Fires and Languages

We were due to go north to Porto and beyond for Tim to hike 3 days of the Camino de Santiago with our friend Bruce, who is hiking the trail in honour of his wife who died recently of Alzheimer's. But suddenly there were fires everywhere near the route, and our trip was postponed until Tim went up a day late while I stayed behind, as my lungs are rather terrified of smoke. 

The fire triangle.

Meteorologists talk of the fire triangle, which looks like this.

There's also a rule of thirties which seems to predicate wildfires: above 30C temperature, below 30% humidity, 30km per hour winds, and 30 days without rain.

In Portugal, as elsewhere, many of the fires are set by arsonists, which is as incomprehensible to me as the fact that the criminal Trump is running again for President, and that half the population of America support this insanity.

At various times during the days before he left, Tim and I were glued to the Portuguese CNN, which had constant updates on the FOGOS.  We struggled with the language of the reporters and the rolling headlines, a language which we have just begun learning.  Sometimes we would race to the translation app, trying to find meaning before the headline scrolled to something just as incomprehensible.  Pictures always help for context of course, and we could see that the fires were awful and that everyone was trying to help, brave men and women trying desperately to save their homes with green-leaved branches, using green vegetation to beat away at the burning vegetation, all that heat and the smoke with no protection for their bodies or their lungs.  

example of small creature
affected by the fires

The fires are under control now and mostly out, although there is still smoke in the air, a little, where Tim is walking today.  I always consider all the little wild creatures affected, and feel so sad with my sentimental heart.  It is strange that 'sentimental' has a bad rap.  In spanish, sentimiento means feeling, or sorrow, and sentimento, as in sentimento de compasión, is a sense of compassion.

Another example

In Europe most people speak 2 or 3 languages.  As a generalization, many English people tend to rest on the laurels of English, believing they can get by. I do feel incredibly lucky to have had English as my native language. It is an extremely beautiful and expressive language, perhaps due to its large number of words, by some counts more than any other language.  Be that as it may, I am utterly in love with English, with the poetry of it, the familiarity of its sounds, it is as dear to me as the country of my heart.  At the International School of Boston where I taught for 17 years, I had an amazing passionate South American student who was bilingual in Spanish (her mother-tongue) and French, and fluent in English too.  Laura was a wonderful poet, and after two years of study with us, she began writing all her poetry in English, and when I asked her why she said, "Because it is the most beautiful language in the world!"

My introduction to other languages came when we were forced to learn Afrikaans from the age of 7 or 8, and I absolutely loathed it.  Even though I am a fifth-generation South African on my mother's side, still, the descendants of an 1840 British immigrant called John Webster clung stubbornly to the age-old hatred between the 'British' and the 'Boer'.  When I was little, the Afrikaners created the repressive state of Apartheid which set our country on a long trajectory of hatred and brutality and poverty, the effects of which are still extensive in the now democratic South Africa of 2024.  So there was also that going against Afrikaans as a language.

However, at the beginning of grade 10, I was fifteen years old, a budding poet and romantic. In walked this new, extremely large and rather beautiful Afrikaans teacher.  She kind of floated in, in that graceful manner which some very large women have.  She had bare arms and beautiful skin, and she graciously put her pile of books down, then swept around to face us all (I was in the back corner of the classroom, where the wicked students were always seated) and began reciting a poem.  An Afrikaans poem! Die Dans van die Reën by Eugène Marais.  My heart!  

Die Dans van die Reën (The Dance of the Rain) is a poem personifying the rain as a woman and how the

an old drawing of mine which sort
of captures the feeling of the poem

parched land feels when the rain finally falls.  Utterly beautiful and somehow untranslatable into English.  But you can read the original with a translation here: https://www.wattpad.com/8161821-gecko-jig-the-dance-of-the-rain-die-dans-van-die   That lesson was like being in an auditorium witnessing the most enthralling performance!  During those 40 minutes I fell in love with Afrikaans and never looked back!  No Afrikaans teacher had thought to teach us poetry before!  Or maybe I just hadn't been listening.

And then you find all the other attributes of the language, the humour, the perfect onomatopaeic words, the vulgar disgust of Afrikaans swear words, wonderful.

In grade 7 we had to choose Latin or French for High School, although there was only one French class and two teaching Latin.  So someone told us to say "I want to be a diplomat" to get into the French class.  I wonder how many of those french students ever became diplomats!  The teacher was a crazy old frenchwoman, Madame Doise, who taught us lots of old french folk songs and nursery rhymes, which are all still preserved in my brain and come rushing out at odd moments, word-perfect.  

In grade 11, my friend and I decided we wanted to be really good at French and knew Madame Doise was not doing it for us, so we persuaded our parents to pay for extra French classes with a private teacher.  This went along swimmingly until the old husband, who I thought was very dear and had become my friend, started coming on to me, quite aggressively, which put an end to that!

During lockdown Tim and I started learning Spanish with a wonderful Peruvian teacher, who happened to be the hero girlfriend who saved our son when he nearly died from Covid in Argentina at the beginning of the pandemic.   When they sadly broke up two years later we took lessons with Matthew's original Spanish teacher in Guatemala, Elsa, an extraordinary young woman who became our dear friend.  We spent a few days in Guetemala with her last year but now, since we have had to give up our lessons because of learning Portuguese, I miss her terribly.

Flowering.

All these languages in the little section of my brain labeled FOREIGN LANGUAGES vie for my attention when I am trying to speak just one of them.  Although I am really good at reading and understanding and also writing in all these languages, I can't say I am fluent in speaking them.  It seems that is always the hardest part of learning a language.  Afrikaans comes easiest to me and Tim and I use it often as a "secret language".  Sometimes when I have thought I was having a wonderful conversation in French, the person will suddenly look at me oddly and I come to realise that Afrikaans has won that round in the FOREIGN LANGUAGES boxing ring.  

But I love them, all these arguing tongues, I find them fascinating and confusing and beautiful and startling and astonishing, and they have opened my mind to a compelling maze of cultures and histories that I would never have ventured down.

And the art for the week is a reworking of an old self-portrait, I have been loving collage this week!