Paucity of Language?

The ability to express oneself is a curious thing. More than just the sum of the words that compose the sentence, salutation, soliloquy is a complicated interaction of inflections, cadences, and timings not to mention the facies, stances, and gesticulations that may accompany whatever is being said. For example a farmer casually drying his hands from washing apples drawling “How do you like them apples?” is far different from a boxer menacingly shaking his fist at his opponent asking the same question. The context and theater of speech is as important to communication as the words of the message. Indeed one could even consider everything surrounding the actual words parts of speech unto themselves and absence of any parts substantially changes the message. This is no more apparent than when travelling in a foreign land without adequate (or any) knowledge of the local language.

Such was the case while we were in the DR, but fortunately for us we had the assistance of several Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) to aid in translation. For clinic, interviews rode the slow train from English to Spanish and back, which made things difficult when seeing upwards of 80 patients daily. In an effort to improve efficiency, I tried to learn the basic introduction of name and role and thus spare the interpreter from doing everything. To my credit I have several years of French under my belt, plus a decent understanding of Latin root pronunciation, and so I thought I could muscle my way through the introduction. Every patient, without exception, smiled politely at my attempt and then turned to the interpreter to find out what I had just said. On woman presenting with an apparently painful thyroid nodule just started laughing and shaking her head, before seeking the translator's help. In between patients one of the PCVs told me not to take it personally, the people were just not expecting me to speak Spanish, so they would tune it out regardless even if I had spoken flawless Dominican Spanish. So with that in the back of my mind, I foraged ahead focusing on the language that I knew better than Spanish: eye contact, “interested” eyebrows, positive vocal inflection and a forward lean. For the most part it worked well though I did run into a little trouble on the last day of clinic.

In the mild chaos that was the last day we were attempting to both close shop and pack-up supplies while finishing up clinic and operations. In addition to sorting and packing I was also pinch-hitting as the only student taking care of the last few patients coming through clinic. I was a little short on sleep at the time and was keeping my spirits buoyed by humming to myself. In the midst of things I was asked to flush wax out an elderly woman's ears so that she could get a hearing test. With the same PCV who had been helping my Spanish skills, I went to work irrigating entrenched wax plugs out of her ears. In similar situations in the US, I make light of my difficulties by giving the patient status updates in a rather sing-song fashion thereby breaking some of the tension in the room. However, as I was doing this I realized that this poor woman had no idea what I was saying and could only imagine what she was thinking about this odd young man alternating serenading and blasting warm water into her ear. I asked the PCV, Sarah, to feel free to translate in whatever fashion she felt was best. Thankfully she chose calm matter-of-fact prose to more lyrical reassurances. I guess if I do something like this again in the future I will try harder to learn the primary language as opposed to just letting my body language do the talking.

Christopher Janowak MSIV
Santiago, DR