Oh the Language Barrier

Today I was reminded of what a HUGE barrier not being able to speak the language is in this context. We have a night guard who watches our house every night from 6PM-6AM. He's become like a protective father figure and loves teaching us new swahili words every night when he comes. A few days ago he started talking about his kids and one miss-communication led to the next and we ended up with the impression that he was talking about marriage with either himself or his son, neither of which are really topics we wanted to discuss! Even after having a Kenyan neighbor do some translating for us, we were still very confused and a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing. Finally today we had our supervisor come and sort things out, and it turns out we were totally misunderstanding him. He was so upset that we might think he was implying something like that and insisted (now he's even said it in his own words!) that he's like a father to us and we are like daughters and sons to him. He was only trying to teach us swahili when all the confusion happened. Praise God!

I am so releived all that is over with, but I know it's not the last of the blunders we're going to make while trying to learn the language and culture. It can be so frustrating listening to someone go on and on desperately trying to make you understand, but only being able to catch a random verb or noun here and there. I am begging God to make us understand the language in miraculous time, but I know that I am learning patience and humility in the meantime. And all things considered, this was a lesser mistake than many possible ones we narrowly escape every day! Just ask our language teacher; she spends half the class time correcting us and trying not to laugh at all the ridiculous and/or embarrassing things we accidentally say! As long as they get corrected in the classroom before we blurt it out in public, I'm ok with being laughed at. :)