Lost in Translation

I am a life story seeker.   Coincidentally the two books currently lying on my nightstand are  both biographies: Mountains beyond Mountains – Tracy Kidder’s novel on physician, anthropologist (and Duke Alumni) Dr. Paul Farmer, and Three Cups of Tea, a biography on mountain climber turned humanitarian Greg Mortenson.  Personally, I think it’s this interest in the human experience that makes the language barrier here particularly difficult for me.

Don’t get me wrong, we have had very little trouble getting our point across at the Nirmal Nagar and Sri Sai Nagar schools. We can get the kids to understand more than we had ever imagined — they can play games, get in line for assemblies, return from recess, sit through lessons, and even dance to the Hokey Pokey — all with some simple English and the few broken Telugu phrases that we learned from Giri, our language instructor.  What I am not satisfied with, is hearing the same rehearsed mumble-jumble of “I’m-fine-thanks” as a response each time the question “Hi, How are you?” is asked.  Some might say ignorance is bliss when it comes to problems which we have little control of, but I think it’s the opposite. I want to know if Person A didn’t have enough to eat for breakfast this morning, or if Person B is struggling to help their family make ends meet.  I want to know why Person C’s favorite Pokemon character is Pikachu and what Person D did for her birthday the night before.  Each of these kids has such a vibrant and unique life story, its a shame we aren’t able to better understand them because of a language barrier.  Although we  have our trusty Telugu speakers around, ready to translate at a moments notice, it’s still not the same as a one-on-one conversation. There is too much which simply gets “lost in translation.”

One moment which stands out in my mind from this past week was during a lesson where we were practicing question words such as: “Who? What? Where? When? and How?”.  We provided the students with a basic template i.e asking “What is this?” or  ”Where is Sunhay, Courtney or Kaya akka?”  One student Shiresha completely out of the blue asked Soren, “Where is your house?”, a novel question that had never been introduced to her.  It was at that moment I realized that these kids are just as curious about our lives as we are about theirs. They want to know things like how many siblings I have, my mother’s first name, my favorite food, and my father’s profession.

The following is one of my favorite excerpts from Three Cups of Tea; I think it is relevant to both this program and to the Duke Engage program in general.

“When the porcelain bowls of scalding butter tea steamed in their hands, Haji Ali spoke. “If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways,” Haji Ali said, blowing on his bowl. “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die,” he said, laying his hand warmly on Mortenson’s own. “Dr. Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.”

“That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life,” Mortenson says. “We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their ’shock and awe’ campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”

-Three Cups of Tea

Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin