Snow - A Cultural Exchange

Angel, a coworker, approaches me. She is the receptionist of the Health Center, and says “Caitie, I have a facebook but no friends, will you help me.”

Facebook is a new thing here. It is expensive to go online, so while most people have a facebook there are usually no pictures, friends, or anything written on walls. But it is still a big thing to have one. Oh the joys of globalization.

We get on facebook, and I instantly friend her. The next hour is spent looking through my photos, her asking me millions of questions: What is this? What is that? Who is that? What are you doing?  And explaining everything I possibly can with a language barrier. We happen upon one of my favorite photos (see photo below.) It is the street where I lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I took the photo during an epic snow day my senior year of college. Greenpoint was my home away from home, and Brooklyn will always be a home to me. A place, I hope, one-day to return to. I have never felt so much like myself in any other place besides New York. 

Angel points to the snow covering the cars. “What is this?” She says pointing the curser over the snow-covered sections.

“That is snow”

“What is snow?”

“Snow is wonderful.” I say without thinking.  

“What is wonderful?”

In Kinyarwanda, the national language, they don’t have many adjectives, or adjectives at all for that matter. I should also note that if Angel and I were to be tested, me in Kinyarwanda, and she in English, the results would probably be the same. She understands when I speak English, but can only speak very minimal English. I find that I have to decode most of what she is saying, because she knows a lot of English words but cannot properly string them together in a sentence. Her sentences sound a bit like Yoda.

Cat I hear want you. For example. She means: I heard you want a cat. I’ve had a month of practicing this, and I’ve gotten pretty good at decoding.

I’m sure I speak the same way in Kinyarwanda. We have an odd relationship of speaking a mix of Kinyarwanda and English, and eventually understanding each other through using both languages.

I spent the next half hour trying to explain snow, and failing miserably. “Is it like sugar but cold?” “Kind of,” I would respond, “but not as sticky, it is light.” “Light like the flashlight?” Again, I find the lack of adjectives in Kinyarwanda frustrating.  Likewise, if a Rwandan studies English, they usually don’t study adjectives because they don’t translate.

Through all the mess and confusion it suddenly dawned on me. In a place where cold things don’t exist (they don’t understand why I like cold water) I remember there is a fridge in the Laboratory for all the blood, urine, and other samples. I grab her hand and waltz over there. I open the fridge, scrap some frost off the side with my finger, and tell her snow is like this.

She touches my finger, and immediately steps back.

“Ah, that is bad.”

“No it is wonderful.”

In a country where, on the unusual occasion the temperature drops under 80 degrees, and winter jackets surface, I’ve should’ve seen this coming. Honestly, L.L.Bean, North Face, giant puffy jackets, Americans use in the dead of winter are worn as if it were mid-January in North Eastern America. In the event of an Ice Age I have little faith in the survival of Rwandans.

I tried to explain the wonderful nature of snow, all the great things about it. We even goggled pictures of children playing in snow to show her how happy people were about it.  But it was lost on her. She was freaked out that was cold, and that this coldness covers the whole land. “Eh, how do you live?!” Angel repeats over and over again.

Sometimes I forget that it’s September. It’s the beginning of the rainy season, which is not as bad as it sounds. It rains for at least two hours a day, but the rain here is warm, and needed. The temperature has cooled off considerably, but it still reminds me of a hot summers day in August on most days. And therefore I forget that in America the temperatures are cooling, and the leaves are going to start to change, or have already started to change. It is one of the things I will miss most in my two years. Fall, and snow. I love snow, unlike Angel I think it’s wonderful, and will be greatly missed.