Of Toddlers and Mango Trees

It's hard being a toddler. You stumble and fall regularly, you are often misunderstood, and things out of your control often incite you to throw little "demonstrations" in order to get your point across.

Most of us don't remember that stage of life though, and I think that God, in his infinite wisdom, has a very good reason for not allowing us all of those painful memories.

The problem is, I'm living through that toddler stage all over again, linguistically speaking. I stumble over words on a regular basis, people rarely understand me the first time I say something, and as for the temper tantrums, well...I may not fall down kicking and screaming, but sometimes I would like to. Toddlers can do all of these things and still manage to coax smiles from the grown-ups around them, but adults who act in such a manner aren't nearly as charming.

It's frustrating at times, but no one is too old to be a learner, and no one is too young to be a teacher. My favorite teacher by far, though, is a little girl named Christine. She's about three years old, and she follows her older brother around everywhere. He's only six, and has been in school long enough to know a little bit of French, so we can exchange some vocabulary words and basic phrases.  The animation that he puts into all of his stories more than fills in the gaps in our language barriers.  But Christine is timid and hasn't learned French yet, and I haven't learned a lot of Kono yet, so our conversations are pretty short.

One evening while Kaelyn was at choir practice, I was sitting outside under the mango tree. Pretty soon a small group of kids wandered by, led by Christine's brother. He knows me from church, and isn't shy at all about coming over and saying hi. Once he greeted me, the other kids weren't about to be outdone, so they all came over to greet me as well. I had been writing in a notebook, but since it didn't seem like any more work was going to get done, I found a couple of extra pens and let the kids take turns drawing and writing. One of the girls started to play school, and promptly wrote down the names of all the kids in the group, so she could take attendance. (This actually was very helpful for me--now I could see their names in writing.)

I listened to the kids talking together, and sometimes I would ask them to tell me the word for some object around us in Kono. This of course, was a fun game.  Why just play school, when you can actually be the teacher? But it was Christine's little lesson that impressed me the most. She hadn't said a word to me up to this point, just watched me shyly from behind her brother. I was looking around, trying to remember the words for things like grass, rock, and tree, and when I pointed up at the large mango tree, a light when on in Christine's eyes. She figured out what I was trying to do, and she suddenly realized that she could help me. I knew the word for tree, but she knew that that wasn't just any tree--it was a mango tree. She stood up proudly, pointed at the tree, and told me the word for mango tree in Kono. When I repeated it, a smile spread across her face, and she sat down, satisfied.

I don't think she said anything else to me that night, but her excitement at being able to teach me one small part of her language was so sweet to see. I had been taught the word for mango tree before, probably more than once. But this time the lesson was from an unlikely teacher, and her words brought joy to my heart. So I suppose it's okay to be a toddler again, because it means I have some pretty great new friends and teachers.