August 2006
I came back into the house just a few minutes ago, leaving behind the glow of a full moon and the chorus of frogs, crickets and birds that line the river behind my house. I had not gone outside to listen to the sounds of mountain life, though. I was trying to break free from my mud walls to see if I could get better reception on my shortwave radio. It was lent to me by a friend in order to explore the airwaves during the week following the conclusion of a major project. This past Friday, four volunteers and I finished a week-long series of camp activities for kids in our market town. It may not sound like much, but as a Peace Corps volunteer, the output of our projects is rarely commensurate with the blood, sweat and tears put into them. Consequently, I have been enjoying the free time to experiment with such an obsolete but strangely fascinating technology. Despite my Luddite tendencies, I am embarrassed to say that I hardly knew what a shortwave radio was until I joined the Peace Corps and found that they were just about standard issue for rural volunteers, alongside Nalgene water bottles and iPods.
For about two hours each day, I have been scanning the troposphere between 6 and 16 MHz. In my little corner of the world, perched on the side of a hill in the Atlas Mountains, facing the wrong direction – south, the opposite direction of any major city and Europe – I can categorize my discoveries under three headings: mundane radio, not-necessarily-exotic-but-interesting-to-me radio, and bizarre radio. For the first group, I surreptitiously scan Arabs reciting the Qu’ran and Spanish news broadcasts, seeking out the stations in the second group. This includes the British Broadcasting Company, which, with its global focus, reports not only the Iraq war, but every battle, skirmish, religious riot, ethnic cleansing and bombing currently ignited in the world. The second group also subsumes random music stations playing everything from 80’s-style contemporary Spanish rock to aboriginal flute music. But there are some real gems in the third category.
Interspersed throughout the band are radio stations of numerous, completely unidentifiable European (I would assume) languages. I have no absolutely no idea what they are saying but it is interesting to sit back and marvel at the diversity within such a small area of the world. That can pale in comparison to places like the Congo and Nigeria, that boast 500 languages each, but all those tribes don’t exactly run radio stations. I have also found several stations in French and Spanish, which at first was not the least bit surprising, except that I noticed that the announcers had thick Chinese accents and were talking incessantly about Beijing. They were all part of Chinese Radio International, apparently aimed at the Chinese diaspora living in Western Europe. That there are several of those and only one English language media conglomerate (BBC) on the Atlas airwaves is proof that the Chinese really are taking over the world. And then there is my favorite discovery: a station that only plays synthesized bird calls around the clock.
The confusing mélange of tongues and recent conversations with new volunteers who are struggling to communicate has been a real throwback to where I was 13 ½ months ago when I dropped by bags on the floor of my home-stay family’s house in this village. I do recall that my first email I sent out when I get here focused on that issue which is quite central to the volunteer’s experience. A lot has transpired since then, with the advent and passing of various professional and mental stages of my service. Through that time, my normal modes of communication have altered considerably as well. You may have noticed that I dropped little bits of French into my last few emails. This is not solely because I am pretentious. French has largely supplanted Tamazight (the Berber dialect) as my working-, and consequently, social-language. It may seem like a strange choice or even antithetical to the Peace Corps vision of getting down with the yokels. In Moroccan society, there are three levels of language that can be found and each generally indicates which echelon of society you occupy. At the bottom is Berber (where I reside), in the middle is Arabic (the national language) and at the top is French (where the money is). My decision to use the lower and upper level tongues makes me a somewhat strange anomaly around these parts, although that pattern is somewhat common amongst anti-Arab Berber intellectuals. Those guys would argue that Arabic is the real colonial language, but I will avoid politics tonight. Rather, I will take some excerpts from a journal entry from last November which elucidates my hitherto rationale.
“In explaining the reason to concomitantly learn French and Tamazight, I can offer the following analogy. Imagine you are a South Korean volunteer to teach and assist poor, immigrant Latino youth in forsaken Californian public schools. Upon arriving, you receive a rigorous, 10-week crash course in Spanish before commencing your job. However, you are taught only Mexican Spanish and the area you work in is culturally diverse, including Puerto Ricans, Cubans, El Salvadorians, Peruvians and Argentineans. While they can certainly speak to each other, you can hardly talk to the Mexicans, never mind the Caribbeans or the South Americans. Your job is to work with the children, hence the Spanish education, but you also required to speak with school administrators and local government. Each time you are required to meet one of them you pray that they are bilingual, but usually they are not. Each time you travel for work or pleasure, you search relentlessly for hotels and shops where your heavy Asian-accented Spanish will be understood, while most other people are baffled that you never learned English to live in the States. Now and then, you worry, ‘If I ever got into trouble, how would I ever speak to all of those red-blooded American doctors and policemen?’ Among the children, you are loved because you speak their language and you are occasionally offered invitations to go to their homes. Within their homes, though, you realize that the kids all actually speak Spanglish, which you have been honing, and it takes great effort to speak with their families, who speak español puro.”
At first I intended to try to develop the two concurrently and equally, but soon my interest in Berber diminished for multiple reasons. As a result, my conversational ability in Tamazight is pretty pathetic. But most conversations in Berber revolve around weather, the prices at the market for a kilo of bananas, and 20-minute introductions, all of which are repeated 3 or 4 times throughout dinner, so I am not really missing anything. The ability to work and socialize with teachers, engineers, national and regional associations; write grant proposals, emails, shared reports and text messages; read newspapers, magazines, government documents and other work-related releases more than compensates. To my surprise, many people who found out early on that I was trying to learn French refused to speak me in anything but that. It turns out I was the only person they know they could practice with after all those years of studying. Nonetheless, I remain an odd bird among my peers, which is nothing new.
Communicative ability makes or breaks volunteers, but not necessarily in the way one may think. To be sure, conversational adeptness can play a key role in your ability to speak with the average Moroccan Joe, thereby increasing your opportunities for establishing friendships. However, language does not equate with effectiveness; not in the least. On one hand, we have those who spend their two years perfecting the Moroccan gift of gab. I can think of one volunteer in particular who spoke very confident and emphatic Arabic after less than one year of working here. As we sat on the terrace of a café, I asked him what he did for work. He slouched back in his seat and grinned from ear to ear. “You’re looking at it,” he replied triumphantly, remarking later that, “I rather enjoy not working.” On the other hand, there are those volunteers who come here with a heart gushing full of blood but a head that is less than malleable in the language department (older folks, especially, have a difficult time picking up new languages). This obstacle infrequently bars such people from pursuing and achieving their goals. Some will perform much of their work through friends and colleagues who are willing to translate. Others find their low-verbal-communication niche which might entail focusing on younger children; generous use of photocopies; a trusty pocket-sized notepad and pen for sketching; or frequent, amusing games of charades. In the end, exactly how and with what words you performed your job is completely irrelevant. One could argue that those who rely on assistance from others are more effective, as they get members of the community involved in their work and transfer the skills and provide a more seamless transition to working without their Peace Corps volunteer. One could also argue that you simply have to communicate to get your point across. It’s a balancing act, really, and like everything in life, there is no yardstick for success.
P.S. If you ever thought of starting your own shortwave radio station, there seems to be some dead space in between 12.35 and 12.37 MHz begging to be filled.
For about two hours each day, I have been scanning the troposphere between 6 and 16 MHz. In my little corner of the world, perched on the side of a hill in the Atlas Mountains, facing the wrong direction – south, the opposite direction of any major city and Europe – I can categorize my discoveries under three headings: mundane radio, not-necessarily-exotic-but-interesting-to-me radio, and bizarre radio. For the first group, I surreptitiously scan Arabs reciting the Qu’ran and Spanish news broadcasts, seeking out the stations in the second group. This includes the British Broadcasting Company, which, with its global focus, reports not only the Iraq war, but every battle, skirmish, religious riot, ethnic cleansing and bombing currently ignited in the world. The second group also subsumes random music stations playing everything from 80’s-style contemporary Spanish rock to aboriginal flute music. But there are some real gems in the third category.
Interspersed throughout the band are radio stations of numerous, completely unidentifiable European (I would assume) languages. I have no absolutely no idea what they are saying but it is interesting to sit back and marvel at the diversity within such a small area of the world. That can pale in comparison to places like the Congo and Nigeria, that boast 500 languages each, but all those tribes don’t exactly run radio stations. I have also found several stations in French and Spanish, which at first was not the least bit surprising, except that I noticed that the announcers had thick Chinese accents and were talking incessantly about Beijing. They were all part of Chinese Radio International, apparently aimed at the Chinese diaspora living in Western Europe. That there are several of those and only one English language media conglomerate (BBC) on the Atlas airwaves is proof that the Chinese really are taking over the world. And then there is my favorite discovery: a station that only plays synthesized bird calls around the clock.
The confusing mélange of tongues and recent conversations with new volunteers who are struggling to communicate has been a real throwback to where I was 13 ½ months ago when I dropped by bags on the floor of my home-stay family’s house in this village. I do recall that my first email I sent out when I get here focused on that issue which is quite central to the volunteer’s experience. A lot has transpired since then, with the advent and passing of various professional and mental stages of my service. Through that time, my normal modes of communication have altered considerably as well. You may have noticed that I dropped little bits of French into my last few emails. This is not solely because I am pretentious. French has largely supplanted Tamazight (the Berber dialect) as my working-, and consequently, social-language. It may seem like a strange choice or even antithetical to the Peace Corps vision of getting down with the yokels. In Moroccan society, there are three levels of language that can be found and each generally indicates which echelon of society you occupy. At the bottom is Berber (where I reside), in the middle is Arabic (the national language) and at the top is French (where the money is). My decision to use the lower and upper level tongues makes me a somewhat strange anomaly around these parts, although that pattern is somewhat common amongst anti-Arab Berber intellectuals. Those guys would argue that Arabic is the real colonial language, but I will avoid politics tonight. Rather, I will take some excerpts from a journal entry from last November which elucidates my hitherto rationale.
“In explaining the reason to concomitantly learn French and Tamazight, I can offer the following analogy. Imagine you are a South Korean volunteer to teach and assist poor, immigrant Latino youth in forsaken Californian public schools. Upon arriving, you receive a rigorous, 10-week crash course in Spanish before commencing your job. However, you are taught only Mexican Spanish and the area you work in is culturally diverse, including Puerto Ricans, Cubans, El Salvadorians, Peruvians and Argentineans. While they can certainly speak to each other, you can hardly talk to the Mexicans, never mind the Caribbeans or the South Americans. Your job is to work with the children, hence the Spanish education, but you also required to speak with school administrators and local government. Each time you are required to meet one of them you pray that they are bilingual, but usually they are not. Each time you travel for work or pleasure, you search relentlessly for hotels and shops where your heavy Asian-accented Spanish will be understood, while most other people are baffled that you never learned English to live in the States. Now and then, you worry, ‘If I ever got into trouble, how would I ever speak to all of those red-blooded American doctors and policemen?’ Among the children, you are loved because you speak their language and you are occasionally offered invitations to go to their homes. Within their homes, though, you realize that the kids all actually speak Spanglish, which you have been honing, and it takes great effort to speak with their families, who speak español puro.”
At first I intended to try to develop the two concurrently and equally, but soon my interest in Berber diminished for multiple reasons. As a result, my conversational ability in Tamazight is pretty pathetic. But most conversations in Berber revolve around weather, the prices at the market for a kilo of bananas, and 20-minute introductions, all of which are repeated 3 or 4 times throughout dinner, so I am not really missing anything. The ability to work and socialize with teachers, engineers, national and regional associations; write grant proposals, emails, shared reports and text messages; read newspapers, magazines, government documents and other work-related releases more than compensates. To my surprise, many people who found out early on that I was trying to learn French refused to speak me in anything but that. It turns out I was the only person they know they could practice with after all those years of studying. Nonetheless, I remain an odd bird among my peers, which is nothing new.
Communicative ability makes or breaks volunteers, but not necessarily in the way one may think. To be sure, conversational adeptness can play a key role in your ability to speak with the average Moroccan Joe, thereby increasing your opportunities for establishing friendships. However, language does not equate with effectiveness; not in the least. On one hand, we have those who spend their two years perfecting the Moroccan gift of gab. I can think of one volunteer in particular who spoke very confident and emphatic Arabic after less than one year of working here. As we sat on the terrace of a café, I asked him what he did for work. He slouched back in his seat and grinned from ear to ear. “You’re looking at it,” he replied triumphantly, remarking later that, “I rather enjoy not working.” On the other hand, there are those volunteers who come here with a heart gushing full of blood but a head that is less than malleable in the language department (older folks, especially, have a difficult time picking up new languages). This obstacle infrequently bars such people from pursuing and achieving their goals. Some will perform much of their work through friends and colleagues who are willing to translate. Others find their low-verbal-communication niche which might entail focusing on younger children; generous use of photocopies; a trusty pocket-sized notepad and pen for sketching; or frequent, amusing games of charades. In the end, exactly how and with what words you performed your job is completely irrelevant. One could argue that those who rely on assistance from others are more effective, as they get members of the community involved in their work and transfer the skills and provide a more seamless transition to working without their Peace Corps volunteer. One could also argue that you simply have to communicate to get your point across. It’s a balancing act, really, and like everything in life, there is no yardstick for success.
P.S. If you ever thought of starting your own shortwave radio station, there seems to be some dead space in between 12.35 and 12.37 MHz begging to be filled.
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