Language barrier

English is the official language of Uganda; most Ugandans learn some English in school. This small detail has greatly eased my transition here. Yet knowing the same language sometimes doesn't quite add up to speaking the same language.

During my first or second week in the office, a group of us were planning to go into a village for a program. Being mindful that cultural expectation in dress varies between the city and the rural areas, I asked, "Do women wear pants in the village?" My Ugandan colleagues stared at me and at each other. "Do they wear pants?" A fellow American chimed in, "She means, can she wear trousers." The Ugandans looked relieved. "Yes, it is ok for you to wear trousers. But it's best to wear a long skirt."

My initial take-away from this interaction was that Ugandans say "trousers" instead of "pants." A few weeks ago, I learned that when Ugandans say "pants," they mean "underwear."

Another example. I've met some Chinese people in church. They speak very little English, so we converse in Chinese. I generally feel pretty darn proud of my conversational Chinese, but the first time that my new Chinese friends asked me to translate "big" words like "worship" and "sanctify," I had to swallow hard and tell them that I could not oblige them. One of them had a look of shock that I will never forget; I felt as if my fake horn had accidentally detached in the presence of real unicorns. I stuttered and try to explain the meaning of the big Chinese words using many, many small ones. "Worship... it's like... um... God is up there and better than us... um... so we're like... um... wow." It wasn't quite as bad as that, but it was pretty close.

This Sunday, my Chinese friends ended up sitting behind me instead of next to me; it would've been too disruptive to translate for them. I turned to the passage for the day and there, in verse 1 of chapter 15 of the book of Acts, was the big word that I hope to never explain using the small ones in my vocabulary.

Thanks to the seating arrangement, both my friends and I were spared from a fumbling, conversational-Chinese explanation of "circumcision."