Storks

I didn’t think storks were real until I arrived at my Pre-Service Training village. In my head, they were just cartoon figures that would deliver babies in blue or pink knapsacks to expectant parents. Here, there’s a stork nest decorating nearly every telephone pole. On my walk to class, they all seem to stare me down, and their chirping can sometimes feel a bit targeted. Maybe they are eyeing me because, in regard to my Peace Corps life span, I am essentially a newborn baby. Watching me hesitantly make my way down the road, they may be inclined to scoop me up in their beaks and deliver me to someone who can care for me. I didn’t realize how much of PST would make me feel like a kid again. My host mom makes me my breakfast and packs my lunch. I’ve only recently convinced her that she doesn’t need to walk me to school anymore or pick me up from the bus. The other volunteers and I play soccer on the school field together and make sure to text our moms if we will be home late for dinner. In a lot of ways, it feels comforting to return to this state of dependence. It’s also easy to slide into this role of a bumbling child because, in terms of my Armenian language ability, I have the verbal capacity of a kindergartener. Actually, probably less at the moment.

That first day when I closed the door of my host brother’s car to drive to my new home, the depth of the language barrier between myself and my host family became startlingly apparent. They began to pepper me with questions in Armenian and my mind went completely blank. Since then, we have learned to communicate through a combination of miming, google translate, and single-word exchanges. There’s even an inside joke amongst us now that whenever one of us gives up on finding the words and resorts to Google translate we say “մի րոպե” which means “one minute” in Armenian. My host sister speaks French and so we have been able to converse slightly more as I dig up high school French-level vocabulary from the depths of my brain. We have language classes for 4 hours 6 days a week and I can already tell that I am improving but I still have a long ways to go. Living in a place where a majority of people do not speak my native language is an entirely new experience for me. It’s something that I had considered but definitely had not fully prepared for. I have been thinking a lot about how the reason that babies cry so much is that they have a need they want to express but can’t. As I’ve returned to this state of communicative infancy, I fully understand why this sensation would drive someone to tears. I’ve been reflecting a lot on situations back in the U.S. when I could have had more empathy for someone who spoke English as a second language or not at all. The disconnect between having words stuck in your head and not having the language skills to convey them is incredibly isolating.

During one of our technical training sessions, we were having a discussion about how language teaching may differ from other subjects. We discussed how young kids are able to pick up language incredibly quickly and another volunteer pointed out that children’s brains are like sponges. They can absorb so much information because they have to catch up to everyone else. There are times when my feeling like a child again frustrates me. But, in order to absorb all the language and culture around me in these next 3 months of training, I think I need to embrace this opportunity to really start something from scratch. Going back to basics isn’t limiting, it’s an opportunity to expand my worldview and rebuild the structures of my own thinking. I’m working on celebrating small successes for myself. If I can sit and listen to my host family converse with one another over tea and cakes after dinner and pick up at least 3 or 4 words, that’s progress. And I’ll continue absorbing more and more over these next three months until hopefully in May when I walk down my street, the storks won’t even look my way.