❝The limits of my language are the limits of my world.❞
‒Ludwig Wittgenstein
My
mother grew up in the projects of western Puerto Rico. Her family could barely
make ends meet each month, and she struggled to get through school. Twenty
years later, while many of her classmates were still in the same neighborhood
suffering from drug addictions, she was finishing her master’s degree in New
York City, and learning English. I have always been proud of my mother, and
thankful that she found the strength to break the loop of poverty and
dysfunction for a better life. Since I can remember she has always told me how
learning English opened up the world to her, and for that same reason she
taught me and my siblings her native language. Just like learning English
broadened her perspective of the world, she knew Spanish would broaden mine.
And she was right.
I
learned my second language as a child, but as I grew I never appreciated it. It
was simply an extra ability I had, a secret code that I used when communicating
with my mother. I never thought I had something special, and I never thought I
would loose it. But as I grew and began spending more time away from home my
second language began to suffer. I began to forget words, slowly but steadily,
and soon found it harder to speak with my relatives. It startled me, but I
found I didn’t care enough to make the effort to practice. None of my friends
spoke Spanish, or knew anyone besides me who did, so my abilities didn’t seem
in demand, or even welcomed when I revealed them. Then, during the winter of
2011, my father received orders to deploy to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We were used
to moving around, but this Naval Base would be the most unique places I have
ever lived. My first impression was far from inspiring: an arid, isolated base
with less than 4,000 inhabitants, including military and civilians. Because of
the US embargo, we could only leave the base on a plane to the states, and
after learning this I was further convinced that this would be a dull and
uninteresting oversea experience. But as my family settled in and I began to
submerse myself in the ‘Gitmo Culture’ as everyone called it, my life
drastically changed. About
half of the people who had come there to fill the civilian jobs were from other
countries, primarily the Philippines, Jamaica, the Middle-east, and Cuba itself.
I had never lived with so many different kinds of people before, and most
importantly, been around so many different languages. At school I met kids that
had been all over the world, from all kinds of families, cultures, and
religions. I got my first job in the local library and spent my days trying to
understand crowds of Jamaican workers chatting in their native Patua, and when
soldiers checked out their books I would try to guess where they came from by their
accents. I was constantly amazed and delighted by this new multi-culture world,
and yet I felt inferior. I came from a tight, primarily Caucasian town that
frankly never looked far beyond the next County Fair. My friends had all grown
up together, where dating each other, and hoped to marry each other. Even
though I had practically been born on an airplane, flying from Puerto Rico to
Washington DC to Florida or wherever my dad was called, I had spent enough time
in one town to forget that I was worldly. It’s funny though, how one glimpse of
a new and mysterious world can forever fill you with wanderlust. I immediately
began to perk up whenever I heard an elderly Cuban shouting in Spanish over a
tense game of dominos, or when a fellow student mentioned he was from Argentina.
For the first time I began to feel proud of knowing another language, that I
could come out of my shell and speak freely without the fear of surprised
sideways glances or frowns in my direction. I didn’t, however, understand the
full extent of my mother’s gift until I caught the entrepreneurship bug during
the tropical winter I turned fifteen. They called it the
monthly Art Fair, a low key gathering of fellow crafters who would put their
creative masterpieces up for sale. I, being the penny pinching and scheming
teenager I was and might still be, saw it as a fantastic chance to make some
money. If you had come to the December 2011 craft fair you would have seen
about twenty vendors, at the mercy of southern winds, frantically trying to
sell their product and keep it taped to their table at the same time. You would
have seen me as well, sitting alone at a table covered in trembling Christmas cards
hand painted by yours truly, trying to put on the confident face of a salesman.
Business was great, and a few hours before the fair ended I was considering
packing up and taking my plump jar of cash with me, when a young man walked up
to me and began gesturing to my cards and making strange hand signals. All the
poise and confidence that had been growing in me that night immediately blew
away with the wind. I was panic stricken, was this man insulting me? Was he
trying to ask me something about my cards? I didn’t know, I didn’t know! Even
now I couldn’t say what it was that made me ask do you speak Spanish? but I am so happy I did. Immediately his face
brightened and he smiled triumphantly Si!
Si! I felt a rush of relief and began to explain where I was from. We
talked for the rest of the night.
I would
later learn that the man I met was a Cuban refugee, who had left his home one
night and swam for miles, hiding during the day and constantly afraid that
Cuban officials would find him. He had left his parents and friends, never to
see them again, and began a near hopeless quest to escape Cuba by the sea. He
and twenty other young men crowded onto a small raft made of trash that they
had scavenged, without belongings or food, and together made their way towards
the haven of Guantanamo Bay, the nearest US territory. There was a small chance
that they would be spotted by the coast guard, and even smaller that they wouldn’t
be sent back to their starved and poverty stricken life in Cuba, but they
succeeded. He and his fellow survivors would raise money during their stay at the
military base and later move to Australia, beginning a new life full of endless
opportunity. But the night of that Art Fair I didn’t know all this, all I knew
was that this stranger and I had something in common. Our language. And if it
wasn't for that, we might still be there trying to communicate through hand
signals and broken English. That experience changed my perspective of the world
forever. It wasn't a grand, public thing that made me suddenly begin proclaiming
that I was bilingual, but it started a very important trend. I began to
practice my Spanish, watch movies, listen to the Cuban radio, and take advanced
classes at school. I was surprised to find that I was still incredibly fluent,
I just needed to prefect my grammar. Instead of hiding my heritage, I began to
embrace it, and to open up to other people. Knowing more than one language can
break all kinds of barriers between people, and find common ground where you
never thought there was. I have made so many friends that I would have never
known if I hadn’t put myself out there and practice speaking Spanish with them.
Sometimes I could speak the language better than them, other times they would gently
correct my misuse of a word, but we would always have a good time. When you
speak in a foreign language with someone you suddenly begin to truly listen to
them, hanging on every word and comment with relish. Before I came to Cuba I
never had experienced that, and it has changed my life for the better. No
matter where I live now I feel like there is a world outside of my own, a world
full of culture and language and experiences. I had known Spanish since I was a
child, and yet I hadn’t discovered it until now.
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