Language Barriers

Yes, it is true that this subject was bound to come up at one point in the blog, but I didn't expect it to be the result of a situation like this.

I only have one class on Friday and so I was home by 11:30 today. I ate lunch with Majda and Mamoun, and Majda asked me if I would like to go swimming with her in the afternoon. Since Anne has class until 7pm, I accepted and loaded up my bag for the gym. I packed my suit, a towel, shorts, a tshirt and a water bottle.

It was a French gym as opposed to a Moroccan one (still have no idea what the difference is). The gym was pretty typical except the women and men had completely separate quarters. We swam first, and then we took a sauna. Majda doesn't speak any English, but we had an enjoyable time and I was able to make some small talk and understand what she said to me. She needed to pick up Mamoun from school and run some errands and offered to pick me up after.

We went out to the room with the treadmills and weights. Majda spoke to the trainer, letting her know that I was a guest and that I can only kind of speak French. The trainer asked what I would like to do. I indicated the treadmill (I haven't learned that French word yet, but I'll look it up tonight), and she led me to them and began to walk me through how it worked with actions. It was not my first time on a treadmill, and in addition, all the buttons were labelled in English. However, I politely nodded along and thanked her for her help.

When I finished running I decided to lift a little. When I got to the lat pulldown (see picture for reference), I confidently sat down and began pulling as I have done hundreds of times before, pulling down the bar in front of me with my arms about shoulder length apart. Before I knew it, the trainer had come over to tell me that I was doing it all wrong. She told me I must put my hands on the very outside of the bar and pull down behind my head (not wrong, but I don't prefer the hunchback look that this can result in). I politely tried to explain, in my limited French, that I had been instructed otherwise in the U.S. However, when she insisted, I switched to her way to finish my set and then moved on to another machine.

Before I had even completed my first set on the next machine, another woman approached. "Do you have questions on how to use the machine?" she asked in English. For a moment I was confused.

"No, thank you, I'm doing fine," I replied.

"She," pointing to the trainer, "said she could not explain to you, that you didn't understand. Are you sure you are fine?"

Then we made small talk for a while, and she invited me to have dinner at her house, that she would give me the address the next time she saw me.

The frustrating part of not being able to speak fluently in another language is that it is hard to defend oneself. I knew how to do the exercise. I understood the trainer's recommendations. Heck, I even adapted just so she would know I understood.

The situation was frustrating, but it also made me almost laugh outloud. I loved how everyone was so concerned and wanted to help me with the machines, but if I had needed help, directions on how to use the machine were, in fact, written on the machine. On every machine, there were drawings with very articulate directions on how exactly to use each and every one. How do I know that they had perfectly adequate directions you may ask? Well, even though my French may still be sub par, and I find it hard to communicate just how much I understand, and I may appear to be rather slow and unintelligent to just about every Moroccan I have met, I know that the directions were perfectly adequate because they were written in English, only English. My language. A language I pride myself on knowing quite well. Yes, they were American weight machines.