What you speaking now? - Language mishaps in a border town

"Dua Minggu" I learned means two weeks in Bahasa Indonesia. Two weeks till I review a patient who lives on the Indonesian side of the divide in a place called Arso. A statement I had to get another patient to translate with a lot of hand signals and smiles.

I am multi-lingual, a side effect of being Papua New Guinean, although not as well as most. I am fluent in English and Tok Pisin and understand enough to get by with my mother's people here but oh, now I need to learn Indonesian, so the next time an old man blurts out his heartfelt thanks in Bahasa Indonesia for helping him, I hope to reply in his tongue and make him smile.

Vanimo is a border town on the coast near Indonesia. People flock here to go shopping at the border (batas in Indonesian) from all parts of Sandaun province and neighboring East Sepik after the road was opened (see a previous post on my road trip). But there is also reverse migration from Indonesia of people seeking treatment in PNG and PNG folk living in Indonesia traveling back for treatment in PNG. Hence I now am on a quest to learn enough Indonesian so I don't look like a flapping bird making hand gestures to get my message across.

Embarrassingly enough, sometimes the patient will patiently watch my flapping hand gestures, smile and then begin a conversation in Tok Pisin. So now I begin my routine by trying tok pisin, then English before resorting to disjointed Bahasa with flapping hands as an encore.

My eventual aim is to be able to write a whole blog post in Bahasa Indonesia to show off my new found brilliance and to perfect my flapping hands technique (why does it remind me of spirit fingers from cheerleader movies?????).
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