When I was preparing for my LIA, I was thinking a lot about the problems I might face. My personal life, to put it politely, was falling apart at the time, and I was going on a huge six week project in an attempt to ‘improve my leadership skills’; in short to learn how to lead teams with empathy, to share ideas in a team where we might not get along all the time.
The project is going great (I think). The work is meaningful and important: we’re working on communications for an NGO that takes care of women in drug-recovery safe houses. Our team all get along and for the most part agree on what to do; if we don’t, we’re learning how to air disagreements in a way that is polite and respectful. I for one am learning how to cooperate, how to not confront every problem with the familiar idea that I’m better off doing it myself. Marco and Jenna are great teammates. The issue is the Spanish.
It seems quite daft when you think about it. Why did I go to a Spanish speaking country, a language I cannot speak or understand, and assume that everyone would speak English? Am I insane? Anyway, this has probably caused me the most frustration. It’s not even the leading-and-managing-teams thing – it’s going to buy mangoes and orange juice that’s frustrating me.
Of course, there are ways around this. After a stressful experience ordering frozen yogurt (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say), when I didn’t have the right cash and the place didn’t take card, I promised myself I’d go back. And I did! I’ve also started going to morning yoga in Spanish, going to do my laundry at a place where they only speak Spanish, writing down words I don’t understand in my notebook (‘efectivo’ means ‘cash, by the way). I can slowly feel myself getting better at it, even though it’s a long, slow process.
It’s also reaffirmed how much I do, genuinely, really like speaking other languages, and how much easier it is to have conversations with people when you at least attempt their language. I’m quite chatty, always have been, and so it’s nice to be able to (at least partially, and very slowly) try to have conversations with people.
We’re also learning how to communicate with people where there isn’t really a need for Spanish. When we were playing volleyball yesterday, a few Colombian boys came up to us, pointed to the ball and pointed to themselves, telling us that they wanted to play, too. As we played more points, the game grew until we were playing five-v-five, so some of the Colombian boys joined the gringo team. We (or at least I) didn’t speak enough Spanish to say ‘your serve’, so we got by with ‘lo siento’ when one of us missed a pass, and by vaguely gesturing at someone when it was their turn to start the game. It was both quite funny and really strange to realise we'd been playing successful volleyball points both with and against each other, and yet couldn't begin to have a full conversation in each others' languages.
I'm quite hesitant to take a big overarching lesson from this as it's quite mundane, really - just the process of an English person going to another country and trying to learn the language. It feels separate from the work we're doing on leadership and I'm a bit hesitant to make a huge metaphor out of fro-yo and an evening game of volleyball. So, to avoid the obvious lesson of communication, I think I'd say what I valued most this week was patience. Ultimately, it wasn't my ability (or lack of ability) to communicate that helped this week, but the grace that Colombian people showed me - helping me count my change, speaking slowly, trying to meet me halfway by saying some English words. It taught me a lot about showing patience to other people, too, whether in the project or outside of it.