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Health & Fitness

When Cultures Collide...

And the author is there, as usual, to make things worse.

     “Bleakish” is a word I heard to describe a cold, wet day and I was taken with the term, as it reminded me of something from Wuthering Heights with Cathy and Heathcliff on the misty moors and all that. I never heard anyone who wasn’t Jamaican use that word and it is one of many intriguing expressions I have heard throughout the years from my West Indian co-workers.

     “Let us watch some cars.”  Okay, what does that mean? Substitute look at for watch and you now know we are going to look at used cars.  I learned that a panamachete is a special type of machete used for cutting cane and is sharp at both sides, cutting two ways.  It is also a slang expression for a person who “cuts both ways.”

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     “This girl stays far from the kitchen” refers to a skinny woman. “He a talky-talky boy” is, of course, about a chatterbox.  Long hair is called “tall” and people from Dominica (not the Republic, but a tiny island near Trinidad) call closets lockers.  I even joined a sou-sou, which is a bank-free savings plan mostly used by women.

     For 5 years I worked with a nursing assistant who had a beautiful island accent, but it tended toward the Cockney side of English with the classic dropping of “h’s” where they were supposed to be and adding them where they did not belong. “Emma” was devoted to our patients at the large Nassau County hospital where I worked as a nurse and she was a regular Radar O’Reilly in many situations. “Can you please get me one of those, you know…” was all I had to say and she was right there with whatever we needed for a procedure.

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     Emma told me many stories about her childhood in Jamaica, including the time the Queen of England was to pass through their town.  This caused massive excitement but also strife as the children were expected to stand on the side of the road, smiling and waving, while wearing shoes. This was a dreadful expense and nobody wanted to be wearing shoes anyway but the teachers all felt the Queen might be offended if the kids were barefoot. A great effort was made to make her alleged Majesty feel comfortable. (This is where the author says nothing about imperialism, colonialism, slavery and the British monarchy.)

     “Mangoes saved our lives” tells you almost all you need to know about a childhood of deprivation.  Emma said her mother worked very hard to feed the family and had a job breaking up rocks to make gravel.  Shallow as I am, all I could think of when hearing that was the song that goes: “Breaking rocks in the HOT sun, I fought the law and the law won.”

     Emma had a lovely singing voice and it soon came to my attention that she did not know the Star Spangled Banner. She was a naturalized citizen and very patriotic so I taught her the lyrics and had her learn the tune from people who were not tone deaf.  One doctor heard her singing it and vowed to send a recording to the Knicks, so she could sing before a game.  In exchange, she taught me the 23rd Psalm, which I can still recite as well as any Protestant.

     Single and childfree, she worked several side jobs to have a nice car, jewelry, designer clothes and quality furniture.  She could not believe I had no interest in possessing such items. I understand now how an immigrant might feel that having fancy things made them more like a real American, a concern I did not have.  She was appalled to learn that I was moving and only renting a U-Haul Van instead of a big moving truck with people who do the work for you. “When will you ‘ire de Hue-All?” she asked.

     This was my Professor Higgins Rain in Spain moment.  If I could get her to say that one sentence correctly, maybe everything else would fall into place.

     We spent quite some time on this, our patients enthusiastically offering helpful suggestions in how to enunciate “did you hire the U-Haul.”  Emma particularly wanted to stop using “de” instead of “th” which she felt was low class and reeked of patois, the dialect created to confound the oppressors in the West Indies. We even tried singing some of the H words, a trick used by stutterers. Noteworthy is the fact that many non-Americans automatically sing with an American accent but never speak with one; British rockers are famous for that.

     The big day arrived and I presented my protégé to a crowd of 5 or 6 co-workers. “Listen to this perfect English sentence” I said, or something equally foolish.  Emma’s smile faded, she stammered and finally said “Darcy, did you get de damn truck?”

     That was the end of my little experiment especially since hearing my own whiny Long Island accent on voice mails. As always, the one needing the most improvement is clearly I.





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