Geek Heaven

"Ying and me went to Akron art museum last Thursday, where our English teacher Sharon suggested us to go."

This sentence, from a short essay written by one of my advanced conversation students, dominated most of our class last evening.

I was delighted that some of the students had gone to the museum, despite the fact that I had to miss class last week. I was even more delighted that two of them wrote about their experience there and shared what they had written with us. This opening sentence of Yuwei's essay seemed the perfect example to begin correcting grammatical mistakes.

Changing me to I in the subject was easy and evident for the students, as was inserting a definite article in front of Akron art museum. Van even picked up on putting commas around the appositive, Sharon.

No one seemed to want to do anything with the final clause that begins with the verb suggest.

"So, what you're really saying here," I began, "is that Sharon suggested that we go to the museum, right? And in English we can eliminate the that if it's followed by a subject and verb…"

Yuwei and Ying both had deeply furrowed brows; Van and Jana looked mildly confused.

"You can suggest a noun, like a restaurant or a movie," I said, trying to make the distinction. "As in, he suggested a new restaurant to try, or she suggested a good movie for the class. Otherwise, you suggest thatsomeone do something…"

"But the rule is to use an object and a to verb," Yuwei said. "Isn't it like the verb advise? He advised me to go…"

Hmmm. He was right about the verb advise, and I couldn't quite articulate how this verb was different. I started to think maybe suggest used the subjunctive mood, like it is important that he be on time. But that didn't make sense either. I tried it with other subjects on the white board.

He suggested she take a nap. I suggest that you leave immediately. The teacher suggested they try another book. The third-person sure felt like the subjunctive, but the others were ambiguous.

The more we discussed it and tried to parse it out, the less clear it was to me. After twenty minutes or so, I admitted defeat.

"You know," I said. "I'm going to have to look this up and get back to you next week. I feel confident that I am right, but I can't explain why!"

We all laughed a little and turned to other subjects.

I would have thought that a failure in teaching like this might unnerve me or cause me some embarrassment. It didn't, though. Coming up against a grammatical point that I couldn't quickly and easily explain was something of a revelation for me. I found it exhilarating!

Today, as I looked up some information about the verb suggest, I found several interesting websites for ESL learners, and for English grammar in general, that will be very useful for the class and me. I am very excited that this more advanced class challenges me and pushes the limits of what I know about language and grammar. It is a 180 from the basic level refugee classes, and a welcome one.

I found an answer, though obliquely, by looking at other issues with relative clauses, and by looking at detailed definitions of suggest in Merriam-Webster Online. Suggest can take a direct and an indirect object, which is how we can suggest something to someone. I had suggested to the class (indirect object) that they go to the museum (direct object). So Yuwei's sentence should read: Ying and I went to the Akron Art Museum last Thursday, where our English teacher, Sharon, suggested that we go. (This includes only the direct object, as the indirect object is understood and would be redundant to state.)

I am in full-on, geeked-out, English grammar heaven with this class!

Turn, turn, turn

The last hour of Susan's Monday/Wednesday class is kind of chaotic now. Mark and I each form a small group where we can give several students more focused attention on writing or pronunciation. And when I say 'writing,' I mean writing the letters of the alphabet. And when I say 'pronunciation,' I mean correcting to include in Akron, or on April 12^th, or tothe United States. Meanwhile, Susan continues with the remaining students.

So we have three groups of people conversing in Nepali while we try to teach them fine points of speaking English. Inevitably, someone gets a little lost.

This week, in my group, it was Jordan, one of our oldest students, probably in his seventies. Jordan invariably dresses in traditional Nepali tunics and loose pants, a combo called Daura-Suruwal, with a dark suit coat overtop and a topi on his shaved head. I saw a photo of him without his Nepali hat once, on his state ID card. He looked small and old and scared, almost childlike. I learned over the course of the fifteen months I've worked with this group that Jordan and Tal Maya are married, that Bibek is their son and Sabithra their daughter-in-law, and that Ashtavakra and his brother, the non-verbal Yadu, are their grandchildren. It was quite a puzzle to put together because the Nepali do not show a lot of public affection with each other.

I had six people at my table, as did Mark at his. We started off writing the basic sentences we had been working on in class before the break: Where are you from? Where do you live now? Are you married? Some in the group did really well and wrote the words with few errors rather quickly. Others had a lot of difficulty, leaving out letters or entire words, becoming confused by the string of sentences on my tablet and conflating two or more of them. I back-pedaled and spent the final half hour writing the letters of the alphabet. Everyone responded well to this, eager to practice something they knew a little, calling out the answers to what letter was next.

Jay faded after writing only a sentence or two. He was on the other side of Asara from me, so I had to lean over her to get to his paper. Our table was shoved up against the file cabinets, and I had no way to exit, surrounded as I was by students. I had tried to correct his writing early on by erasing a jumbled combination of letters that didn't make a word, then writing the correct word on the line below and indicating that he should copy it into the erased spot. He didn't, though; he just began another word right up against the previous word and continued a long line of letters with no breaks. I've looked through most of his notebook; he does this a lot. It looks as though he's trying to conserve space by writing everything as close together as possible. The times I've tried to indicate that there should be space between words, he takes it as a cue to make slanted lines between the words.

Because I couldn't get to Jay easily, I couldn't give him a lot of attention. Saradha was directly across from me; she always demands a great deal of attention, calling out Teetser! after every effort at a word and shoving her notebook under my nose, regardless of whatever else I may be doing. She writes very poorly, but tries hard and teaches me a lot of Nepali words for things (though Mahananda, another teacher who is bilingual, told me she is wrong about most of them, substituting a pidgin-like slang for most words).

The upshot of this whole small group situation is that I am increasingly frustrated with this class. I no longer look forward to going there, and I only go on Wednesdays instead of both days. I still enjoy interacting with the Bhutanese in between lessons, when we are just being people and trying to get our meaning across however we can. But the actual teaching portion of the class only frustrates me. I feel I am not doing any of them much good.

And that's probably a good thing because I finally got a job. For actual money, not volunteering. I'll be a part-time faculty tutor at the writing lab at the University of Akron beginning this fall semester. My primary work days are Monday and Wednesday, with a third that I can choose. So I'll no longer be available to volunteer with this class. I'll keep running the evening conversation class I began two weeks ago, for more advanced speakers, on Thursday evenings, but my mornings will no longer be open.

I have really mixed feelings about this development. I knew I would get a job eventually, but I suppose I thought there would be some kind of finality to the arc of my experience with this class. I've been working them very steadily for fifteen months now; I know their names and many of their relationships with each other, a few words in their native tongue, a little bit about their culture and group dynamic. I've seen Deepta's glasses change a few times, Chandra's hair get shaved off and grow long, heard about Drolma's first grandchild being born, and noticed Sabithra get a full set of clean, white teeth.

I think I understand how they’ve touched and moved me over these months: I have a much deeper appreciation for the plight of refugees in general, and some insight into the loss and grief these particular people have suffered. I have a bit of an understanding of the difficult complexity of institutions that depend on public funding to try and meet the needs of a population that needs absolutely everything, from clothes and education to food and healthcare.

But these are all rather abstract, cerebral effects, aren't they? I don’t think I'll understand fully how deeply they’ve affected me until I'm away from them for a while. I missed them during the winter break last year, but then I didn’t miss them so much in the spring when I was so overwhelmed with graduation

Let's see how much I miss the scent of curry and body odor, the shy, gleaming smiles, the choruses of good morning teetser, and the heartfelt namastes after a semester of tutoring young, entitled students at the university.

T.M.I.

I really didn’t need to know anything about Sancha’s vagina. In fact, I could live the rest of my life quite happily without having much information about the vaginas of most of the women I know. But sometimes we learn things we never really wanted to—and then we cannot UN-learn them.

I go to Susan’s class only on Wednesdays now, and that works out well for both of us. Another volunteer, Mark, has started coming to her class, as well. Mark used to work in Immigration Services at the Institute, but now that they have hired more lawyers for those services, he “can get back into the classroom,” as he put it. Mark is tall and thin with a square head and black-framed glasses. He seems comfortable explaining sentence structure, but not so much learning all the Nepali names.

More new students appear in Susan’s class every week. In addition to the woman from Thailand who started a few weeks ago, and the two sisters-in-law from Bhutan, we have the gentleman from Iraq, another Bhutanese woman, and another man from Bhutan. The latter wears thick-rimmed glasses and an impressively lush mustache. Not many of the Bhutanese refugees I’ve worked with sport facial hair, other than the occasional scruffy shadow that gets razored off within a few days. 

These bring our legion to almost thirty, so two volunteers is not unwarranted.

When I came to class this week, I indulged in a few happy choruses of hello teetser/good morning! from students I hadn’t seen in a while: Amita, Drolma, and Deepta who feel like long-time girlfriends of mine; and Yadu, Bibek’s non-verbal son whose enormous smile always lifts my heart.

As I passed the rows of tables and started to put my bag down, Sancha followed me tentatively, kind of sidling up behind me. Sancha is probably in her late sixties or early seventies with all gray hair and no teeth. She has told me that she first lived in Minneapolis when she came to the US three years ago, that her husband is dead, and that she has only one son. She wears a wool sweater over her shirt and wrap skirt, even on the hottest summer days.

I turned to her and said good morning; she bowed slightly and gave me some papers that she had folded several times and that were damp from her sweaty hands. They appeared to be discharge papers from a hospital with detailed information about post-surgical care. 

Bed rest for two days; report unusual pain or blood seepage; nothing in the vagina for six weeks.

My cheeks reddened a bit at this last one.

“Why are you giving me this, Sancha?” I asked. There was some spidery writing in black pen on one of the papers, a date and a couple of words I couldn’t make out.

“Hospital, going,” she replied, waving and flicking her hands away from her in a gesture the Bhutanese use for everything from I don’t know to that’s wrong to I don’t understand.

I folded the papers and gave her an expression that I hoped conveyed my confusion: I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes while raising my shoulders a bit.

Sancha nodded and flicked her hands.

“Have you been in hospital?” I asked. “Are you sick?”

She nodded yes, then said “No.”

“Are you going to go to the hospital?”

She looked confused and spoke some Nepali with Deepta and Drolma before trying again.

“My…Tuesday…hospital…going.”

“Oh,” I answered with relief. “You’re going to the hospital next Tuesday? Okay.”

I folded the papers and gave them back to her.

“Teetser,” she said, taking the papers but reluctant to go sit down. “I going … Tuesday… longtime. Is okay?”

“Yes, it’s okay,” I said. “I hope it’s all okay.”

She seemed satisfied and took her place at the front table.

When I mentioned the papers to Susan a while later, saying Sancha will have “a procedure of a pelvic nature,” Susan looked as taken aback as I was.

“You didn’t need to know that, did you?” she asked with the faintest smile on her tired face.

No. No I didn’t.

Susan also suggested that Sancha needed an interpreter to help her with the papers. I sure hope an interpreter will go to the hospital with her. Can you imagine having some kind of procedure on your most private area and not understanding anything the doctors or nurses say? These refugees have to deal with so many complicated and confusing situations here, but I’m sure health care is probably the most confusing and terrifying of them all. For me, just having minor healthcare situations—a small polyp removed from my cheek, getting a root canal, having a mammogram—are fraught with embarrassment and anxiety.

Again and again I am reminded of my experience last year with an illegal immigrant who was getting assistance from another charitable organization I worked with. I ended up in the exam room with her, the doctor, a resident, and an interpreter while the immigrant had a pelvic exam. I was shocked at how much privacy she had to forgo to receive the healthcare she needed, how easy it was for me, a total stranger, to infiltrate what should be an inviolate space of intimacy. And I was forced to realize again how much I take for granted.

I hope Sancha’s procedure goes well, that she is as healthy and happy as she can be so far from her homeland, amid strangers and strange language.

But most of all, I hope I don’t have to hear any more about her vagina.

Of Helplessness and Humanity

We had a few new students in our class at the International Institute this week. It’s the beginning of another six-week session, and it’s summer, so we expect new people to show up and regular students to bring their children. Yadu is back, grinning and grunting next to his grandmother, constantly waving me over to hold his hand, and Indira’s fat son is back, eating his way through the first half of class and playing noisily in the hallway for the second half.

Two women in their early forties (if I had to guess) that I didn’t recognize were sitting in the front row Wednesday. I introduced myself and asked their names. Tika and Pabithra first said they were sisters, then modified this to say that the men they were married to were brothers. Tika wears tiny, wire-rimmed glasses and has a network of pale scars in figure eights around her eye sockets. Pabithra is plump and round-faced and speaks English much better than Tika, with full sentences and effusive facial expressions.

In our second hour, as per my usual, I formed my small group with these two newest students, along with a Thai woman who started last week and our long-time remedial student, Karma. I began with simple, repetitive questions and answers.

“My name is Sharon; what is your name?” One by one, the students answered then asked the question. “Are you married?” was the second question.

I asked Asara, the Thai woman, if she had any children, and we spent a few minutes working on her pronunciation. She has a lot of difficulty discerning the lsound from the r sound. I thought her name was “Asala” until she wrote it down for me.

Asara asked Karma about his children, and after he labored out his answer, Karma asked Pabithra. Pabithra was sitting on the same side of the table as me with her elbows on the table. Karma’s voice is soft and unsure, so when Pabithra looked away toward the rest of the class instead of answering right away, I thought she just hadn’t heard him. I told him to ask again. Pabithra did not turn toward Karma or the table, but moved her head down toward her forearms. I still thought she couldn’t hear the question because Susan was working through an exercise with the rest of the class that was a little loud. I reached over past Tika and touched Pabithra’s arm to get her attention and asked the question myself.

“Do you have children?” I pronounced all the syllables slowly and clearly, hoping to help her understand better.

No reaction. Pabithra’s head remained turned away from all of us and leaned slightly forward over her arms.

I looked at Tika with a questioning look. She flipped her palm upward in the international gesture of I don’t know. I tried again. I leaned forward and touched Pabithra’s arm once more, repeating the question a fourth time.

Then I noticed Pabithra’s torso shaking just a little. She was crying.

It’s easy for me to forget that these students are refugees who have had everything in the world taken from them. I am lulled into a false complacency by their easy smiles and the safe atmosphere of the Institute. The repetition of the questions we work on also has a kind of numbing effect. I know most of the students memorize the sounds of these questions and answers by rote without really understanding the content of the words, and that lulls me, too. It lulls me into thinking the information they recite about coming to the US, marital status, and number of children is nothing more than any other demographic detail compiled for bureaucratic record-keeping.  

Until, that is, one of them understands a question in the context of still-fresh wounds suffered amid unimaginable loss.

Did Pabithra have to abandon her children in Bhutan? Did a child of hers die there? Has she never had children and, now that she is older and far from her homeland, fears she will never have any?

I’ll never know the answers to these questions, nor to how Tika got those awful scars, and in a way I’d rather not know. Last December, I asked a Jordanian student, a petite, elderly woman with beautiful handwriting, when she had come to the US. It was a standard question we worked on every day because getting dates in the correct format was difficult for our class. She hesitated, and when I repeated the question, she, too, began to cry. She had told me earlier that one of her sons still lived in Jordan. I’m sure thinking about when she had left Jordan reminded her that she might never see that son again. I felt guilty for making her cry and helpless for not being able to comfort her. I touched her arm and gave her a tissue.

I love working with my refugee students, helping them make tiny breakthroughs in language comprehension. But I must never lose sight of the fact that they are not as young and innocent as the elementary lessons I teach. And the information we teach them to fill in on forms or recite in class is not just information, but a short-hand version of their lives. Lives that have been ripped apart and tossed onto a garbage heap, then transplanted half-way across the world without regard for their memories, their injuries, their sorrows. Losing sight of these realities diminishes their humanity. Forcing myself to face them makes me feel helpless. And a little guilty. But also grateful and humble and renewed in my commitment to do what I can for them.

I felt helpless and guilty with Pabithra, but I couldn’t sacrifice the entire class to indulge my petty feelings. All I could do was pass her a tissue and move the group to another, more innocuous line of questions. Luckily, a discussion of fruits and vegetables rarely brings anyone to tears.