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Och. Oy. The summer drags on. I visited some very interesting people today. A race car driver, a Greek grandmother (who put me in mind of Yiayia, the grandmother from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but nicer...she gave me chocolates) and a Jamaican man who had volumes to say and whom I understood not at all. I caught maybe every tenth word. Florida, something about a bulldozer, a cigarette, collection plate, clouds, Jesus...and preacher. He called me "Preacher," every sentence or two. I wonder about such visits. My CPE supervisor is adamant that verbal communication is not necessary to good pastoral care. Being a Language Kind of Guy (a title that aptly demonstrates my linguistic acumen) I consider this tenuous ground. I enjoy words, spoken or written, and find communication difficult without them. Still, I can see his point. I have a Korean-speaking patient, and while I can parrot a few Korean words (Hello, it's warm today, thank you, good-bye.) for the most part I just sit with him and smile. He seems to appreciate it and today I heard, from the Korean chaplain that fate sent us, that he enjoys my visits. Is it different when the patient thinks he's being understood? I'm not sure. My first week I had a Croatian patient who began speaking - nay, verbally vomiting - to me just because I sat and listened. Did he think I understood? I did, in a sense...I understood that he was frustrated and sad and lonely and that he wanted to walk. In a way, because I wasn't straining to comprehend the language (there being no possibility of that) I was able to listen to him rather than to his words. On the other hand, the Jamaican man was (presumably) speaking English. That was what was so ridiculous...we were speaking the same language. It was only his heavy accent that made him incomprehensible to me. Having no idea what he was saying, I just smiled when he smiled, laughed when he laughed, nodded when he seemed to be asking for affirmation and frowned when he seemed angry or sad. I dared not make any uninvited statements or ask any questions for fear I'd be way off track... Man: Yeah, my wife left me for another man and then my house burned down and my mother shot me in the face. Bland non-committal seemed the safest route. On the other hand, what did I nod my head to? Man: I'm going to escape tonight. I'm going to club the nurse with my bed pan, tie her to this bed with my feeding tube, crawl out that window and leap from the roof of emergency onto a passing ambulance. Is that a good idea? I wonder if every conversation this man has with non-Jamaicans is like that. Does everyone just nod, pretending to understand while smiling a weak little smile? He has lived here since 1975 (that much I understood) so he must have noticed by now that very few people speak as freely to him as he does to them. How has he managed? Does he think that Canadians are all just really polite, never venturing our opinion, even when asked? Does he think we're all addled? Are we? After today, I'm beginning to think that I am. I was strongly reminded of the Little Britain sketch in which an English woman can't (or rather won't) understand what an Indian woman is saying, although she speaks perfectly clear English. I swear, though, this man was utterly incomprehensible to me. I wonder if my accent was equally impenetrable to him? |
