Linguistic Barriers

It's hard to believe, but I only have a little over a week left in my Eritrean adventure. On Thursday April 13, I take off to the Hague for our hearing before the Commission. But before I go, I would like to share some more stories from my last few weeks in this beautiful country.

I think I'll begin by taking you back to Senafe and to a frustrating situation that I found myself in while I was there. One of the most difficult things for me about being here is that I don't speak the language. Although I have lived abroad before, this is the first time I have done so without speaking the native language of the country I'm in. Sure, I knew very little Swedish when I arrived in Sweden, but I picked it up pretty quickly because I was taking two Swedish classes and attending regular high school classes that were taught in Swedish every single day. But here, I have only picked up a very few words of Tigrinya, most of which are numbers or food names. And, I tend to be pretty embarassed to use the little bit I know.



Anyway, while I was in Senafe, I took a walk to take some photos of the landscape. As I was contemplating heading back to the hotel because it was close to the time when we needed to get back to work, a couple of women who were standing in their front yard, waved me over. I walked over and joined them, and began a very awkward conversation involving my few words of Tigrinya and their few words of English. Eventually, one of them asked me to come in and have tea. Although I didn't have much time, I thought I could afford a few minutes for tea, and I am always interested to go inside houses in the villages and small towns here because they are so much different than what I'm used to.



So, I followed them inside and sat down. One of the women began to, I thought, make tea. In the meantime, I sat inside the main room of the house, which was both a bedroom with two beds and a sitting room with a small couch and a few chairs. Two of the women joined me in there, but they seemed to be the two who spoke the least English. However, there were two little kids there, and I asked if I could take a picture of the baby (holding up the camera and demonstrating of course). They said yes, so I took the picture and showed it to them. Then they got so excited that the three younger women wanted to have their pictures taken. I was really excited about that because women here never want their pictures taken. Mostly its just the kids. Sometimes the men. But the women always say no.



Anyway, while all of this was going on, one of the women was setting up a little table in the sitting room, and as she started pulling things out and setting things up, I realized that she was starting to make coffee, not tea. Oh shit!! I definitely didn't have time foor that, considering that when the women initially invited me in, I only had 15 minutes to get back to the hotel for work. I tried to explain that I didn't have time for coffee, but of couse they didn't understand. So, I ended up just getting up and heading to the door. They again said to "drink tea" and then clarified "bun" (coffee). I tried again to explain, but they didn't understand. So, I left the house and the yard telling they a combination of "sorry" in English and "thank you" in Tigrinya. I tried to act courteous, even though I knew I was being rude to leave, especially considering she had already heated the charcoal for the coffee. But I didn't know what else to do.

Anyway, not being able to communicate in that situation really bothered me, and I missed the days when I lived in a foreign country where I spoke the local language.