FINAL: Spanish def. Rob

After 10 hours of immersed field work each day, two hours of personal study at night, and with much prayer to Jesus (who speaks every language, and then some), I may have achieved some breakthrough in my language acquisition adventures. Although I’m no where near fluent, I could, theoretically and eventually, get a Spanish-speaker to understand what I’m trying to say with enough grunting, wild hand gestures, and interpretive dancing.

Before I fully confess where I went wrong and the lessons learned from this experience, first let me say that most Dominican’s were NOT helpful in teaching me Spanish (that’s right, I’m blaming them for me not knowing their language). For some reason, everyone on this island talks as if they are training to be auctioneers, and no matter how often I ask them to speak more slowly, they just can’t seem to understand my cry for help. If anything, I come away from this experience with a renewed patience and consideration for those who don’t speak English fluently. To all you ESL kids, I am your new best friend.

Now, I still stand by my original thesis, that adult’s can learn languages and quite quickly under the right conditions. Two months to attain even mediocre fluency in Spanish was a little overzealous, I’ll admit, but if I could do it all over again (and when I do it again), I would enact these changes:

1) Take language classes in the immersed country: Whereas when I lived in Italy, I had Italian classes but no immersed environment (I lived with 50 Americans in a Florentine villa), here in the DR I had the immersed environment, but without the necessary Spanish classes. Both theory and experience are imperative to language acquisition. I lived virtually every moment of the last two months in an immersed environment and was memorizing several dozen new words every day, but since I wasn’t trained in the grammatical theory behind sentence structure, I simply knew a lot of words that I would haphazardly string together to form a patchwork of grunts and murmurs.

2) Aggressively guard yourself against your native tongue: English is my enemy. And yet every day when the going got tough, I would nestle up to its bosom of comfort and familiarity. Even on the outskirts of the Dominican Republic’s most remote villages, I would still meet those who spoke English. I don’t know how to necessarily change this, except for being diligent to set the following expectations very early on in your relationships with the locals. Expectations: 1) (Slowly) speak to me in Spanish all the time, and 2) Gently, correct me when I’m wrong.

3) Don’t be afraid to sound stupid: Thank you all. This was the most common advice I received on my blog from all of you, and it is undeniably true. Learning a language in an immersed environment is one of the most humbling experiences you can endure. Perpetual embarrassment is the inevitable consequence; what matters is how you react to those embarrassing situations. I suspect that the best language learners actually pursue these embarrassing mistakes, while the slower learners are typically more timid and restrained by such opportunities.

4) Community: After three years of serving as a Residential Advisor at Pepperdine University, the last thing I wanted to talk about was the clichéd concept of ‘community’. Now, it is all I can talk about. While the totality of the subject is far to grand to address here, my time on Hispaniola has only served to reinforce the necessity of community in my life—particularly when traveling.

This week, I met with a friend of mine named Gregg Tucker. Missionaries from the United States, Gregg and his young family relocated to the DR nearly a year ago to partner with a local church in La Victoria, and I was fascinated to hear about his journey to fluency with the Spanish language. First of all, he followed Lesson #1 and took 6 weeks of private Spanish lessons for four hours a day. I also learned that his home church in Colorado actually sent down another family to help guide his project. Having two families not only guards against missionary burnout, but it also creates an innate learning community from which to learn Spanish. Although there is great value in developing relationships with locals and connecting to their communities (whether through local churches, companies, sports teams, etc.), how great is that to have at least one other friend or loved one to share the experiences of learning a language together. This can certainly be a double-edged sword, however, in that unless there are strict expectations governing the partnership, Lesson #2 will be hard to uphold.

5) Arguing is the best way to learn a language: My most significant breakthroughs in learning Spanish would typically occur during one of the frequent arguments with my host grandma.

Let me begin by saying that I have never had this much difficulty communicating with a woman before, and folks, that’s saying a lot. Her rapid-fire, unannunciated words and noticeable impatience with my conversational shortcomings were certainly manageable challenges. Conflict arose when the Honeymoon period in our relationship passed, and she went OCD on me so that nothing I did- whether washing the dishes, bathing myself, or even drinking water- was up to her expectations. Things got heated when I learned enough to start questioning her unrealistic expectations, thus quickly leading to raised voices and wild hand gestures by both parties. Although I think I lost every argument simply from a lack of potent vocabulary, I can’t think of a better way to hone conversation in a foreign language than on the playing field of intercultural debate!

Learning a language in an immersed environment is a lot like playing golf, it demands the utmost mental clarity over a prolonged period of time, but all it takes is one good shot to keep you coming back for more. Spanish may have won the battle this time, but I am determined, and quite certain, that I will win the war.

[My Whereabouts: I am currently in Washington, DC, although I wish the same could be said of my luggage. After this brief visit, I will head back to the motherland (Seattle) tomorrow night to begin wedding festivities for my lil’ stinky sister.]

Haiti

This past week I traveled to my 26th country: Haiti. Occupying the western third of the island of Hispaniola, Haiti is the only nation to have ever formed from a successful slave rebellion when, in 1804, the island’s inhabitants threw off their colonial ties to France, and subsequently became the second independent nation in the Americas after the United States. Since that time, however, Haiti has endured a tumultuous history marked by violent coups, a series of oppressive of tyrannical leadership, and generational poverty, so that now Haiti ranks 154th of 177 countries in the UN’s 2006 Human Development Index, with about 80% of the population living in poverty. Beyond the obvious physical and economic need in Haiti, there exists pervasive spiritual and moral bankruptcy as well, causing Haiti to be regarded as the most corrupt nation on Earth, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index.

The UN doing what the UN does best: resting under a tree in the shade.

I traveled to Haiti with Esperanza International’s Director of Operations, Pedro Lacen, and a three-person team from Pennsylvania-based Hope International, another faith-based Micro Finance Institution (MFI). Esperanza began providing microloans in Haiti over a year ago, and since that time, demand for our service has exploded. Thus, our objective on this trip was to initiate over 100 new associates into Esperanza’s program, deliver donated goods from the DR, observe the living conditions of our clients and their businesses, and document everything.

Bank of Hope Meeting in Trou Du Nord

Traveling to Santiago from my home in Puerto Plata, I rendezvoused with Pedro, Micah, Rachel, and Jill, before heading west to the DR-Haitian border at Dajabaon. It was market day at this dusty border town, and so we were thankful to have David, Esperanza’s Branch Manager in Haiti, as our guide to navigate the immigrations process, UN checkpoints, and the locals who were zealous to assist us in our passage for a small fee.

Border Crossing at Dajabaon

Everything about Haiti is unfinished—partially constructed buildings, deteriorating roads, and makeshift business operations are the hallmarks of every village. Marred by deforestation and the most extreme poverty in the Western Hemisphere, the Haitian landscape in and around Cap-Haiten contrasts sharply with its lush Dominican neighbor. I became our designated driver for most of the trip, since I was the only one onboard who knew how to drive our manual SUV. Haiti’s roads make for a turbulent ride, and drastically curtail the lifespan of any vehicle that dares to travel on its formidable paths.

After the first gut wrenching leg of our journey, we arrived at Trou-du-Nord, a city of nearly 100,000 Haitians, and immediately we rush into a Bank of Hope meeting to initiate new micro-entrepreneurs into Esperanza. It is a pleasure to watch Pedro engage the future associates and ensure they know the details of the program inside and out. Pedro is one of the few people I know who truly loves his job. He is a passionate, young leader, and a proud father of a beautiful 2-year-old daughter. It is Pedro’s fervor and youthfulness that keeps us gringos venturing on through the heat and dust to three more Bank of Hope meetings in Trou-du-Nord that first day, and countless more the next. Gathering in homes, schools, churches, or wherever we could find a refuge from the heat and dust, each meeting began with the 15-20 micro-entrepreneurs singing a hymn in French and then pronouncing a corporate prayer of blessing upon their community, their families, and their businesses. I now find myself trying to translate the business of each meeting through two-degrees of separation from my native tongue: French to Spanish to English. As each meeting progressed, there would inevitably be a growing crowd of Haitian children watching us, fascinated by this break for the ordinary of life in Trou-du-Nord.

It was during these many meetings that I couldn’t help but feel like we were observing the very beginnings of something important- a movement and a shifting taking place in the grassroots of Haitian society. By empowering these men and women with the opportunity and tools to build sustainable businesses, could this not be the beginning of a movement that will break the cycle of economic oppression in Haiti? It is in a place like this, though, that you begin to see the limitations of microfinance, at least in its current form. For all the benefits microcredit brings to individual micro-enterprises, we are helpless to affect the perpetual macroscopic challenges of failed infrastructure, rampant lawlessness, and corruption within governmental institutions. That is the harsh irony—although we are here to bring hope to Haiti, I myself feel helpless to actually bring far reaching and widespread reform.

Our lodging for the week was an hour away from Trou-du-Nord, in the port city of Cap-Haiten, the second largest city in Haiti. My driving skills were put to the test navigating the dark, dusty roads between Trou-du-Nord and Cap-Haiten, when a bicyclist, UN armored personnel carrier, chicken, or child could dart onto the rocky path at any moment. Thankfully, I had a stalk of fresh sugarcane to gnaw on to relieve my driving anxiety and stay alert.

Our $50 USD-a-night hotel, regarded as the nicest in the city, was perched high above the bustling Cap-Haiten in the nearby foothills. Only in the daylight could we appreciate the panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean, port, and surrounding countryside. Looking out upon Haiti from this removed hilltop, it is possible, even for a brief moment, to forget the generations of violence, suffering, and hopelessness that have plagued this people. From here, I can’t see the crumbling infrastructure or fledgling economy, and the sting of starvation that Haitian children endure each day seems as a distant nightmare and not the daily reality for Haitian families that I truly know it is.

It is still too early to clearly define many of the questions that have confronted me as a result of this experience. Questions regarding why I, ashamedly, feel so disconnected from the Haitians when, superior to differences in language, culture, and socio economics is the fact that, we are all equally created in the image of God. Questions about how an entire nation can be so plunged to the depths of destitution—and most importantly, how do we bring lasting change to Haiti and all nations like it?

Indeed, the reality of Haiti presents a host of challenging questions. The problem is, I don’t yet know exactly what these questions are, and I suspect it will take a lifetime to live into the answers.

Haiti, July 2007