Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

| by archiveworldraceblogs

     It is amazing what can get lost in translation.  I went to help with carpentry in the Director’s office at the Mission Of Hope School.  My idea was that I’d have the opportunity to learn a new skill; I love love love to learn! Well, such as work in Haiti, the laborers lefts as soon as I arrived.  It is sort of a way to delay actually doing any work. 


              


    Rather than waste time sitting around, I looked for something to do.  Since I was in the directors office, I had access to the newly organized library (my team led the cleaning, sorting, organizing and arranging of the books.  We alphabetized and stacked the previously disordered heaps of books into something useful!).  More than just books, MOHI has an abundance of coloring books for the children.  Well, today a huge Rubbermaid tub sat out in the middle of the room…full of crayons.  What was I to do except color?!  I decided on a Bible Heros coloring book and began.

     I got through 3 pages before someone came back.  Ready to work I asked, “Are you ready?â€�  Wilson, the carpenter who speaks English, said back something I think was Creole.  The speech tends to be pretty slurred and not very clear. Trying to discern what in the world he had said, I asked again, “Are you ready to start working?â€�  No logical response followed.  So I tried charades, pointing to the unfinished door lying on the floor.  He just repeated his initial response.  Hmmm, at this point I think he might be speaking in English and I just can’t understand.  The conversation is morphing into the game where you hum a tune and have people guess what you are trying to say.  I put sounds together and begin matching them to English words, then trying to formulate a sentence that makes a little sense.  (by the way, this is where I strayed.  Logic is not the underlying reasoning in most places)  “Do I desire?…Do I desire, what?…to work? Yes.  Lets start.â€�


     Nope.  Pa Bo, no good.  That was not what he was thinking, but there where no clues.  Wilson just kept repeating the same word/words.  Now he was playing charades with me, pointing to my coloring page.  I was coloring two giraffes, associated with Noah’s arc. 



I took a deep breath, prayed for patience and tried again, “do I desire…to see a giraffe?  To visit a zoo?…be an artist?â€�  Again he repeated and said, “en Creole, dis-i-rn-eâ€� tapping the animal on the page.

    OH!  This whole time he was simply trying to inform me that ‘giraffe’ is ‘discerne’ in Creole.  So much is lost in translation.  Every encounter is an exercise in communication.  This started with an eager American asking about work, ready to get started on building doors for the first time.  It morphed through several stages and settled on the Creole word for an abstract zoo animal-the giraffe! J


                           

    All I could do is laugh and appreciate the effort on both side of the conversation.  We kept trying to make since of the other’s unknown mumbling.  Thank you Lord for our many different languages, behaviors and cultures. Above all, than you for creating us all in your image and enabling us to have a universal desire to fulfill your kingdom here on Earth.