Commit a prayer to memory. Regardless of your religious affiliation, practice this prayer until you can say it in your sleep.
When your taxi driver is careening in and out of traffic like he's an Indy 500 driver and you're not wearing a seatbelt, because apparently passengers don't need seat belts and they are impossible to find, you can recite this prayer to yourself. The repetition will help calm your nerves and if something unfortunately happens, you've already made a plea for divine intervention.
Other tips, always introduce yourself to the taxi driver and ask him/her about his/her day. Small chat can help make the drive more pleasant, enable you to learn more about a country's culture, and distract you from the realization that stop signs are merely guidelines and not rules. Additionally, you'll humanize yourself in the eyes of the driver. I'd like to think this will help the driver make safer choices. And if all else fails, I remember that the driver would like to go home at the end of his/her shift safe and sound, which should hopefully make for better driving. God-willing.
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| If all else fails, take a donkey instead |
Ecuadorian Match-Making:
I'm sitting in a delightful little restaurant in Riobamba eating lunch engrossed in my kindle when suddenly, I look up and see a little boy, about 7, with a lucha libre mask standing next to me. He looks simply adorable but obviously his intention was to scare me as he's growling menacingly, so I play along. After all, that's the only decent thing to do. This child took his time, sized up the room, and found that I, Girl Reading, was the perfect target for his prank. I certainly didn't intend on disappointing him.
As I pretended to be scared and he pretended to be menacing his mom looked over and saw us playing. She asked me what I thought was an odd question "Was I single?" Yes, I replied quizzically. She turned to her family, all 8 members who were in the process of getting ready to leave, and hurriedly found the first single member (perhaps her son or nephew) and pointed to me and said, "see she's single, go talk to her!" I burst out laughing 1) because the look on her son/nephew's face was priceless - incidentally, he looked about 19! And 2) because something about my interaction with her young son made her think I was acceptable to join their family without asking me anything about myself - I found this heartwarming. As they were walking out the mom stopped and asked me some more questions all while encouraging the single men in her family to contact me in social media so we could advance the plot.
"Oh you work in medicine? Here! This one wants to be a nurse."
"Oh, you live in the states? Here! This one wants to learn English."
It was all in jest and literally I almost had tears rolling down my face by the time they left.
That woman is my personal hero. Where others would just see a tourist eating lunch, she saw an opportunity to marry off a relative and was going to make damn sure that she did everything in her power to make something happen! Viva Ecuador!!
On the advantages of limited language skills:
As I sat in the car with our tour guide for the day trying to explain a word I didn't know in Spanish, it occurred to me, I would be really good at Taboo in Spanish! The object of taboo is for the player to be able to describe a word without using other common words generally used to describe the primary word. When your language skills are limited, you have to get creative with explanations. This often includes basic or creative descriptions. As I struggled to describe the word, I realized that I wasn't using any words that could possibly appear on a Taboo card. And after about a minute the tour guide guessed my word. Great success!!
In addition to making you a master in taboo, not fully comprehending or being able to speak another language helps make you a more active listener and more engaged in conversations. You don't have the luxury of half-listening, hoping to remember some details when it's your turn to respond. You have to engage every faculty and sense. The infliction, body language, tone all help to convey the meaning and give you clues when the topic/words are unfamiliar. This is important because you have to be judicious in your use of the phrase "I didn't understand that" or "could you repeat that." Just as when you're having a phone conversation with someone in your native tongue and you can only ask them to repeat something they a couple times before you, out of social convention and a willingness for the conversation to move forward, just let it go, so goes the courtesy of not making someone speaking in a foreign language repeat everything they've said because you're learning. Sometimes, you may not get it all but that's okay. Unless it's something vitally important, do the best you can, keep a smile on your face, and use your body language to convert you're engaged and listening. When you let go of expectations of perfection, you can enjoy the process and relax. And remember, there's always Taboo! You'll rock that!
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| Our ever patient and amazing tour guide |
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