News from Home

One of the things that happens when living in another culture, away from your home country, is you seek "news from home." Any kind of news--of course, any contacts from family and friends which can happen these days with a click of a button, but other kinds of news as well. Any time someone said the word "Canada," my hearing would improve. What is Canada involved in now? What's going on politically, economically, socially? If Canada was doing something positive in the world, I was proud. If Canada was mentioned in a negative light, I wanted to defend my country.

But there was nothing that kept my attention more than Canada and sports. I craved the sports of home which included not just Canada but U.S. sports as well since so many Canadians watch not just Canadian sports but generally sports of North America, including the NFL and the NBA. It was my connection with the familiar--not just geographically but also with the English language. It was a craving I did not anticipate.

And now the tables have turned. I have lived back in Canada for almost six years now. I am relishing all things Canadian. There is an appreciation in my heart and soul for this country that I would not have realized had I not lived overseas. But even though I am here, I am still seeking "news from home"--from my other home. News from Thailand, news from Southeast Asia. And now I listen for Thai when I pass by ethnic speakers from Southeast Asia. I don't hear it very often but I seek to--part of my heart is still there.

So, this morning, when I read the following post, my heart was aching for those people:

 http://www.wsj.com/articles/thailand-arrests-four-and-vows-crackdown-on-human-trafficking-1430734044

Even though they are not people I know personally, I have a heart connection. My heart was heavy with sadness. My prayers lifted up "my people" for they were under attack. And I must confess, my heart was angry at those who have no conscience--no sense that human trafficking and treating other humans like animals is wrong. But they too are lost--and I prayed for them.

My heart for the minority peoples of Thailand and surrounding countries is a part of me that I cannot cut off. It is with me. It will always be with me. It is part of what being a TCA is all about. And it is a part of me I wouldn't change for the world.

I am ______________ when God brings transition into my life

I am ______________ when God brings transition into my life. That's one of the questions posed to our Home Group this past week as we studied Acts 11:19-30. It's a chapter about transition as God reveals His heart to bring the Gentiles to saving grace--stemming ALL the way back to Genesis 12 and God's call to Abraham.

My gut response to that sentence is "excited" because for me, transition means change is coming and I've always welcomed change--ever since the summer of 1979 when I lived on a First-Nations reservation in northern Saskatchewan and I felt God's calling on my heart. I remember reading the book, "Lord Change Me"by Evelyn Christenson. It's outdated now but it had a powerful effect on me. And one line of a song kept running through my head: "And I welcome the change like I welcome the rain, after nothing has grown in a long, long time." So I welcome change because change means growth.

I think most missionaries have a positive attitude toward change. I mean, they almost have to, right, with the travelling and training and moving that takes place? At least for us, we've lived in over 20 different places since we've been married. That's simply crazy--and yet it's often the life of a TCA.

That all being said, transition and change are around the corner again. In January 2015 Doug and I will be returning to Thailand. Am I excited? Yes, because I know God is going before us and preparing hearts and lives for our work there. Am I sad? Yes, that too, because it is the first time we will be leaving all our children, and granddaughter, behind. I don't really like to think about that aspect of this new change. It won't be easy. For now I am simply trying to milk the year for all it's worth--soaking up every opportunity to be with family, extended family and precious friends here in Canada. And it's all good because it's ALL from a good God. And that too is a good perspective for a TCA to have.

Language, Translation and Existence

I wrote this for a Composition course I took a few years ago. There is some overlap with the previous post but this post has more to do with identity in a new culture and language, something a TCA struggles with almost daily.

LANGUAGE, TRANSLATION AND EXISTENCE

Growing up in a little prairie town in Saskatchewan, I had little exposure to mountains. I have a vivid memory, however, of driving through the Rocky Mountains on a family vacation when I was 11. As we travelled west past Calgary, I was in awe of what rose before us. The jagged peaks, multi-faceted rock formations, swift-flowing streams rushing down from the snowcaps were fantastic—but also ominous for a young child. Winding around the dynamite-blown rock faces beside 300-meter drops, blind to what was around the bend, was frightening. What did the first explorers feel when they traversed the prairies and watched the mountains grow in the distance, not knowing how high or wide or long the range extended? For me, the only thing I can compare it to is the feeling I had upon moving to the other side of the world. Trying to communicate in a language I had never heard, with strange vowels and tones and a script that looked only like geometrical shapes and artistic squiggles, was like trying to cross an undiscovered mountain range.

 Part of me was exhilarated by the adventure. I studied the many crags and crevices of the etymology and syntax of Thai, a slow uphill climb. I drank in the cool, mountain stream of Thai culture—relishing spicy dishes filled with hot peppers and coconut milk or swaying on the etched back of a graceful elephant. But I also felt crippled, lost, in the inability to express ‘me’ and I sought to understand the ‘why’ of that feeling and the ‘how’; how could I be me in Thailand?

In the early stage of language learning I realized that language is existence, not mere existence as another homo sapien on this planet, but existence as an individual. If I cannot speak or write, I cease to be the person I am. My cultural heritage, my personality, my uniqueness would vanish in the mountain wilderness. But it was in translation, in using the familiar highway of English to explore and chart this new mountain range called Thai, that I grasped how my individuality, my values, and my history were defined by my words. It was a paramount discovery.

I am a trained linguist. That means I am able to analyze the speech sounds and patterns, phonology and grammar of any language of the world. What drew me to this area of study was my infatuation with the English language. In grade school I was curious—curious about all the different figures of speech, what constituted classic writing, why we studied grammatical parsing of sentences, how English differed from French. That curiosity directed me to linguistics, and linguistics made me appreciate and love English, my mother tongue. But in moving to Thailand I felt like my mother tongue was being stripped away. And, in a way, it was.

In my training I saw that figures of speech, especially metaphors, flourish in all languages but as I studied Thai I realized metaphor is not just a comparison of words. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson state in Metaphors We Live By that “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” and that “our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people”. One example they cite is the metaphorical concept “TIME IS MONEY” as shown through such phrases as “wasting my time, budget your time, borrowed time”. This book opened my eyes to why I was struggling to express myself in Thai. It was not just a language problem. It was a concept problem.

With that knowledge I began to study how a Thai person sees the world—the metaphors they use to explain culture, feelings and relationships—in contrast to metaphors I use to define my world. The clouds that had been hanging heavy over the mountain range began to dissipate.

An old English proverb says, “The eyes are the window of the soul.” In English, eyes metaphorically represent emotions in terms like ‘green-eyed monster, bright-eyed, hungry-eyed, flaming eyes, sparkling eyes, longing eye.’ For a native English speaker, each of these metaphors describes a specific emotion. The Thai language does not use the eye but the heart to describe a wide range of emotions, a discovery that gave me a glimpse into the Thai mindset.

A colleague introduced me to a book called Heart Talk by Christopher G. Moore, a book for the foreigner seeking to understand how the word ‘heart’ is used in the Thai language. Moore states that the word “jai [defined as “the heart” in English] in Thai means both “heart” and “mind”.” (13). Generally, the Westerner separates thinking and feeling. The Thai person does not. Let me cite two examples from the over 300 root words using jai. The first one, written in Roman script, is cit jay suung, literally translated as the “tall heart,” (56) and in English means “a person who has a high moral standard” (56). It is a choice of the mind in English. In Thai it is a choice of the heart. The second example means the same as our metaphor ‘out of sight, out of mind’ showing how we compare sight to thinking in English. In Thai the phrase klay taa klay jai is translated “eye far/heart far” or we could say “out of sight, out of heart,” comparing sight to emotions. I was beginning to envision what was around the next bend.

That revelation energized me for the long journey ahead. It is a journey I will continue on as long as I am living in Thailand, exploring how the metaphors of my language and culture translate into Thai. Just as the raw, Rocky Mountains stand in stark contrast to the serene, Saskatchewan prairies, so the Thai mindset counters mine. Translating ‘me’ in Thailand takes time and work. It is, however, a highway worth travelling because for me, it is the difference between merely existing and truly being.

Cereal Overload

In 1992 my husband and I arrived in the Philippines with our three children, all under the age of 5. That reminds me, sometime I need to write about flying. But today I write about food surprises.

We lived very simply in the Philippines, especially when we were out in the village. Breakfasts were especially simple. During language school and when on the Wycliffe centre we had access to bread so we could make toast. Even then, though, there were few boxed cereals--corn flakes and maybe rice krispies. But out in the village there was nothing and I learned how to make very yummy granola in a cast iron frying pan. It became our staple.

Before going overseas, and in our first year overseas, we were required to read a certain number of book on culture, cross-cultural living and the different stages to expect when adjusting to life in a different culture, especially a third-world culture. It was good reading and helpful. However, when we returned back to Canada, we were given little to read regarding the reverse i.e. culture shock in the return.

I remember going grocery shopping for the first time upon return from the Philippines. There were changes, of course--new foods, new brand names. Nothing surprising. THEN I turned my cart into the cereal aisle. I remember freezing in my tracks. Cereal. Cereal. Cereal. A whole aisle--two rows--all devoted to cereal. I was overcome. It was a shock to my simple-lifestyle system. I cannot explain my emotions in that moment--fear, claustrophobia, sadness, shame, disdain. Just negative emotions. I just remember I was too overwhelmed to even look at it all. I quickly picked two cereals I was familiar with and got out of there.

The next time I went shopping, I prepared myself for the emotional onslaught and spent more time perusing the cereal aisle. I was okay. I could breathe. I learned to adjust to this small outcome of living in an affluent society. But even now, there are times I enter the cereal aisle and am reminded of that day and a tinge of emotion ripples at the bottom of my gut. It lingers still.

The Smell of Shrimp Paste

 Today I write because I'm homesick--not homesick for the little town I grew up in but homesick for Thailand. I've started an assignment for an English course I'm taking called, "Creative Non-Fiction." My writing prompt is to write a story about being ambushed by a smell. Think about it. This happens to all of us--you enter a room filled with a certain smell and it takes you back to a place in time. Well, the smell I am writing about is typical of a TCA because it is the smell of shrimp paste wafting into our house from the neighbour's house almost every morning like clockwork. The smell assaulted me with memories that occurred in that house for 7 years of our lives as a family--especially morning memories when the smell was pungent in the air. Mostly mornings of trying to get the kids ready for school--mornings of loud arguments with my daughter who hated mornings, mornings of hunting for school uniforms, whether skirts or pants or even sports teams, mornings of trying to get my son to eat a little something before heading out the door. 

 Admittedly, these memories make me sad because I was often so impatient, so unkind--a reminder that I was and sometimes still tend to be a control freak. I've learned much about myself in that area in the last 7 years and am thankful that God is gentle and kind and patient with me and with my relationship with my children. I was so far from being the perfect mother and yet God protected these relationships and caused them to grow and flourish in Him so that despite my past failures, I have beautiful connections with my kids. I feel so blessed.

There were also happy memories mixed with the sad ones. MANY happy memories. Our dog Rosie would almost always make us smile in the morning as she attempted to attack our cat, who wanted nothing to do with the dog. I think Rosie was a morning dog and our cat, Kitty, was a night cat. Two opposites clashing in the morning like my daughter and me. But also memories of eating together, celebrating birthdays and holidays together, playing games together. Lots of love and good times.

And so I am homesick, all from writing about the smell of shrimp paste. Nothing triggers the TCA syndrome like food. Sometime I'll have to write more about that. But not today. And now that I've written here, I feel joy instead of sadness and am thankful for the gift of memory. God is good.