My journey towards learning and mastering the Spanish language has taken me into and through some rather interesting places. When you are poor and on a low income and live in an English speaking country and you wish to tackle and learn a non-official language you are going to be up against quite an adventure.
I could not afford to pay for classes, much less return to university. I had recently gone from homelessness to living in a shared apartment with a Czech and a Slovak, soon replaced by an obnoxious Russian (is there any other kind? Okay, you're not all like POO-tin). And I wanted to learn Spanish. Badly. Worse, I had an ambition, a driving blinding ambition to learn Spanish that had been building and accumulating in my blood for five years. In February 1997 a perfect stranger approached me and gave me a small Spanish-English dictionary, a spontaneous gift. I knew this to be a sign. In 1999 I committed myself. Taking whatever small coins I could spare from my very meagre income on social assistance I bought a larger Spanish dictionary and a Spanish exercise book. I was in. A few weeks later I ran into an old friend who informed me that she was trying to learn Spanish and, to boot, that she had a number of Mexican and Salvadorian friends.
Her roommate, a gay middle aged man who neither liked me nor was sexually attracted to me (and like many gay males if he was going to give me the time of day it really would help if I could offer both benefits and alas I could not) to keep our mutual friend happy and quiet agreed to give me Spanish lessons, spiced with the jalapeno chilies of his dislike and his insistence in correcting even my most innocent errors. I eventually blew up at him, my friend backed me up, and this man and I never spoke to each other again.
Fortunately my friend was also a wealth of learning resources: one dollar Spanish classes at a local community centre facilitated by a middle class Mexican who treated me like dirt on the floor because of my poverty; a Spanish language radio program which became an invaluable language aid: a language exchange program in another community centre (actually they are called Neighbourhood Houses and they are rather like enhanced community centres for people with special needs and challenges.)
The language exchange program became a boon for a while. I was introduced to a young woman from Peru, ethnically Chinese, who was trying to learn English. We began to meet every week in a coffee shop and got on very well. She seemed intrigued that her Chinese-ness for me was neither an issue or a novelty, given how used I was to our rich ethnic diversity here in Vancouver.
Meanwhile, I graduated from beginners Spanish to intermediate, and was blessed with a different and much nicer, also Mexican, at the first Neighbourhood House (called Gordon House) and was even. One evening as we were beginning one of our sessions a young man looked into our room looking for his math class. A gay middle aged Chinese Canadian in our group, suddenly in love went chasing after him with a package of cookies (Wanna cookie, little boy?). The two lust-engorged middle age white women in our group simply egged him on and I felt frankly and openly embarrassed. The Chinese fellow came back looking rather disappointed. Through the open door the young man could be seen again and together, three pairs of hungry eyes were fixed on the poor boy. Feeling very ashamed of their behaviour and distressed that the young guy was being abused I went over and closed the door, commenting that I was protecting my brother. "How do you say spoilsport in Spanish?" whined one of the women. I looked it up. The word is "aguafiesta."
My Chinese-Peruvian friend became interested in meeting a Chinese-Canadian (different guy) from the Spanish class. They were strangely similar. The fellow was third or fourth generation Canadian and knew hardly a word of Cantonese. She was a third or fourth generation Peruvian who also knew scarcely a word of Cantonese. I was quite surprised how well they hit it off. He forgot that he was already married and to the surprised enjoyment of the young lady sidled right up next to her and she very self-consciously seemed to accept the courtship.
I hooked up with another Spanish speaker to do language exchange with since the young lady returned to Peru. He was a university professor in his native El Salvador with a passion for learning English and helping others learn Spanish. He also demonstrated appallingly poor judgment at times. While we were meeting in the foyer of the Neighbourhood House the custodian, a very unfortunate Filipino man who appeared to have a brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder, decided to participate. He had no interest or aptitude for learning Spanish and had horribly sexist attitudes towards women. He was soon harassing a young Mexican woman in our group. As a treat I had bought tangerines for everyone and he decided to give his to the girl in his interest in getting her in the sack. I felt awful about this and our Salvadorian facilitator didn't appear to see what the big deal was. In a way he seemed to be passively encouraging this man's behaviour, who had also bragged openly about his liaisons with prostitutes while he was working in Iraq, long before the war. Neither gentlemen appeared to understand why I would express concern for the sex-workers or the possibility that they were maybe being exploited. There was also another man from a non-Spanish Latin American country. When there were only men present in the group he wanted to talk about women, even though at least one of the men present, myself, felt very uncomfortable and not a bit squeamish about his cavalier sexism. A minority of one. I soon stopped attending this group, but only because of our facilitator's proclivity for wanting to hold our sessions sitting outside of McDonald's so he could smoke all the way through, not really understanding that not everyone wanted to patronize McDonald's nor be subjected to his second-hand smoke.
The Spanish classes eventually petered out, following an unfortunate stint with a particularly unpleasant facilitator from Mexico. I was finally working and could afford to buy books in Spanish, gleaned from selected second hand bookstores. I continued to listen to Spanish language programming on the radio, often tweaking my work schedule so that I could usually come home for lunch in time to listen to Latino Soy or in the mornings El bus de las siete.
I can only say that for all the awkward and sometimes unpleasant and embarrassing situations I have found myself in, my journey towards full Spanish fluency has been a fascinating and incredibly rich experience for me. I think I have also learned to be a little more patient and less judgmental towards those who do not share some of my values, though I still have my limits.
I still have little patience with poor bashing or gay bashing or abuse against women or other vulnerable people and if I witness any of these offences being perpetrated I will continue to address them. But I am also trying to see and appreciate the person who is making the error, to not attack them nor hate them but to try to understand them. But in English and in Spanish I still will not keep quiet.
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