My new word for the day
I used to think I had good French until I drove a car from LeHarvre to Lourdes. I discovered that, while I could rabbit on about the “plume de ma tante” etc, at a fair pace, when it came to the inner workings of the automobile, I was dumbstruck. I barely knew the word for petrol, let alone all the terms that have become commonplace since the man on the Clapham omnibus started driving a model T Ford. One could blame my teachers, but at the time I was learning French, I had no need for such words and didn’t bother to learn them. Now that I need, them, my grey matter seems unwilling to absorb them. That is, as they say, life.
I had a similar experience this week with the word “Zhan Peng”. It means tent, and until now, it is not an expression I have had need of. The Chinese aren’t the great outdoors type, and there was no Chinese Baden Powel to encourage boy scouts to hike long distance to endure the dubious pleasure of singing songs around the campfire, having cooked dinner in a Billy Can. Until now, I have had little use for the word and so, when the subject came up, I was not racking my brains for a Chinese character I once knew, (a common experience, given the quality of my Chinese) but instead was sent scrambling for my trusty partner in such circumstances, the online dictionary.
Sadly, the scramble was not predicated on the prospect of a bracing hike, designed to ensure a health mind in a health body, but rather on the needs of the relief effort in Sichuan, and bringing a semblance of a home to 5 million people. The number is staggering. Imagine the entire population of Ireland homeless overnight and one begins to get the scale of the situation. Tents are being manufactured on an enormous scale but cannot meet the demand. Jinde Charities with Caritas Germany have already flown in two batches this week and another arrives on the 2nd June. My ‘great outdoors’ view of the tent is that of the extra lightweight, two man affair which hikers can carry easily. The ones being brought into the earthquake zone however are an altogether different matter. They have to strong enough to be home to an entire family for months (one fears to say years) to come. The logistics in getting the “portable homes” to the places where they are most needed, even with the best of intentions, are complex and stressful. Cross-cultural expectations of how the process is managed have to be negotiated carefully. Luckily for us, Jinde Charity team in the field have good logistical skills and the tact to match, so the tents are moving more or less as planned.
Right the word for the day is “tents”. But given the scale of the disaster, I fear there are many new words to be added to my Chinese lexicon in the weeks and months ahead. I don’t know the words for “daily calorie intake”, “functioning primary education”, “elderly support programmes, and “sustainable recovery schemes”. I had assumed that, after earlier diligence, I could rest on my linguistic laurels. Ultimately, struggling to learn these new phrases is, a mild inconvenience only. For 5 million people, they represent life lived with the semblance of order and dignity. The nuisance of going back to school is a small price to pay for the privilege of being present, even though remotely, with the victims of the Wenchuan Earthquake. Pray for us