The Kids Are Okay

HAIFA, Israel--“Sababa?” I asked her in colloquial Hebrew, meaning “You alright?” She nodded and grabbed a blue marker from my hand to color in the Hamsa she was making.

A few seconds later I grew bored. “Sababa” I said again, this time meaning, “Hey let’s go somewhere else—maybe the playground—I hear they have paddle ball.”

She raised an eyebrow and responded with a long breath of ch’s and ba’s that I did not understand. I think it was Hebrew or perhaps Russian. Probably not Spanish.

“Que?” I asked just in case.

She looked at me wide eyed and confused. It was definitely not Spanish.

Using her body language and context clues I could tell she was asking the question, Why are a bunch of ignorant Americans at my school, and why are they so bad at coloring in the lines?

I didn’t really know either. The program, Boston Connection, an organization that connects students from Boston to their sister city in Haifa, essentially just dropped us off at an elementary school, gave us some markers and told us to “connect.” I wasn’t quite sure how we could connect when the only words we had in common were “ok” and “bathroom."

So after going to the bathroom seven times and discovering that everyone, even the boy who had fallen while playing hopscotch, was doing okay, I was beginning to think that this trip to the school was a little hopeless and that the only connecting I was doing was to my inner ignorance.

But then Gangnam Style came on.

My first instinct was to cringe—another language I didn’t understand: outdated pop culture. My second instinct was to dance, but that would be embarrassing. I didn’t want these kids to know that I never learned all the dance moves to the song. But while repressing the urge to gallop like an injured horse, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my new friend (and I use this word liberally) was nodding her head to the beat.

So I grabbed her hand. “Let’s dance.” I said “Bailemos.” I had to double check.

She was hesitant, but from her body language and lack of verbal protest, I could tell that she really wanted me to drag her to the front of the classroom and make her dance.

She stayed for the entire song, hoping around and showing me the correct dance moves (lasso yes, sprinkler no). When the song ended, someone, perhaps a teacher, perhaps the ghost of PSY, replayed the song. From the way she kept smiling I could tell she was finally having fun, and from the way she kept pointing at me and laughing at my pelvic thrusts I could tell that we were bonding.  And when I tried to sit down because I am too cool (out of shape) to dance to the same song twice, she dragged me back up.

“Sababa” she said. She was a smart girl.

So perhaps there are ways to connect without words, as even with my limited vocabulary, I was able to successfully convey to her that I was a horrible dancer, and even though we didn’t share a language, she was able to convey to me that she did not care.