Turns out working as a medical
interpreter is rather hard. And by
rather, I actually mean really, really, really.
This past Wednesday was my first attempt to step into that role, and boy
did I flounder! My task was 1) to get a
refugee family to the hospital on time for their 6:30 am appointment and then 2)
serve as an interpreter for the outpatient operation that one of the family
members required. And folks, truth be
told, I utterly failed on both counts!
We wound up making it to the
hospital a whopping thirty minutes late for the appointment, a thing that was more
than a little bit frowned upon by the operating staff. My arrival at the family’s
apartment had inadvertently functioned as their wake up call, so we left later than intended, and
then, once there, I got us 100% lost within the compound of medical buildings
and hospitals, which resulted in us circling the whole place (in the cold. and the dark.) for what felt like eons before
finally racing up to our destination.
Once there, after butchering the translation of several medical/ legal
documents with the father (explaining things like an Advance Directive to a
refugee family in French is most likely beyond me at any time, much less that
early in the morning!), I realized that I had yet to hear a response back from
the young daughter, the family member who was actually having the
operation. Shyness, perhaps, or
nervousness about the upcoming procedure, I wondered? Or, worse, had she for whatever reason taken
an instant disliking to me, or found my French so terrible as to not be
deserving of a reply? After repeated
attempts to get through to her continued to fail, suddenly it hit me—she really
was not understanding me because she does
not speak French! When I finally
made this breakthrough and point-blank asked the father what languages his
daughter speaks, he offered that, yes, she only speaks Swahili. Now, considering that my knowledge of Swahili
extends no further than “Jambo,” well, my role as interpreter was becoming more
complicated by the minute!
So there we were: me translating
for the doctor and nurses to the father in French, the father translating to
the daughter in Swahili then back to me in French so that I could translate
back to the doctors in English…you get the picture! To make matters worse, all the while I couldn’t
shake the uncomfortable flutterings of anxiety that stirred up within me every
time I remembered that this family’s feeling of comfort within this unfamiliar
environment was, for the span of those few hours, relatively dependent on me. Hospitals and operations can feel scary
enough, without throwing in the factor of having to trust a young, bleary-eyed
girl who had just gotten you lost to adequately relay your questions and
concerns to the doctors! I found myself
stumbling over words and phrases that I do actually know, losing some
vocabulary entirely—for instance, following the operation, I completely blanked
on the word “droplet,” having to settle for “liquid ear medicine” instead until
the father supplied the word that was escaping me.
Nevertheless, we somehow managed to get all the necessary questions asked and answered, so about an hour
or so later the father and I were shooed out to the waiting room. Realizing mid-way into the morning that the father
was under the impression that I was a French woman, when I was able to clarify
that I am, indeed, American, and one that hasn’t had a good French class in
about three years, I noticed almost immediately that his previously rapid-fire
speech pace slowed helpfully down to the more lyrical tempo I’d gotten used to in
Senegal. Hearing too that I had spent
time in Senegal seemed to open a door between us: “So you’ve seen it, my
Africa?” he asked, “That is good. You
must go back.” Amazingly, as we sat
there semi-watching the news program that I could only half-hear and that he could
not truly understand, he reached out to me, beginning to share bits and pieces about his family and
what it is like being here, concluding, “It is hard, you know, very hard. When you are a little one, it is easy to
forget. But when you are old, it is
hard, very hard.” As he told me stories
and asked questions about my own life, I felt the tension— that
suffocating feeling that I might at any moment mess everything up— begin to fade. Here I was, there to make this family feel
more comfortable, internally tallying and kicking myself for every mistake
made. And there he was, extending grace,
making me feel comfortable, reminding
me that sometimes it’s ok to fail.
In the reading assignment for one
of my classes, I came across the idea of the “decentered host,” one who, though
in a position of caregiving, falls into a position of receiving care in such a way that allows their
guests to become centered instead:
As decentered hosts, we will feel
awkward, disempowered, the ones interpreted rather than the ones interpreting,
those beheld in uncomfortable ways by the beneficiaries of our regard. Our own disorientation possibly is the
strongest connection we may have to the disoriented ones to whom we
attend. We become more like than unlike
them.[1]
And such is the gift of that flustering, wonderful morning: fumbling through my French and feeling a keen sense of
having failed the family that I was there to serve, I experienced full-force the
beauty of such a reversal of roles in that cold, empty waiting room! And so, though I surely hope to do a more
competent job should another opportunity to interpret arise, I am so thankful
for this experience. Far more than
just challenging me to brush up on my medical French (though goodness knows I won’t
be forgetting the word for droplet anytime soon!), it pushed me to consider
other ways in my life in which I can allow myself to become “un-centered.”
The
operation was over before we knew it (with post-op instructions thankfully
going far more smoothly and seamlessly than the whole process leading up to it),
and soon we had the smiling and sleepy daughter back to her home. Exiting the car, the father shook my hand and
thanked me, giving me a perplexed yet happy grin when I thanked him right back. Little did he know, his is a gift I’ll be holding
onto for a long time to come.
A bientôt,
Janelle
PS: If you’re wondering what the picture has to do with the
post, the answer is nothing, really. I
stumbled across these miniature houses in a woodsy garden by my place and
thought they were too enchanting not to share!
[1] William Blaine-Wallace, “The
Politics of Tears: Lamentation as Justice Making,” Injustice and the Care of Souls.
p. 196.
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