not being very good at things

I have had some interesting experiences the past few days.

Last night I played pictionary with about ten other people, all of whom besides me were Egyptian. The game was in English (What I mean is that the words that we were supposed to draw were in english) but some of the people playing couldn't speak English.

So obviously those people could only be the draw-er when the draw-er from the other team spoke english. I tried to explain what a bucket was in arabic, what a cocoon was in arabic. Neither of those worked, I was much more successful with "towel," which I could directly translate.

Then there are some words in English that no one knew at all. About a third of the time the two players from each of the two teams would go up, pick a card, look confused, talk for a moment and then decide to "ask Emeelee."

Mardi Gras? Cowbell? not all of these things translate easily to Egyptian culture, much less Arabic!

The thing about being in another country is that unless you hang out with other foreigners all the time you have to get used to not being very good at things. I am not very good at speaking. I am not very good at singing because I can't get the words very fast and the tunes are really different. I am not very good at finding my way around because everything is new. I am not very good at handling kids because there are different ideas about raising children here. I am not very good at cooking because the ingrediants and recipes and facilities are different.

I think, though, that part of the value of being here is learning to enjoy not being very good at things-- learning the value of being that kid who has no idea what is going on, who doesn't have it together. Needing help constantly, having to ask for help constantly. These things are good for me.

In going to a new country you have to lose yourself.

So today I had a very interesting experience-- I was with an Egyptian-Candian guy and we were walking on the Corniche which is like the main high-way by the sea. We were stopped by this kid who looked to be about seven (he was ten, I found out later). He was incredibly skinny and mal-nourished looking, his clothes were really old, he had sand and dirt caked near his eyes. He clearly lived on the streets. He talked to the guy I was with (because the guy looks Egyptian although he has grown up in Canada and doesn't really speak Arabic).

I never know what to do in situations such as these- give money, give food, don't give, etc. Lots of people try to speak with authority on this and I never know who to believe. But when it is a kid who is clearly in need of help it is a lot harder to ignore them. So we took him and ordered food for him (it was a nicer area of town so there weren't a lot of other kids who would see and also ask for food or money).

When I was trying to order for him I handed the menu to him to pick out what he wanted, thinking it would be easier for him to just point to it and show me than for me to read out everything on the menu to him and probably mispronounce every other word. But as I handed the menu to the boy the stand-owner looked at me like I was crazy, and the kid just pushed it away.

That is when I realized that he couldn't read. In my mind every ten year old child knows how to read.

I didn't want to leave him alone waiting on his food and I wanted to make sure that he actually got what we ordered for him. The stand owner definitely thought we were weird-- I was clearly american or european and sort of spoke Arabic. The guy I was with looked like a posh-egyptian but didn't speak arabic. We were with this little kid who clearly lived on the streets. It was weird, all of us standing there, plus the stand owner kept giving me sweets which eventually got awkward, so the three of us sat at one of the tables.

Here I am sitting beside this little kid with skin almost black from the sun who keeps looking off into the distance and won't drink his coke until his food is ready. I talk to him a little in Arabic-- ask him his name, how old he is, about his brothers and sisters, if he likes football, goes to school.

As we sit there I suddenly get this urge to teach him how to read, to take his bright red can of Coke and sound out Co-ca co-la, as if these simple syllables would equip him with the skills he needs for life, as if we could finish the alphabet and phonetics in half an hour. As if I could read arabic all that well myself.

It was strange, encountering illiteracy. It is something that I don't even think about.

Okay, I need some sleep.