Author: Paula

Travel Language

Travel language

Bert and I are multilingual speakers in travel language.  Bert actually is proficient in seven languages and I can get by in three and a half. Travel language is different in that it means being able to greet, ask a few very important questions and say goodbye in the language spoken in whatever country you are.  Given our passion for travel we have mastered the stock phrases like  good morning, yes, no, please, thank you, where is the bathroom, a beer please, my name is… in many languages.  

Greek is Greek to me.  Here I was throwing around Kalimera,  Efharisto and parakalo with aplomb to our waiter who was so impressed he offered to teach us more Greek.  He showed us what those words looked like written in Greek.  I looked, I saw and decided this was unconquerable. I was reminded of the oft repeated verse of my high school days when I was studying another ancient language.

Latin is a language

As dead as dead can be

At first it killed the Romans

And now it’s killing me.

Now take Swedish.  Please. It has special significance.  We have family there. I love to hear Swedish spoken but I find it very difficult to learn.  My niece and I have a continuous game.  When we are together I have to say sjukhus and she has to say unbelievable.  For some reason those words are unpronounceable to us in each other’s languages.  She cannot get those syllables coming out the correct way and when I say sjukhus it comes out  ‘cookhouse’.  You should know that sjukhus means hospital. Dissected it seems logical,   sjukhus = sick house= place for sick people = hospital. The Swedish mouth says it so ‘Swedely’.  Coming from my mouth it is bizarre to say the least.  If you are sick would you choose to go to a cookhouse?

Our winter in Bali gave us an opportunity to enhance our vocabulary beyond the norm.  The official language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesian, but there are over 300 dialects spoken. We were in Bali so we tried to speak Balinese.  One bonus of our diligence is that  as cruisers we travel on ships with Indonesian crew and they are always pleasantly surprised when right away I greet them in their own language. I can also tell the Balinese the order of their birth by reading their name tags.

In South Africa I seem to understand more than I should in Afrikaans but not isiZulu, the most populous language. Afrikaans is similar enough to the Dutch language that although my husband did not teach me much Dutch I can maneuver through it somewhat. I do not speak Dutch but I could find my way around in The Netherlands and, surprise, South Africa.

The Meander: Travel language is minimal communication that brings a great reward.  Say the simplest word or phrase in the local tongue and the smiles get bigger, the help is forthcoming, the warmth spreads and the welcome more expansive. The effort is very much appreciated

Suspicions confirmed

Suspicions confirmed.

“Yes, Mrs. De Ronde, your husband has early to mid stage dementia/Alzheimer’s disease.”

I heard the words. They did not register or perhaps they did at a depth not yet plumbed.  My stomach moved and there was fuzziness in my brain. I saw a long, dark, dense, never ending tunnel.  There was a total absence of light. My heart lost a beat or two then started again.

It was perhaps two years previous that I had begun to suspect that something was not quite right.  Sure, my Bert was older than me.  It was a subject for teasing throughout our marriage.  Comments like ‘robbing the cradle’ would come up now and then always with a laugh.  We often observed that though  younger I would perhaps die first as Bert had the better genes.  Then at his 80th birthday party I noticed that he did not remember our friends’ names and he was asking me to remind him who some of them were. If they were people we did not see from one year to another it would not have made an impact, but these were close friends.

I passed it off as that old age thing creeping up on us and the usual forgetfulness that comes with it, that there was no reason to worry.  He was entitled to be a little forgetful.  Heck, I also suffered from that forgetfulness syndrome too. I had walked into the bedroom from the kitchen and forgotten why I went there in the first place.

Then nine months prior to downsizing, as we were preparing our home for sale, I asked Bert to take some table linens downstairs to the laundry room.  He was gone for about five minutes then he came back to me and asked me where he should put the tablecloths.  I said: “In the laundry room”.  I watched as he walked out of the kitchen, through the dining room and to the living room.  He stopped, looked around, then went along the passage to the main bathroom, looked in then went to our bedroom.  He came back out, went   into one guest room and as he turned to retrace his steps, he saw the stairs, nodded and went down them to the laundry.

I knew I had to get him to the doctor. I had to get him assessed.  Now here we were and I was being told the result of the various assessments.  The words I just heard were not the words anyone wants to hear yet they were not unexpected.

I looked down that tunnel and realized that if there was to be any light, I would have to create it myself. I also knew I needed help.

The Meander: Here was a new journey.  Had all that had gone before in my life in preparation for this?