The joys of language…
and of teaching a bunch of 11-year old Middle Eastern kids about New Zealand.
“Why did you choose New Zealand?”
“Coz you know nothing about it.”
“Gotta love NZ”
“Is that Maori?”
Tourism - Pakistani boy keeps saying ‘terrace’ instead of ‘tourists’. Sounds like ‘terrorists’ who should visit NZ to experience and appreciate its ‘awesome nature, mountains and…uh…uh… other stuff like that’.
Other stuff being: rivers, forests, volcanoes, geysers (What’s that?), glaciers (What’s that?), fjords (What’s that?), lakes, adventure sport, Maori culture – urghhh!!!
“Look at the pictures! Just describe what you see.”
National Parks? (Reading off the calendar’s cover page)
“Three World Heritage Sites!” (and don’t say ‘What’s that?’)
Tattoos – “they use needles with ink and stick it into your skin until the ink takes the shape of the tattoo. You can’t put water on it for three weeks (horrified). If you did not have a tattoo, you were useless.”
“No, worthless”.
He writes ‘worse-less’.
Name three cities in NZ – “Auckland, Wellington and Nepal.”
Sport – “they are the world champions in rugby and swimming.” ( No, sailing.)
The rugby team is called All Blacks, the football team is called All Whites. It refers to their clothes! The football team is not very good.” (Don’t say that. They won’t like it.)
Jordanian boy does a whole power point presentation on agriculture. When he’s finished, he asks: “What does agriculture mean?”
Kiwi – they know it’s a bird and a fruit. They love the fruit. If the NZ kiwi board ever wants a good add, these kids would be superb!
Would you like to visit New Zealand? – “I don’t understand the question.” (Explain) “No, because I will be working in Syria.” (Something wrong with my explanation?)
Did I make a difference? I’d like to think so.
They can find NZ on a map. They do know about Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. They know the Skytower is higher than the Eiffel Tower.
They can do a Haka (though not a very intimidating one).
They know the highest mountain is Mountain Cook (sic). They know who Edmund Hillary is. (The famous explorer who discovered NZ!) No, seriously, they do know. They even know who the Head of State is. (They can’t spell her name and they’re not sure she’s still alive, but still!) They know what the NZ flag looks like and they know that there are spelling mistakes in the National Anthem. (There is no such word as “thy”!) They probably know a lot more.
They will grow up and maybe one day, when the opportunity presents itself, they will take a break from their jobs in Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, India, Saudi… and say:
Let’s go visit the youngest country in the world; the land of the long white cloud; that small innovative little place at the bottom of the world, next to the penguins.
