There was one little boy though, who had a bit of a harder time than the rest. His name was Atsushi and he had come to the U.S. from Japan exactly 18 hours before starting camp. He spoke not a single word of English. His mother, who also spoke no English, informed me, through a note written by a friend, that she felt the quickest way for him to adjust and learn the language was for him to be totally immersed. In theory, this seems like a reasonable idea. In practice… well let’s just say it was significantly harder.
By just the second day of the session I knew I had to do something for poor Atsushi, who sat unmoving, unspeaking, and unblinking like a shell-shocked soldier as he dealt with the multi-pronged traumas of being left by his parents for the first time, being in a totally foreign environment, and being three. While wanting to respect his parents’ wishes and help him immerse, I also felt a fundamental human need to throw this kid a life line. I mean, I couldn’t even ask him if he had to go to the bathroom. So I bought a book of conversational Japanese.
The next day, I tried out my new skills. I won’t butcher the Japanese language by trying to recall the translation, but Atsushi understood perfectly, vigorously shook his head, and took my hand as we rushed to the bathroom. And then the most remarkable thing happened. Atsushi started to talk. And talk. And talk. It turns out that he was the most verbal kid in the entire group. Don’t get me wrong, even with my new book I couldn’t truly translate what he was saying most of the time, but once I made that initial effort to bridge the gap we managed to communicate in much the same way I communicated with the other three year olds.
Now I know that this example is long and a little heavy handed, but it remains one of the most memorable relationships of my life, even though it only lasted six weeks. And, I really do try to use the lessons I learned that summer in my work.
We, in the sexual and reproductive rights field, work in a small community where we are comfortable with the language and are surrounded by people who agree with us in almost every way. The small differences in the missions of our respective groups are nothing compared to the overwhelming similarities. But, because we are so used to interacting with people who speak our language of rights, access, funding, and underserved populations, we can forget that there is an entire world of Atsushis out there.
Because I am convinced, as I hope that many of you are too that we are absolutely on the right side of these issues, with science, compassion, and justice on our side, I have to believe that our problem is fundamentally one of communication. Many of the people out there who don’t support us may not necessarily be against us; they just have no idea what we’re talking about.
I think we have seen this clearly as the Stupak amendment brought our issues front and center in the health care debate. There is a new audience now, one who may be confused by the vast amount of information, misinformation, and opinions that are swirling about surrounding health care reform as a whole. The burden is on us to take the first steps to speak to these people, because we are the people who want to draw others to our side – to have outsiders understand the world through our insiders’ point of view. Believe me. We are never going to be able to do this if we are locked in our one way of thinking and communicating.
I would ask that as we think about issues like health care, abortion, funding for HIV prevention, same-sex rights, and comprehensive sex education, we start to develop some messaging frameworks that speak to people with other points of view. By focusing our energies on empathy toward people who are not in our camp have, I believe we can find new, strong allies. We just have to take the first step to open lines of communication and meet on some common ground.
And, after all, it’s always a good idea to start any meeting by asking if anyone has to use the bathroom.
