Speaking in Stick Figures
When asked how many languages I speak, I usually joke ‘about 0.5’.
As a communication student, this isn’t technically true. However, it does reflect my lack of confidence when pronouncing new words, and place names, and foreign foods... So when it was recommended that we learn some Bahasa Indonesia, I felt out of my depth. ‘I can’t learn a new language,’ I thought, ‘I stumble over English as it is…’
Needless to say, I was a major liability when playing Chinese Whispers at the local school
It was with very few Bahasa words that I entered Desa Tanjung, an island village in the Riau Provence of Indonesia. We were tasked to learn from the local villagers about their lives and knowledge of Peatland restoration. My plan – to smile as much as possible and lean heavily on our translators.
This plan had one major flaw – having a translator.
On the first night in the village, I took out my notepad to take some notes on what we had learnt so far. As soon as I started writing I had two 10-year-old boys leaning over my shoulder, watching me. I instinctively gave the notebook and pen to them, encouraging them to write. Suddenly shy, I prompted them by writing my own name. Within a minute I had the names of the four children in the house and we had formed a circle around my notepad.
Our stick figure families
I looked up to see our translators, Sovi and Ilham, deep in conversations of their own. So instead of relying on speech, I started to draw. I drew my family and indicated to the children to do the same. I drew my house, and they drew their house. Soon they were drawing their favourite sports, what crops their father’s grew, and writing their ages.
I’m not going to say that it was straight-forward. It was hard work to think of the next thing to draw and how to communicate it. But this moment, sitting on the floor surrounded by vivid turquoise walls and friendly unfamiliar faces, was pure and memorable and reassuring.
Reassuring that I could connect with these people, whose lives were so different from my own. That it didn’t matter if I couldn’t pronounce their words. I just needed to smile and find a common medium to share our similarities.
My communication skills were tested further the next day, when Sovi fell ill two minutes into our participatory workshop. Here I was, with 40 people gathered around me, and no common language. Low and behold the stick figures came to the rescue. Together, we completed a matrix ranking exercise and two solution trees primarily communicating through my drawings, and enthusiastic hand gestures.
Desa Tanjung has taught me that you don’t need language to find reasons to connect and laugh and learn. You just need to smile and sit on the floor and give the pen to someone else.
