“Open your mouth. Open your mouth and let the words fall out.”
This phrase repeated through my brain like rubber track on a treadmill, calming and taunting me in an endless cycle. As a child, I always dreamed of learning another language. I wanted to share secrets with people of another country, culture, world, and we would speak as loud as we wanted, because only we would understand. I could jump into the midst of a population, rich with new sights, sensations and especially syllables, and nobody would question that I belonged.
Challenge. Adventure. Growth. Bliss.
I was mistaken. In learning a new language, the first three words proved spot-on, but bliss simply does not belong in that list.
With only six weeks of prior training in Portuguese, I entered Brazil as a missionary for my church. Six weeks. One, two, three, four, five, six, and I had just enough practice to say I needed to use the bathroom with an atrociously American accent. Upon arrival, everyone expected me to talk, travel, and even teach in the Brazilian tongue, but as much as I wanted this to be true, my mind and mouth simply couldn’t keep up with the pace of real conversations.
First day: I sat next to my teaching companion (a Brazilian woman from Espirito Santo, and a total stranger as of a few hours ago) beneath the cover of a humble, cement-walled home. Without air conditioning, the shade only teased our senses, and sweat still crept along every curve and crevice of our bodies. We each balanced precariously in broken plastic chairs, our stomachs heavy and brains lazy due to the full plates of rice, beans, and heavy meats our hosts had prepared so generously. Now, we had to fulfill our end of the bargain: teach.
I thought I’d begin the lesson with a question. They responded….
Whatever language they spoke was not what I’d studied! I tried another question, and they responded in the same language, but not the one I knew, or thought I knew, or clearly didn’t know!
And so began a nine month journey of immersion, humility, mental exhaustion, and a daily, hourly, second by second search within myself for the courage to simply open my mouth and let the words fall as they would. I have never done anything more challenging or more fulfilling than stripping myself of all familiarity and expression and relearning how to communicate. Ignore the looks. Embrace embarrassment. Move my mouth.
Victory is not in perfection, as I had always believed. Success is not in fame, as I had always seen on the Tv. Beauty emerges in the midst of struggle, and my mouth soon sprouted wings like a butterfly prying herself from her cocoon cage.
I will never forget the day a Brazilian approached me on the street, asked me for directions, and my once clumsy tongue floated through a phrase with perfect Portuguese grace. No weird face. No repeating of the question. A perfectly uneventful interaction shone as my ultimate trophy. I had gone native, and the language I once feared became my most cherished friend.
Brazil bleeds passion from her every pore. Sensual music penetrates all the way to the veins, and savory flavors float from within each home. Every expression in Brazil exudes suavidade (smoothness), especially the conversations. To speak the language is to taste it, to think it, to know it as a part of one’s own identity, and that gives me the courage to learn more. In learning another language, I faced myself bravely and came to love a people through their own tongue.
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