tool, but not a barrier, to show that not only do you understand, but also that you care.