Is "American Polyglot" an Oxymoron? ...I Think Not

I'm easily excited by visiting non-English-speaking destinations. There's a thrill for me in functioning in another language. I suppose it's a bit like getting continuous positive reinforcement. Think about it. The people with whom you are communicating are reassuring you that you have properly learned a language you have taken the time to study hard, simply by understanding you. It can feel rewarding in the same way it felt as a child when the teacher handed back a quiz that said, “Great job!” at the top in red cursive.

When I was six years old, I began to study Hebrew. I remember I had this hologram ruler with the Hebrew alphabet on it. I would hold that blue, green and orange ruler in my hands, staring at it as the letters changed from one form to another as I moved it ever-so-slightly. I would write my name from right to left as I had been taught, staring at it, unexplainably giddy knowing that this was still my name, but I could express it in a another way, using what felt like a special type of code. As I child, I believe that I grew to enjoy studying Hebrew because I liked the idea of being a code breaker. At temple, I would follow the service in my own prayer book , tracing the words with my pointer finger, reading each word just a fraction of a second before the rabbi or cantor pronounced it.

Strangely, at the time I didn't recognize that I enjoyed foreign language, so when I got to seventh grade and began studying French and hated it, it didn't seem surprising to me. My teacher often seemed fed-up with the group of twelve-year-olds in our class. I'm pretty sure we were jerks and I'm equally as sure that he was burnt out, but I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. I just know that by the end of eighth grade with the same teacher, I still didn't understand the concept of verb conjugation, and while I could produce a short, two-man conversation in French that I had learned by rote, I hated my experience and thought I hated French.

When I got to high school and sat down in Mrs. Brigham's classroom, French changed forever. Here was this fantastic Belgian woman, who seemed excited to be standing before this group of teenagers who had chosen to study her native language! She approached us with enthusiasm, wanted us to love French, and gave us the tools we needed to learn it well. She found ways to teach us about circumlocution, telling us to “talk around it” when we didn't know the exact word for what we wanted to say. She helped us to practice a more authentic French accent by modeling the position with her own lips and reminding us to “tighten [our] jaw”. When a fellow student would intentionally butcher the beautiful sound of French into his own rendition - a combo of an American accent mixed with the frequent addition of o's on the end of words to remind her that he had previously been an (unsuccessful) student of Spanish - she still managed to smile, passing a test of patience that even I was failing.

I studied French right through the end of high school, enjoying it more and more each year. When the opportunity arose to stay with a family in France during my junior year, I jumped on it. I had a feeling it was going to be wonderful - I had no idea it would be life-changing. In the weeks I spent in that lovely home in a Parisienne suburb, something extraordinary took place. I began to dream in French, think in French and felt a constant sense of joy that I had never before experienced. It hit me one day after a long afternoon at Versailles with some fellow French students. I had spent the whole day chatting with David (that's Da-VEED, not DAY-vid), a French boy who was hosting one of my American peers. After heading “home” that evening, I was reflecting on my day and the many things about which we had spoken. Suddenly I realized that among our topics – castles, relationships, school, public transportation and gastrointestinal problems – we had talked about all of it in French. How had I managed that? Somehow, I had become very competent in French! I was reeling!

When freshman year of college rolled around and it was time to choose my courses, I was rocked by the idea that I could study other languages in addition to the French I had studied in class, and the Portuguese I had been informally learning with my Brasilian friend and her family. By the end of college, I had taken courses in French, Hebrew, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese, and lived in Brasil and El Salvador. My simple American life had gradually been transformed into a multi-lingual life that had taught me about people all over the world. The more places I visited, the more I realized how valuable it was to be able to communicate with people in each country. 

There are approximately 21 Spanish-speaking, 33 French-speaking and 9 Portuguese-speaking nations. When I think about how many doors have been opened in my life due to being able to speak these languages, I am eternally grateful to the many enthusiastic language teachers I have been fortunate enough to have had, and to the many good citizens of the countries I have visited who have welcomed me with open arms, taught me about the place in which they live and helped me further my passion as a citizen of the world.

If you are a parent, may I encourage you to teach your children the value of really learning another language? It's not always easy and I recognize that not everyone is as receptive as I came to be, but there are things you can do to cultivate interest in language, and there's no better time than when children are still young. There are online games, Global Child programs, Rosetta Stone, and often there is community involvement that will teach them to appreciate other languages and cultures. In the end, it will mean contributing to filling our world with not just tolerant but compassionate, interested individuals, and a greater possibility of world peace, one step at a time. 

Cuba: A Caribbean Conundrum

I woke up from my dream and opened my eyes to find myself still dreaming. The dimly-lit bedroom boasted gaudy decorations, a thin, satiny-lime colored bedspread beneath me and lacy curtains that opened to reveal the same dull green wall – a windowless, high-ceilinged space. Outside my room voices conversed calmly in the same Cuban Spanish that rolled off the tongues of actors in movies I once rented in efforts to better understand the island that was such a mystery to me.

I always wanted to see Cuba. It struck me as a vibrant place, full of musicians, poets, dancers, painters – creative minds everywhere you turn. Every Cuban I had ever met emanated a special type of energy and cause me a great deal of curiosity. Yet as an American citizen, I knew that a visit was basically out of the possibilities. Aside from it being illegal unless granted special permission, there seemed to be too many obstacles and potential repercussions. So off Cuba went to the back burner and where it remained a distant dream for years.

As the plane took off, I sat quiet but excited, unable to believe that I was on my way to Havana. I re-read the stub from my boarding pass to confirm that it was really happening. What had I gotten myself into? Was I truly prepared to spend three weeks in Cuba? I had made no reservation and had no idea where I would sleep. Would it matter? Should I have made some type of plan? Less than two hours after take-off we had already touched down in Havana. My heart beat accelerated. This was it... I was in Cuba!

I followed signs until I made my way to immigration and stepped into one of the many lines. I watched and waited, the lines barely advancing in the ten minutes I stood there, when a handsome man in civilian clothing approached me and asked to see my documents. When I handed him my United States passport, he looked at it briefly and asked me to follow him. I tried not to allow my nerves to take control of my expression, yet I couldn't help but wonder if it was already over before it had even begun. I was lead to a separate area for interrogation, and answered the twenty-minute series of questions with a measured level of calm. My smile betrayed everything I was truly feeling as I watched him jot down all of my responses as well as my passport details. He finally explained to me that he works for the police and it is his job to help monitor who's entering the country and to understand their intentions. After going through ten more nerve-racking minutes in customs, I was done. Stepping out of the airport, I found myself smiling from ear to ear. I had really pulled it off.

It took no time at all to discover that Havana is peppered with hustlers and characters in every direction, and the city is positively pulsating with an energy all its own. Too many seconds of eye contact and suddenly you have ignited someone's hopes and dreams, and as a single female traveler, the grand majority of this energy seems to manifests itself in the form of optimistic men suddenly materializing before you to launch their spiel in hopes of stopping you dead in your path. “Ay princesa, I will cook for you, wash and iron, clean the house. I'm your slave!” Their comments and approaches to unaccompanied foreign women occur with a frequency so alarming, that it almost seems to be a social obligation.

One evening three of us were walking home, all women, one of us Cuban. After the third comment made by a passer-by, I turned to our Cuban friend, who happens to look like a foreigner, and asked her, “How do you stand it?” “It's intolerable”, she replied, “but at least you know you exist”. My feelings about these “piropos” went through phases. In the beginning, I was simply surprised by them. Occasionally they were creative or dramatic enough that I was shocked into laughing, and as I battled not to, I felt the feminists of the world staring down upon me, shaking their heads in disdain. The comments were never of a sexual nature and were always clearly intended as compliments, but after a while, it became exhausting. While most of these men were between their 20's and 40's, some were well into their 70's! One day my friend and I were going to buy some ice cream and a little 8-year-old-looking boy and his friend called down from the truck on which they stood. “¡Mami! ¡Qué liiiiinda!” one shouted. Flabbergasted, I couldn't even find the words to respond. We knew they were simply practicing what they saw every day, and what to them, probably defined being a man, but it seemed so wrong. I found that by the end of the visit, I was no longer capable of accepting compliments. I couldn't believe them anymore.

Hugo Chávez's death brought a mandatory, week-long mourning period upon Cuba. Banners went up, murals were painted in his honor and celebrations of all kinds were banned. So on the day this was announced, I decided to spend some quiet time writing amongst the plants. And what did I happen upon? A park teeming with life. On one side, a group of more than twenty men gathered, aged thirty to sixty, arguing passionately with each other... They raised their voices, used their hands, flailed their arms, got in one another's face. About what? Baseball! I stood there for a while and just watched, containing my laughter, but not my giant smile.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the park, transvestites! A whole corner of the park was simply humming with theatrical individuals; some were wearing skinny jeans, ruffled shirts and hushpuppies while others wore mini-skirts or short-shorts and tube tops, hair flowing down to the visible crack of their brown behinds, sucking on red lollipops. I later found out this was Central Park, but I think it should be called Ambiguity Park. The men looked like women, some women had mustaches, skater-looking guys were greeting transvestites with kisses on the cheek and the gay men were hitting on women passing by. I could not have imagined a more confusing scenario.

Fascinated, I befriended several members of the LGBT community in Havana, and spent hours talking with them about their lives and Cuba's progressive attitude. Havana for me was a whole new level of impressive. It was heart-warming, really, that a LGBT community could not only exist but thrive in most machista country I have ever visited. I will never forget Raúl, our cab driver in Trinidad province, who further reinforced my faith in this coexistence. When I asked him if he had children, he responded, “I've got three. I have two sons and a gay son. He's my little girl. You should see him. He's just beautiful. He's got long, shiny hair, a beautiful woman's body, and real style.” We talked all about his relationship with his son, and I left the cab beaming. An old-school Cuban man and his family show full love and support to his transvestite son. There's hope for the world.

Writing about my visit to Cuba has been one of the toughest tasks I've had in a while. It's true that the country is fantastically beautiful. The countryside is flowery and picturesque. I loved riding a bike all around the tobacco fields, rivers and mogotes of Viñales and walking down the colorful, colonial, cobblestone streets of Trinidad. I love seeing boys improvising a game of baseball with a piece of pipe or wood and a bottle cap. I love that it's impossible to confuse Cuba with anywhere else because there are '57 Chevys and a thousand other brilliantly painted old cars and old buildings everywhere you look. I have never been anywhere else in my life with as many cello, guitar, trumpet, percussion and flute players gracing as many cafes and corners. And I will never forget the excitement I felt when I told my friend Rafa, “Hey! I love this song!” by Buena Vista Social Club, and walked into the next room to find the band standing there, playing live before my eyes.

The mogotes and tobacco fields of Viñales

The tough thing about Cuba is there's so many secrets. Despite how energetic, friendly and flirty the people are, each conversation always has similar boundaries. If you converse with them enough, you will eventually notice there is a fear of sharing too much information. I'm a curious person to begin with, and “interview” turned out to be a scary word for most Cubans I spoke with. In the end, they always seemed concerned with what I might do with the answers they gave me, or who might find out we had been chatting. This was without me even touching politics. This was true not only of discussing life, but also the simpler things. For example, I don't like to feel like a typical tourist, and I do everything I can to integrate myself into each place I visit, but Cuba has a palpable barrier that takes time to chip away at. It took me a while to learn, for example, that there are sometimes two separate menus in restaurants – same options, completely different prices, and plenty of businesses intended for Cubans that visitors can also access, but only if they can discover them. In the end, it felt like the island of Figure-It-Out-If-You-Can. I can only imagine what it would be like to try to understand Cuba without speaking Spanish!

Leaving Cuba reminded me of Chinese food. There were certain moments when I looked forward to it, but mostly it was something I didn't want. I felt that I left when I was just beginning to crack its shell. It was an overwhelming visit that took me close to a month to process. I learned and saw so much in such a short period of time, that I'm still collecting my thoughts, still reflecting on how different the island is from the technology-consumed, capitalist society to which I am accustomed. And I think we need reminders like that or we'll take everything for granted...our internet, our wide array of food options, our cars and our walk-in closets. I won't say that Cuba is for everyone, but if you're ready for some eye-opening in a land that sometimes seems frozen in time, it's a wondrous place to explore.