Finding Your Tribe Without a Shared Language
Picture a man named Oskar, sixty-one, who moves to a country where he knows about a hundred words. In his first month, he eats most dinners alone. He tells himself it is the language.
Then he tries something different. He stops looking for people to talk with and starts looking for things to do with people. A pottery class, where people teach by showing. A walking group that meets on Saturday mornings. A shelter where volunteers walk dogs on Wednesdays. Three activities, about three hours each, every week.
In the pottery class, a woman shows him how to hold the clay by pressing her hands over his. In the walking group, a man points at a bird and says its name, and Oskar says it back, wrongly, and the whole group corrects him at once. At the shelter, nobody needs a word of the language to hold a leash.
After twelve weeks, Oskar knows eleven names. After six months, one of them invites him to dinner, and he understands about a third of the conversation. He laughs at the right places and is not sure why.
He also joins a language exchange on Thursday evenings, where he trades an hour of English for an hour of the local language. It is where he meets two other newcomers, and he is glad of them. He keeps them as one part of his week and not all of it.
Not everything works. He drops the walking group after a month, because the pace does not suit him. He tries a choir and leaves after one rehearsal. Some of what he tries does not suit him.
You might say that without the language, a person cannot belong. In my experience, language helps a great deal, and people often feel they belong before they speak it well. A shared task gives people something to do together while the words catch up.
You could pick three activities that use your hands or your feet more than your words: a class, a walking group, a volunteer job. You could go every week for twelve weeks and count the names you learn. You could bring someone a small thing you made or cooked, and see what happens.
What activity helped you meet your people in a new place? Tell us in the comments. Someone reading may be about to walk into their first class.
Tell us in the comments