A common language

I suppose it’s inevitable that after a week in a country where you don’t exactly speak the language, you begin to think about how we communicate as people. Several experiences this weekend made me think about our innate desire and need to connect with others.

On Saturday, after a few hours of interviews, my translator, Laura, invited me to her home for comida with her family. I met her two teenage sons, her husband, her mother and her sister, and for much of the afternoon we sat on her patio and ate, drank and talked. She made tortillas with mole and other delicious fillings, and we drank Coronas and Sauza tequila. But mostly, we learned how much we have in common, how the things that we want for ourselves and our families are the same.

The challenge of communication was not insignificant. I tried to speak in Spanish almost exclusively, getting help from Laura’s sons when I struggled for a word or couldn’t understand a question. To do this for three hours was exhausting, but also rewarding in ways I hadn’t expected. It was a feeling of having climbed a linguistic and cultural barrier to discover the wall was only in my imagination.

When I left, they gave me an ataulfo, a type of mango that originated in Chiapas. It’s green now, but they said after a few days it will be yellow, and delicious. Maybe it was the tequila that afternoon, but I left with a warm feeling inside.

(The photo above is of Elvia Garcia Hernandez and her parents. Elvia has two sons in the U.S., and every few weeks she comes to this building in the remote pueblo of Belisario Dominguez to speak to them by telephone. The calls are expensive, and the lines at this telephone station are long, but for Elvia, to speak to the sons she has not seen in two years, it is worth it.)