Tag: Language school

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A Morning Laugh

The key slipped easily into its slot. I was downtown Nairobi, standing before a bank of metal post office boxes. The bold figures on our assigned box – shared by others of our same mission – read 30207.  Drawing out the few pieces of mail bearing the Lout name I paused at one marked with a Louisiana address. I recognized the sender though we hadn’t been in touch since I left San Antonio more than a year ago. I turned the envelope a couple times. How about this. . . What’s Ray up to these days?

Ann and I had passed through our first Nairobi, Kenya months in a seeming blur, a lot of new happening. New friends, new apartment, new culture and new car. . .New baby.

Julie Ann Lout made her squalling entry to Nairobi Hospital July 13, 1972 – a bare six weeks after our Africa landing. Our most joyous moment since Ann and I exchanged our vows.

A few weeks later I engaged another kind of new. A new language.

We found we were short on funds to cover both an insurance payment coming due and my Swahili School entrance fee. By now the language studies were underway. The money worries burdened me.

On the post-office-visit day I had awakened about 5 o’clock. Our little studio flat came with an oddly arranged self-contained kitchen, separate from the rest, making possible an inviting private space for alone-time. Before boiling some coffee water I slid a chair near me and knelt before it. And found myself questioning.

Laugh? I’m to laugh?

My questioning was reaction to a direct, uninvited impression that entered my mind some moments after I knelt. “Laugh. . . simply give your voice to laughing. . . laugh.”  To consult my feelings seemed pointless. I felt like doing any number of things. Return to bed. Bemoan our money shortfall. Worry.

The word ‘laugh’ persisted, like a gentle command. A few moments passed.

OK, here goes.

“hahaha”. “hahaha”. “hahaha”.

The sounds coming quietly off my tongue were flat, lifeless as a corpse, ricocheting the yellow-painted walls of my small enclosure.  I realized that no smile accompanied my attempted laugh. Alright.

I’ll smile. I willed my face to the posture. By now, though, I had begun sensing that God’s Spirit was likely behind this unorthodox exercise. That something special may await.

Several seconds of emotionless chuckling directed upward stretched into a minute or so. For the most part my eyes stayed open, as the practice didn’t seem entirely like prayer anyway.

What happened next, there in my early-morning space, surprised me. And revisited my thinking later in the day when reading the Louisiana-stamped letter. The impact was profound.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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Cajun Surprise

The joy-stream inside me began as a trickle and broadened soon to a rippling brook, before breaking out in overflow. Like Old Faithful awash in laughter.

The contrast was stark. My mood of just moments before had been glum.

Merely responding to an inner prompting to laugh surely couldn’t lead to such a free-spirited abundance of peace?

Irrational, even hypocritical as the laughing exercise at first seemed, my hollow ha-ha-ha’s at some point crossed a threshold. As if persistence made possible the passing of a baton. To a literal spirit of laughter.

Regardless how it all may have gone, one thing was certain.

The money-worry lifted – indeed it had vanished. A bubbly joy giving rise to effortless, authentic laughter washed over my heart and mind. Nothing felt a threat or burden, not CPK Language School fees. Not a looming insurance bill. Still I was rational, knowing a full day of normal, responsible activities lay ahead. An unvoiced assurance had settled in that all was well.

Four hours later I drew open a post office box and spotted a letter marked Louisiana. And started to read.

“Hi Jerry and Ann. I hope you all are doin’ well.”

I smiled as Ray Manguno’s easy-going Cajun brogue drifted into my hearing via the eye gate as I read.

“Well, I’m out in Alabama’s back-country doing evangelistic work. I’m preaching some night services at a little church. . .”

Ray then spoke of a practice he followed when preaching revival meetings.

“I always preach one evening on foreign missions, the call to get God’s message out across the world. I always raise an offering on that missions night, passing the plate so the local gathering can send a gift to whoever their church supports outside the country.”

As I read, curiosity stirred, Where’s my college pal headed with this? I glanced the added paper insert that had dropped from the envelope.

“Well,” Ray continued, “when the service ended the pastor came over to me a little embarrassed. He said, ‘Brother Raymond, our church doesn’t support any missionary. In fact. . . we don’t even know a missionary we could send this money to. . . Do you know anyone who could use the offering?’”

“‘Well, pastor,’ ” I said to him, ‘I actually have a couple on my mind right now.’”

“Now, Brother Jerry. . . and Ann, I want to tell you all that for the past few days I had been having you in my thoughts. Actually, the sight of your faces came up before me ahead of my time to preach here at this church on missions.

“So anyway, that kind of explains how the enclosed gift is for you guys.”

I sat in our white VW Bug with its KNZ 948 license plate, and rehearsed the story in silence, re-reading it slowly, word by word. Taking in the dollar amount registered on the American bank check I was sure it sufficed to cover our two crucial bills.

It was then I let out a whoop. “Praise you, Father! Thank you, thank you, Lord.” I thought of my wife.

Wait ‘til Ann sees this.

Pausing again, I recalled the early morning laughing spell and wagged my head in a mix of gratefulness and wonder. I steered the Volkswagen into traffic.

My accelerator foot experienced a slight weight gain en route home.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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In A Manner Of Speaking

“La!”

The roundish, baldish, gruffish language tutor prided himself in his home area’s version of the Swahili language. After all, his was the Coast Swahili variety. Only Kenya’s neighbor to the south, Tanzania, could compete with the gold standard Swahili spoken along the teacher’s Indian Ocean region. His voice was raspy, making him seem harsher than he really was. His sudden “La!” (No!) was instantly followed by a terse scold, “Up-country Swahili!” With little patience for poorly-spoken words, the aging gent spat out the phrase as if evicting a live wasp from his mouth.

It was through this mwalimu mzee (elder instructor) I first caught the need to communicate well in another culture. This was further driven home once our stay in the Capital ended. Through a much-loved missionary headmistress whose wrinkle-teased eyes constantly twinkled and whose tongue offered up wisdom and wit by the kilo. . . “I believe I understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure that what I said is what you thought I meant.” A sampling of Elizabeth Ridenour’s way of making the point.

Some places are not the best for a native English-speaker to learn the Swahili language. Nairobi was one of them. A recommended, though challenging way, to master a new language is through a method called immersion learning. Learning by immersion happens when everybody around the student understands and speaks the desired language, but do not speak the student’s language. A sink or swim approach.

By the time most Nairobi kids reached adolescence they were fluent in two or more languages. And with English the nation’s official language – in government-sponsored places like post office, secondary schools and parliament – young people thirsted to know English. During my language school months, the moment I tried bumbling through half a sentence of Swahili in the company of a teenager, the youngster was already responding in crisp, fluent English.

Meaningful practice of the African dialect outside the classroom was rare.

I was dead set on communicating well – as Mwalimu Mzee insisted. With proper ‘textbook grammar’, exact pronunciation. . . Coast–like. That was my aim. And I must not yield to the great linguistic sin – any use of upcountry Swahili.

Months passed. Classes ended. The Mission assigned us to a remote station hundreds of miles further inland from the Coast. How would my textbook Swahili do. . . there in the place we were to live and serve?

Upcountry.

©2017 Jerry Lout