Gaining Access to "Otherness"

It's hard for me to imagine a place more "other" than Laos.  At times, as I attempt to look objectively at what attracted me to my wife, I wonder if that's it--her "otherness."  Of course, when I became attracted to her--at 15--I had no idea intellectually about "otherness" or what it entailed.  Rather, I had an American ideal of class-, gender- and racelessness in mind that amounted to something like this: underneath your skin we're all the same--you're exactly like me.  Fortunately, I've learned since then that the midwestern American male is anything but the common denominator in global personality.

My tour through "otherness" first happened through food.  Not long after we started dating, my mother-in-law made me kwa mi, more famously known as "pad thai," literally stir-fried noodles with chicken pieces and probably some green onion.  Of course there was sticky rice and sai gok, dark red-brown Chinese sausage, and that other Chinese staple, egg rolls.  But later there was pho, beef noodle soup seasoned to your own personal liking by mixing four flavors:  sweet, sour, salty, and--that completely "other" flavor to the upper midwest--spicy.  And then there was the unimaginable:  tripe and ant eggs and on and on.  In short, for me the revolution in "otherness" that was Lao food was not unlike Peter's shock at the vision of the sheet coming down from heaven, introducing him to pork: it blew my little mind.

Over the years, I've become exposed to other things Lao if not immersed in them: music, dance, dance, gaming, family customs, sport.  However, a larger reality looms.  We are seriously exploring the possibility of a month-long trip to Laos, which leaves me to contemplate just how serious we are and I am about this trip into otherness.  Why undertake this voyage that will knock a hole in our savings, going to an unpredictable country with children who will probably not see the point of it?  I have visions of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake dancing in my heads:  children who are hot and miserable and spoiled whining about just wanting to go home to play video games. 

But after 20 years of my wife's acquaintance, this possible trip to Laos has led me to another level of "otherness"--that of language.  After 20 years of picking up about one word a year (words for food, bathroom, mother, yes, no, thank you, spicy, sweet, sour, bitter, salty, meat, assorted food dishes, go, home, hot, cold, play cards, and, oh yes, I almost forgot, the private parts of both men and women, which have substituted for the English words as we teach our children about the world), I bought a Lao for Beginners book and CD set which I can listen to on the commute. 

It becomes even more apparent to me now how arrogant I've been in thinking I can have access to an "other" culture without knowing the language.  Without language one can't think inside another culture, only think outside it.  This is not to say, of course, that with three beginning Lao CDs--that have taught me such things as that great insider phrase, "Please speak slowly so I can understand you"--that I suddenly have real access to the culture.  Rather, with the hours and hours of work that I've spent trying to learn the difference in tones between "ma" (dog), "ma" (horse), and "ma" (come), I've realized how infinitely far I have to go to really gain access.

And yet knowing even little glimpses into how the language is constructed in relation to reality begins to open up that world of "otherness" in little ways.  For example, the list of family relationships which seems to not just differentiate older and younger brother and sister by modifiers ("older," "younger") but by a special term says something about the importance of family relationships.  As another, the word for river is ma nom, literally (I think) "mother-water," a word that communicates the importance of the Mekong river both mythically and economically to a landlocked country.

In light of this discussion of language and otherness, it becomes striking to me that there is such a lack of emphasis on teaching another language in our schools. It speaks of us being satisfied with the world we know--our world as it's constructed by our language.  But how do we know we haven't maligned our world in the way we see it through our language to a degree that makes it unimaginably different than what it is? 

Perhaps this attributes more power to language than it should.  I don't mean that we necessarily construct a world through language, but it certainly fashions our vision.  However, if--especially as Christians--we're serious about knowing our world and knowing ourselves, then we need to know "otherness," and if we need to know "otherness" we can only gain access to that otherness, it seems to me now, through language.