Week Communication Breakdown

Every time I start to feel sorry for myself I try to remember that I could be in Eastern Europe freezing my tuchus off and trying to learn a very complicated foreign language.

Regardless of this awareness many times a week I feel sorry for myself about how I have no idea what is going on. More accurately would be that I feel like I miss about 75% of any conversation that I am part of. Somehow I miss all of the actual planning. It is quite funny because the Peace Corps constantly tells us to be patient and flexible. Everyday is lesson in both of those. Like this weekend:

7:00 pm on Friday night. My host mom arrives at home. I am sitting on my bed reading in my very purple room. No plans have been discussed for this weekend when I inquired the night before.

Host Mom: (yells) Air-een! Come awhile!*

Me: (Enters) Good night. How was town?

Host Mom: John-Lewis** asks if you have meetings on Friday and I tell him when I reach home.

Me: (long, confused pause)

Host Mom: John-Lewis is reaching Possy*** tonight, I tell him that is good.

Me: (still trying to figure out if the statement before was a question) I don’t have any meetings tonight. Do you mean tonight or next Friday?

Host Mom: Okay, okay. (Exits)

10 minutes later.

Host Mom: (yells from the kitchen) Air-een! Come awhile!

Me: (Enters, hoping to be fed) Yes?

Host Mom: Pack the plaintains and the fish.

Me: Sure. What should I pack them in? Are we going somewhere?

Host Mom: (slightly exasperated) We reaching Possy tonight.

Me: (confused) Oh. Are we staying overnight? Should I pack a bag?

Host Mom: Okay, okay. A big bag. (exits)

I know what you’re all thinking- how could Erin not realize that this was an invitation to go to John-Lewis’s house in Portsmouth for a dinner of fried plaintains, boiled hotdogs and cocoa tea**** (at 9 pm), to meet his entire extended family, and to spend the night at his house and drive back to Salisbury at 5:30 in the morning. I don’t know. And I can’t even blame it on the language barrier.

*"Come awhile" is used for anytime you are calling someone- whether you want them to watch you peel carrots, meet the prime minister, or hand him/her an enormous plate of food that was not requested you simply scream "come awhile" from wherever you are. I learned today that the correct response to "come awhile" is "just now" which means "I will come when I darn well please, be it 5 minutes or an hour" and "in a while" means I'm coming right now. I have yet to use "just now" but I will be taking great advantage of this new knowledge.

**John-Lewis is the father of my two youngest host sisters. He does not live with us but spends a lot of time with my host mom and sisters. I am not sure if his name is John Lewis or his surname is John-Lewis. Each time I have tried to ask it’s a conversation much like the one above. He works for the police though and Dominica does not have a military so the police are kind of the military too. One afternoon I got out of the shower and walked into the kitchen to see John-Lewis (who is about 6’3” and 250 lbs) in full camo holding a M-16. I almost wet my towel.

***Possy is the Kweyol name of a town about 20 miles north of my town where John-Lewis has a house that may or may not be where he lives.

**** Cocoa tea is a delicious drink made from boiling cocoa and adding milk and sugar. It was a texture in between hot chocolate and chocolate pudding though and I’m still getting used to drinking it at dinner.