Oh, so you don't know...?

One thing we learned early on about non-literate cultures is that they think differently from literate people. They are extremely smart people, just in a different way than school-educated people. As Jim often says, they do not use palm pilots or computers, but their brains retain huge volumes of information. We've known people to memorize the entire New Testament just by listening to it repeatedly.

Repetition is the key. I'll never forget how frustrated I used to get with the endless question and answers I'd repeat with Quiche pastors. Pronounced Kee-CHAY.

Jim would spend his days going to nearby villages that spoke Quiche, and I would stay home and try to have kindergarten with Christopher and Timmy, who were six and almost five. It was futile enough with the two "little ones" - Mike and Hannah - getting into things around the house, but to make it worse, we had a constant barrage of visitors knocking at the door looking for Jim. This is how I remember it.

Knock-knock-knock
Greeting (long, drawn out greeting in Spanish by two non-Spanish-as-a-first-language speakers, the Quiche pastor and myself) "Hello. How did you wake up? And your family? Did they all wake well? Blah, blah, blah."

For the sake of your time, you can skim over the rest of this to get the gist, but for full effect, you have to read the English translation S-L-O-W-L-Y until you are losing your mind like I used to.

Visitor: "Is Hermano Santiago (Jim) home?"
Me: "No, he isn't here."
Visitor: "So ... he's not home?"
Me: "No, I'm sorry, he's not here."

(Long pause)

Visitor: "When will he be back?"
Me: "I'm not sure when he'll be back."
Visitor: "Oh ... so you don't know when he'll be back?
Me: "No, I don't know when he'll be home."

(Long pause during which I notice my little students have sneaked out the back door and are now hanging from the trees in front of the house)

Visitor: "If I come back at in the afternoon, will he be back then?"
Me: "I don't know what time he will be back."
Visitor: "Oh ... so you don't know when he'll be back?"
Me: "No, I have no idea what time he will be home."

This used to go on and on until I finally established that Jim would certainly be home by late in the evening. By the time the visitor would leave, following a lengthy farewell ("Send my greetings to Jim. Blah, blah, blah. Have a nice day. May the Lord bless you.") and I had finally gathered the boys back to the kitchen table to continue a reading lesson, we'd hear knock-knock-knock (or actually the equivalent, which was a mere greeting shouted faintly through the door), followed by the EXACT same question and answer sequence you just read. No kidding. Almost word-for-word. If there was anything to make me question their non-literate status, it was my suspicion that each pastor was passing along a written script to the next one. "Here, follow this text. It will make Santiago's wife go nuts!"

By the end of the morning, I had about decided I should teach my children this alternate way of learning and retaining information since it was unlikely I would ever be able to complete a single lesson, let alone teach them to read and become truly literate. It was the ultimate in cross-cultural stress and frustration.

Finally I appealed to Jim to PLEASE set up regular office hours so these poor guys would know exactly when to find him at home. We decided together that he would always be home on Saturday. That would be simple. I could stop the crazy question and answer by short-cutting to the end. Right? No such thing. It only varied the sequence.

"Is Hermano Santiago here?" (slowly spoken)
(Quickly replied) "No, but he WILL be here on Saturday if you want to come back then!"
"Oh... so he's not here?"
"No, he's not here."

"When will he be back?"
"I don't know when he'll be back, BUT HE'LL BE HERE ON SATURDAY!"
"Oh ... so you don't know when he'll be back?"

And so forth. You get the idea.

Well, they did catch on to this new bit of information. Saturday was the only day to reliably catch Santiago at home. The first Saturday I was awakened shortly before 6:00 A.M. with a man's voice hollering outside our door, "Is Hermano Santiago at home?" Yep, it was Saturday! I hadn't specified what TIME on Saturday. From then on, Saturdays became the day I put on the coffee early, and made plenty of pancakes for whoever might drop by. In their defense, many of these men took the bus to see us, and they arrived at whatever time the bus dropped them off.

I used to joke that I could write a really powerful paraphrase of the Bible, Quiche-dialog-style.

"Jesus is coming again."
"Oh, so he's coming again?"
"Yes, he is coming again."

"When is He coming?"
"We don't know when He is coming."
"Oh, so we don't know when he's coming?"
"No, we don't know when He is coming."

"Is He coming tomorrow?"
"We don't know if He's coming tomorrow."
Etc.

Then again, maybe my paraphrase could become an obnoxious worship song with endless repetition. Oops. I just let my bias slip. Maybe my bias against repetition comes from those early years in Guatemala that were so productive for Jim, and so terribly frustrating for me as a homeschool teacher.

Thinking back to my post a couple of days ago about the kind of people God puts in my path to show me what I am to Him... I guess He must get plenty frustrated with how many TIMES He must repeat a lesson before I finally "get it!"