Lost in Translation (10/8/11)

 This story starts with my return to playing soccer. I'd been wanting to join the younger men in my community playing soccer for a while now but I didn’t have my shoes until Stephanie brought them for me, and I’m too much of a wimp to play barefoot when half the men have soccer cleats on, even though lots of the teenage boys run around barefoot. After Stephanie brought my shoes, the boys stopped playing for a couple months because there were no tournaments for them to train for, so apparently that means full stop on playing soccer. Playing because its fun apparently seems like too much work here, I could be wrong though. Anyways, the boys all started playing again finally in September but due to a nice large infection I had on my ankle the doctor told me I wasn't allowed to play until it started closing up. So two antibiotic cycles later and as much babying as I could possibly do, my sore was on the mend, the boys were still playing soccer and it was time to join them. I tied up my hair into a semblance of the samurai style, grabbed my ball, and shoes an walked down to the field. It being 3 in the afternoon I was ready to start playing, but of course it being Vanuatu soccer wouldn’t start until about 4pm even though they told me they started at around 3. That was fine by me because not having looked at a soccer ball in almost a year and it having been about 3 since I played, I figured it was a good chance to try running around and kicking the ball a little bit to make sure I wouldn't horribly embarrass myself when everyone else showed up. Sure enough, I was horribly out of shape not having done anything athletic in a year and my soccer skills were just short of making me worthy to be on the St Michael's A team. As the guys started showing up and kicking the ball around with me though I relaxed because most of them were not much better than me. So the day progressed and we played 6 a side for about an hour before they started calling out last goal wins, by which point I couldn’t have sprinted if you put me in front of a lion and tied a steak to my shorts. The next morning I woke up as sore as I was after the first day I ever lifted weights in high school, and felt like I might not be able to walk down the hill to my school. After hobbling around my family's compound for about an half hour and eating breakfast I decided the best remedy to being so stiff and sore was to just ignore it. So that afternoon I donned my cleats again and stiff and sore played another couple hours of soccer on our stone and dirt soccer field. This happened again on Thursday and again on Friday. Friday is when it got interesting. As I was on my way down to the field, my legs cramping as I walked down the hill to the field my brother in law saw me and asked if I was going to play in the big soccer tournament with the boys and I laughed and said if they wanted me to I would, assuming he was just joking around with me because of how poorly I played. We played for about an hour before my brother in law came through again and stopped us playing so he could make an announcement. This was of course all in local language, so all I got out of it was, bring an 18 kilo rice bag full of kava to play in the tournament, there was a lot of money to win, and the boys had to train hard if they wanted to win. After this he turned to me and in Bislama told me. Bae I mus gat physical blo winim tournament ia, yu save helpem ol boy mo mekem training lo olgeta? Translated as literally as I took it, The team has to have physicalS to win this tournament, can you help all the boys by training them? I told him that of course I’d be happy to help train all the boys for the tournament but that if they wanted me to play with them I’d have to see if the medical office had an up to date physical on form before I could tell them if I could play or not. This got a very confused look, which I didn't understand at the time. So excited about being asked to play in the tournament with the guys I immediately sent messages to the peace corps staff asking if it was ok if I played and if they had a current physical on file they could mail me. It being the weekend they said they would check next week. On Saturday as we were sitting down talking before getting ready to play one of my dads asked me if I knew what kind of work outs and training to teach the boys to help make them more physical in the tournament. I told him I knew a bunch of them and said we could start them up on Monday, at which point he asked me, so why are you waiting on the physical papers to come from your boss? Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. They didn’t need me to get a proof of a physical to play in this tiny soccer tournament in Vanuatu... they thought that I had to ask someone at the office to mail me a bunch of work out plans or something. Here I was after over a year of being in Vanuatu and speaking Bislama almost exclusively and I had completely misunderstood what was said. In Bislama they never use plurals, so while they said it fairly straight forward that the boys would have to be physical to win the tournament I just assumed that physical was supposed to be plural hence the way I interpreted it as, we all needed physicalS to play in the tournament. Now the funny look about me saying I needed to make sure I had the right papers to play made sense! Quite embarrassed I let the office know the next day that I actually wouldn't be needing a physical. Needless to say I didn't explain to them why I had changed my request. =)