Word by Word

The simplest little phrases can make all the difference in the world. My host mother speaks much better English than I speak Ilokono, but her English is still somewhere shy of fluent. Yesterday I was sitting around with some of my teenage cousins & I learned the affix to signify “every” & so I can now way “every morning,” “every evening,” etc. Not terribly exciting but a step none the less. So today when my host mother was chiding me, in English, for not hanging up my sweaty sheets in the morning so they dry (& here she comes chiding me some more :op) I was able to ask here in my broken Ilokono if she meant that she wanted me to hang them up “intono bimegat?” “every morning?” & suddenly she spouts off in a string of Ilokono in which I caught about two words. She’s much more comfortable in Ilokono but does an amazing job working through in English! Times like this really emphasis the importance of language here. Mom and I can communicate in English, but the more I speak her language the better our relationship gets.

Its also fun to watch & participate in this balancing act between my mother and I and our cultures. For some things she really does need to show me the basics because of cultural & climate differences, such as hanging up my sheets. & then there are just the cultural differences that means I do things differently than they do and that everything will be alright in the end. Such as today when I tied my wet, sweaty shirt around my head to keep the sweat out of my eyes after I worked out which Mom thinks will give me a headache. Or her insistence on waiting awhile before showering after being all hot and sweaty. I’m still not exactly sure what the concern is there besides “getting sick,” nor am I sure of its validity but no harm in waiting a bit and it sure makes Mom happier. The more and more comfortable I become in these surroundings though the more I am able to assert some of my own identity and ways of doing things that might be different. Its just a matter of figuring out where the lines are and what is acceptable, if different, and what might actually offend.