Speak

For Tristan.

I remember being puzzled when I discovered on my very first day of engineering school that the first three days were entirely dedicated to a seminar on communication. Even more so, when during the first hour I learnt for the first time that while words matter, 70% of actual communication is expressed  by the body. Fast forward a few years later and I like this idea a lot. This sort of physical telekinesis that links us and the agreeable feeling not being a machine simply transmitting a flux of perfectly formulated data. The space for interpretation, guessing and imagination. With hindsight I am not sure on how this figure of 70% was ever calculated and at the same time convinced that there is quite some latitude in non-verbal communication. A simple example would be to watch kids meeting and playing together at the park. Or me playing with kids in a camp called Djabbut. The game was then called how many photos can we take before getting tired and the answer is at least 500. So to make this first answer short and clear, I am amazed at how much communication is possible without using a single word.

photo by Marinel, 7.

I have two great examples here to share with you.
The first one is very straightforward. In a camp called Kaniapan, there is a girl about 8 to 10 which is called Monika, or Awet depending who you ask. I noticed at first how much she was staring at us and finally found out that she is deaf. Nonetheless, we had a good time playing to catch all sort of animal in the camp in glass bottles, laughing at the horrible faces we had in photos we took and going on adventures around the camp.

Fitting Monika's new green bracelet.

Number two is a bit closer to you, especially if you are using the mobile version of our blog. Angry birds, Doodle Jump, Flow Free, Flappy bird... Despite being as young as 5 and having a style of life as different as could be from ours, I can tell you that it takes about 10 seconds for the kids, and adults alike, to get to grips with my phone. I also happily shared it for them to make photos and video clips. The one way to make a whole camp laugh is the slo-mo video mode where I get footage of kids and me doing all sorts of jumps and acrobatic stunt.

Captivating screen.

So, answering the first question communication with no words is possible. Of course understanding simple things like the aim of the trip you are gladly invited to join is a plus. The one thing that is complicated is that in the place we work people use mostly a dialect called Paranan, with no book or dictionary available, as there are only 1500 speakers. Most of them also understand Tagalog, which is the main Filipino language. After now 7 months, I must say that my skills in Tagalog are pretty awful. I guess the mixed language environment pushed me to a strategy where I learnt quite a few everyday words and expression, but I do not know which language they belong to. Nor do I understand anything about constructing a sentence. Despite this, I can go around greeting people in the morning with a nice 'Mapiya Dimadimang' reproduced here by adults and kids respectively.

I can carry on asking how was the night fishing, if they wish to share a cup of coffee and their plans for the day. Where it may get a bit awkward for me is when then we are having our cups filled with the warm beverage and I want to carry the discussion. Let's see, I can tell them the coffee is hot, but I guess they have figured that out by now, or should I simply say good morning again? Well, the good thing here is that, the Agta don't expect you to interact based on the ground of physical proximity, and in French the concept awkward do not really exists, so you can relax and enjoying watching the camp activity quietly.

Of course sometime this isn’t enough, either the Agta start to chat you and fully expect you to answer or when you actually need to express more complicated thoughts than ‘here is your coffee’.  This is where our Team of Translator came in handy.

Ate Christe, Girly and Aima

It took some time and effort to find them, but I must say they are doing a great job. For translation of course but also by helping us understanding the local traditions and organising our trips to different camps.  They  negotiate prices in shops and convince people to welcome us in their camps when it is our first trip there. We share all the good as well as the difficult situations together and I must say that I will miss our companions when we leave.

Medical survey at Didikeg

Time to cook dinner

Ok, I must admit it, the lost in translation effect is real and comes into play often unexpectedly. One night we were in Cauayan city in our Favorite Restaurant, Amorfino. And as often when back in town our appetite was about half what it was when in England. And because I love those Cheese-stuffed chilies of their I explained that I wanted to order only a small plate of them, being ready to pay the full but not to waste those tasty starters. She asked me quite a few times to repeat what I was after. I repeated one more time: a small plate of chilies.
And here we are twenty minutes later with a waitress very proud to bring me a big full plate of very small chillies…

I must agree I digressed a bit here so as a conclusion to this article I share here more audio clips in order to share with you the happy sounding language of Palanan.

Anin : Awesome, sick bro, amazing.


Asus: Dammit, WTF?, whoops.


And finally, some extracts of conversation. The first about how cool my recorder was and the second about medical matters.

With love,

Wasabi.